Looking back...

Due to my great obligations, I have left this blog unattended for quite a while. Unfortunately I cannot promise that I am definitely back to blogging, but I can say that I can at least try.

So, about a year and a half has passed since my conversion, and I'd like to offer a couple of notes to all you who are seeking to find or have already found Christ in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, but you are still in doubt.

As you can see from my conversion story, it took a lot of courage to take the plunge, but I can assure you all, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, that the path that I chosen was and still is NOT an easy one.
I guess that the first big problem I had to face was the whole "changing" and "conversion" in the habitual sense. So, it's not only that you've become Catholic and that's that - it's what you plan to do with that fact. In other words, I had to adjust myself to being or to having become Catholic.
There were three blessings in this respect: First, God taught me to schedule everything around Sunday, so I made regular Mass going a must in my life. Another thing was going to frequent confession, according to the late (and God willing, soon to be blessed) Pope John Paul II. And the third was the great support I got from my friends, near and far. If it weren't for my personal upgrading, I would never have reached the point I wanted to reach.

So, even though the road on the way to happiness is tough - I have never had any doubts that it is worth it!

Therefore, I'll leave this come-back post with this picture, hope you're enjoying your way!

Praying the Rosary on the way to school

One of my favourite pass-times since I've converted was praying the rosary. It was a bit difficult to learn at first but I got the hang of it after a month of constantly and daily praying it with the help of a CD by the Mary Foundation and a book from my parish priest.

What's in a Rosary??
Well PRETTY MUCH! First and foremost you get to pray the most beautiful prayer that the very Jesus Christ, Our Lord gave to us 5 +1 times. Then you get to pray one of my favourite prayers to Our Lady. And finally you get to experience the life of Jesus just as it happened from his conception to his ressurection! But not only experience it but also pray it and at best think about it. Because as you go from one decade into another the best thing to do is to think about what you are praying.

The biggest problem for me was finding suitable time to pray the rosary just after I learnt it and started praying it regularly. There is a very nice practise in my church in which you get to pray the rosary as a community before every Mass. But if I wasn't going to Mass then it did present a problem for me to get the right time and pray the rosary as I wanted to. And then I figuired it out! EUREKA!! :)
I started using the time I used to spend without doing anything. I considered that the rosary wasn't something that you say - but that you experience and I usually experience things with either my eyes or my mind. I do love looking at the rosary while I'm praying it so I combined the two and experienced the Rosary one beautiful afternoon while walking to school. It was impossible at that time - me praying and walking?
There were people around who did absolutely nothing - they either had a blank stare while they were walking or running, others were listening to the radio or to their mp3s and I was actually doing something more with my time I wasted in vain. I then spread out my practice to praying the rosary while on the bus, especially for the longer rides I have to take. Because I spend a lot of time with my rosary on those occasions.

This is an experience I've been practising ever since - I STRONGLY RECOMMEND IT!
It doesn't take up your time - quite the contrary it gives meaning to it!

My return to blogging

Sorry for the delayed return folks!
I would love to share my after-becoming-Catholic news back on this blog, so I hope you will be interested in reading them....

See you soon!
Pax Vobiscum!

Please pray for these good souls

I ask that the kind readers of my blog pray for:
Sr Julia,
Bradley
Bill
and Dawn
May God give them strength and shower them with His love and mercy in their hour of need.
Amen!

Reconciliation

The Sacrament of Reconciliation has always been one of the sacraments of our Lord that helps us connect to Him. Why can we get so close to God when we only kneel before the priest in the confessional?

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

We start our connection by establishing the first formula with which we establish our foundation upon which we will build our whole dialogue, instead of saying Hello, we have based our beliefs and we begin our confession by setting the base greeting with which we call upon the Merfcy of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, the priest from the other side suddenly becomes somebody we have grown to know each day. He acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ (instead of Christ), creating the bond between Him and us. So this connection is not established by a crystal bowl or the calling of spirits, but by sound faith and a sound relationship with God.

We are faced with the recollection of memory of our passed sins before we enter the confessional, and as we kneel and cross ourselves, we in fact face our inner self, sinful as it is, and bow before God's eternal blessing, wisdom and mercy by letting his light guide us through the confession, by confessing everything we confess that we are sinful, but that we want to become better. Confession is not a place where the weak come to be weaker. In fact, the ones weak from their sins usually come there to become stronger. Because it takes great courage and strength to face our sins, our wrongdoings and our going astray.

After we confess our sins or ask for guidance, we hear something which is greater than anything we've heard before. After the penance due for the sins we've committed we hear something which we haven't expected. I went wrong, I confessed and the Lord is Merciful enough to forgive all of our sins! What Power and at the same time what Mercy we are faced with. The sins we commit as we go through the Stations of the Cross, are in fact a modern representative of the people participating in Jesus' passion on his way to Calvary. If we try and re-live those moments of the life of our Lord, we can see our sins from another perspective.

The powerful psychological image of the Confessional, is something we find in other practices as well. If you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, you do pretty much the same. But the psychologist or psychiatrist can never do one very important thing - forgive our sins. This glorious duty is only entrusted with our priests.

If you can find Michel Dangoisse's, Laissez-Vous Reconcilier avec Dieu, (Reconciliate Yourselves with God, also translated as Accounts 0r Testimonies about Reconciliating with God) or a similar book that explains why you need to go to confession, might help those of you who are still in doubt of whether or not you need to confess.

It's better than going to your local square and shouting from the top of your lungs "I HAVE SINNED", because I doubt that even God would like to hear you:) when you can ALWAYS go to Church and open up! And don't worry, your sins will never be heard by anyone else as the priest is obliged to keep them to himself even if he is under threat for his life, and the only cost you have to pay is to be penitent.

