Guest column by Becky Huebner
St. Peter Parish, Lincoln
If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about the Catholic Church, contact your nearest Catholic parish, or visit www.lincolndiocese.org/parish-ocia/locations.
My improbable path into the Church has been a long and winding one, culminating in 2019 when I was received into the Church.
A truth seeker and lifelong Christian in the Protestant and Evangelical traditions, my conscious journey to the Catholic Church began about 20 years ago when I picked up a book written by Peggy Noonan titled “John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father.” Both her story and his captured me.
Around that time, while driving my son to the airport, we stopped at the Holy Family Shrine along I-80 in Gretna. The beauty of the Nebraska prairie from this beautiful space – the Truth, revealed through beauty – formed a little pebble of Catholic curiosity that began to tickle my spirit. How apt that this deposit of beauty drew me toward the Church. As the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The next steps in my pursuit of the good, true and beautiful had begun.
That boy I was taking to the airport, he too was on a path. And unbeknownst to anyone, our son was leading me.
One cold January day in 2019, my husband and I set our alarms for 3 a.m. and sat, transfixed, in front of our TV as our son’s voice filled our living room. That man, our boy, raised a Protestant here in Nebraska, was the deacon singing the “Proclamation of the Moveable Feasts” at the Epiphany Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. As Deacon Christian’s voice wafted across the basilica and across the airwaves, the improbability of all this took our breath away.
But as Isiah 55 reminds, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Our son’s story is his to tell, but I offer a brief summary from my eyes. Always a pursuer of the good, true and the beautiful – before he or I knew to call it that – the boy had a heart for the Lord, and a curiosity for all things academic. He read voraciously, sang, acted and marched to his own drummer. His zeal for the goods of life were contagious and his humor a joy. He wisely sought mentors (several of whom are now Catholic, as well) in his relationships and readings.
While in law school, our son announced his conversion to the Catholic faith. We were not overjoyed. But we knew him, and we knew his logic and his heart were sound. And, a few years later, when he announced his intention to discern the priesthood, we again were not overjoyed, but we were not surprised.
Dear friends of ours – St. Peter parishioners – had been following all this and kindly invited us to attend RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults; now called the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults or OCIA) in an effort to understand our son’s journey. We did, and it was eye-opening. As we listened around the table and heard the intellectual horsepower of the attendees, we were impressed.
For these folks, there was no conflict between intellect and faith. In fact, their intellects grew their faith in many cases. This was something new. Our traditions had encouraged spirit and scripture – both good and true – but somehow not intellectual pursuits. This had always felt a bit uncomfortable. Were we not called to “love the Lord with all our heart, soul and mind, and our neighbor as ourself ”? My mind was searching. Each church, each bible study, each good relationship made good, rich deposits in my journey of faith, and I am so grateful for them all. But something was missing. Something sensed, but not known. I believe it was Aristotle who said, “the senses are the gateway to knowledge and there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
Back east in Washington D.C., something else was stirring.
Our daughter, an optometrist, was looking for a place to do an internship rotation as she finished her training. Her brother invited her to his neck of the woods, and arranged for her to live with some of his female friends: friends who were Catholic; friends who lived directly across from his parish, St. Peter, on Capitol Hill. RCIA there was not far behind. Our daughter’s housemate and friend was her sponsor, and a beauty of a new Catholic was born.
Two of our children were now Catholic, two were not; we were watching, learning, studying, and once again going to RCIA; once again not ready to join, but open to learning. Family history aside, doctrine is enough of a mountain to climb: Do Catholics “worship” Mary and the saints? The Real Presence, really? And relics – oh my, so many rules and regulations!
I was not even familiar with the concept of formation, but being formed I was.
While our son was discerning joining the Church, he needed a place to attend Mass when home visiting. Having raised our family in the neighborhood, we knew where St. Peter was, so there he went. We would occasionally join him. Then, occasionally, we went on our own. And one day, occasionally became regularly.
The barriers were not easy to overcome: Are we welcome here? Where do we sit? How do we know when to stand or kneel? What page are we on? Are we allowed to take Communion? We hid in the back, but we were there. Over time, the friendly 4 p.m. greeter knew our names, the priest gave a smile of recognition, and one day, some friendly strangers invited our son to brunch after Mass. They didn’t stop there. Fast-forward several years; they sponsored us into the Church.
We had a Lutheran church home, and I didn’t want to leave it. I cared about my circle of people, and the things I was involved in mattered to me. Also, I love stability. When I eventually left that church to become part of The Church, I assumed I would not find friends or community, nor be able to be of service. I was too old to start over.
But “… my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9. Each time I mused on these things with my son, he reminded me to always put God first and the rest will fall into place.
I was being formed, not only by the Mass, but by relationships, education (RCIA), and by study. A book kicked off this investigation, and more books, along with myriad podcasts, videos and relationships, filled and formed me, and continue to do so. They are numerous, but some key guides were, and are: “Word on Fire” and Bishop Barron’s online presence and his “Catholicism” and “Pivotal Players” series; The Thomisitic Institute podcasts and Aquinas 101 series; Father Thomas Joseph White’s “ The Light of Christ,” Scott Hahn’s “The Lamb’s Supper,” and Peter Kreeft’s books and modern lectures.
2018 brought me back to RCIA for the third time. It first brought me to Rome for our son’s diaconate ordination. It was not our first trip to Rome, but it was first among all journeys.
Not being Catholic, we did not really know why this was something important, but he was our son, and he asked, so we went. He also invited an eclectic group of his friends from his many walks in life. We spent a week together, and the people, the place, the time, conspired to create something beyond words, something of the Spirit, something like a Pentecost. Heaven touched earth that week and it settled something for me. I had to be a part of this thing called the Church. I was ready to be a Catholic. I had to be a Catholic.
“Because you have made us for yourself, our soul is restless until it finds its rest in thee,” said St. Augustine. Sometime during our visit to Rome, my soul came to rest. In the end, the only reason to be a Catholic is to believe it is the truth. I did.
Those questions and obstacles did not immediately disappear. Some settled; some settled more with each passing year, but some may not be. “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. now I know in part, then I shall know fully…” 1 Cor 13: 12. Dimly will more than suffice on this side of heaven.
That third time through RCIA, my husband did not join me. We had walked together through all this, including attending Mass and many of those formative deposits. But, in the end it is the Spirit who converts, and my husband was not yet moved to become a Catholic.
During the “time of Covid” we both began to read and listen to things of faith, culture and philosophy. It was an eye-opener and it was life-changing. Paul “met” Thomas Aquinas, attended RCIA for his third time, and was received into the Church in 2023.
As stated in a recent homily, “in the Catholic Church we are given all the gifts that God wants to give us.” Indeed. Thanks be to God, and to all those who shepherded me along the way.