From my personal experience, I believe that confession has made me stronger and has given me a guidance in life, but most importantly it brought peace and happiness to my soul. The Holy Trivium is a wonderful time to go to Confession. Why not use it? You always know that there will always be a door open for you there.

Entering...Entered:)

Well, the biggest challenge of all was of course to make the selection of Church and tradition. Something was wrong, I did not get what I want from the Orthodox Church. The splitting up of churches in 1054 instead of ending there and getting the dialogues going, it had gone further down in the East. With the split of the Bulgarians and others each and every country forgot Constantinople and decided not to recognize the surpemacy which used to belong to "the New Rome" in that period after the split with Rome.
Now this is something huh? Suddenly all that I had been hearing of having something "ortho-dox" (right way) in your church. And there had been a talk going on against Catholicism. There's another problem. There are Orthodox Churches that don't recognize each other. Each country has its own Orthodox Church, but there isn't a THE Orthodox Church anywhere.
During my reading of the Bible I stumbled upon Matthew 16:18:

Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Now who and where's Peter? Of course as the more informed amongst you already know he resides and is succeeded by means of Apostolic Succession in the Holy Father - the P0pe.
So I said to myself: What am I waiting for? I never realized the wealth of the Internet before. Being able to inform yourself is something wonderful. I started gradually building up my knowledge and reading everything I could. With the help of a wonderful person from the USA, I could even receive books and read them in hard copies:)
After much reading and self-preparation as well as a great support from my friend, I decided to visit my local diocese. I was welcomed as a friend and was not scorned but instead I was listened to very carefully and I received the explanation. I was given a choice to either join or only participate within the Church. My inner-self knew that just participating would not help my need for God. I had to enter into full Communion. It is something deeper than you have ever felt before, you just know that it's there, waiting for fulfillment and nothing you can do can stop it in any way. You're not aware of how strong this feeling was! I just had to keep going and it gradually developed into something greater. Fortunately I had a great guide and received, God willing, an even greater father and brother in Christ.
Developing into a Catholic took a great courage and strength, which I have never believed nor expected to happen. Courage because you are getting into something new and partly unknown and strength because you're facing up a community and an outer world that might not accept your decision with open arms. But there is only one way to go by it. Accept what you want and more importantly accept God with all your heart and with all your mind.
After I have converted, I changed. For the better. And people noticed it and are still noticing it. Conversion is only the beginning. After my conversion I grew and am still growing spiritually.
So therefore I have proudly entered the Catholic Church in 2007.
My next posts will concern my growth, I'll try and recommend books and sites as well as practices I've found helpful.
Semper In Christi

A peak into the light

Usually it's very hard to live in a way of life that you think does not fulfill your expectations, so it was a hard thing to first acknowlidge that things weren't going the way that I wanted them to be. This is why it took me first a lot of time to inspect my own religion or the way that my Church goes about it in it's tradition and beliefs. So what do you do first when you're in doubt about your religion? You go to a priest.
Older priests in my country had started their practice during Communist times which enabled them to create a tradition of religion that might suit the goals of the system, which preached that "religion is the opium for the masses" so tradition was more important than faith. So people didn't learn any prayers and weren't taught in their religion.
So bearing that in mind, I was told that I shouldn't bother myself with such things, and that it was their job (the priests' job) to deal with the questions of God.
Prohibition does wonders to a young man's mind. I went deeper into the subject by looking for some books and articles on religion and about whether my religion was the one that had the truth.
This is the period when I started doing a more intense study of the Bible with the help of different materials which came from different pamphlets and internet sites by different Christian sects (or whatever they are called) which helped me get a basic understanding of what the Holy Scripture was. I couldn't understand why the priest I talked to didn't tell me to go to the Bible for answers; that's what priests used to do on films, and I read lots of commentaries by different priests who actually suggested a certain amount of Bible study for the practicing Christian.
Meanwhile I found out that prayer was something to be said, so I started learning pace by pace how a Christian should really pray. At that time a new magazine on Orthodoxy was being issued and I had the opportunity to read more about it, and about the "do's and don'ts". I tried to follow many of these advices, but I was always pulled back by my environment which didn't accept religion as a way of life, but as a way of differenting between peoples and nations.
People here, usually attend the liturgy if they are told to or if there's a big holiday (Christmas or Easter) so that it has become a part of the lifestyle of the population that they should follow their own religion (as a counter-influence of the Muslim tradition of regular attending prayers and everything).
On this crossroad of my life I decided that I will practice whatever I think secretly, and I will perform my public duities as I was supposed to do. It wasn't easy, but I did it. I found an Orthodox priest online who told me that what I was doing was right and encouraged me to follow the path I have selected.
But something was wrong. My lifestyle didn't go allong with the choice that I had made to follow God as He would instruct me, and as his earthly representative (the Church) would tell me.
I prayed one day saying "God, please lead me to the right path and I will obey your wish".
This is the time when I started reading about Church history and the 11. century split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
The magazine gave an article commemorating the visit of the late Pope John Paul II to Greece, and discussed certain aspects of difference between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. I think that this would be my initial close encounter with the Catholic faith. I started watching Catholic Masses from Italy and from my country and I was astonished by them. The organization of the Church and the complete hierarchy and the order it gave was the most appealing thing to me at that time (and if I might add, it still is).
I was given a chance in life, a chance to choose. And I had a new topic on my mind that I had to explore the Western way of life, the way of moving away from the East and tradition, towards something that appealed to me after such a long time. I finally had the right choice to make, and Deo gratia, I finally was able to have at least a small ray of light from our Heavenly Father.