This essay compliant with the Coming Home Network submission guidelines was submitted but not accepted. So I post it here as a abridged spiritual autobiography.
Introitus
Our large family was Roman Catholic through Mom’s Italian lineage and Dad’s dutiful conversion for marriage in the Church. Mom delivered a child every thirteen months with near-mechanical regularity until I arrived twenty-seven months delayed, a statistical outlier, and the last of eight children. My ten-pound, four-ounces of fetal macrosomia left the birth canal in ruins, prompting a hysterectomy that closed the door on younger siblings.
I was born in 1965, the year Novus Ordo was instituted and the old Mass set aside after centuries of use; perhaps that’s significant. The spirituality of our Maryland home was obligatory Catholic: infant baptism, first Holy Communion, Mass on Sundays, Lent.
I was never confirmed nor catechized and remember one confession that Mom assured me would make me feel better; it did not.
At age seven, I made my First Communion wearing a tweed jacket and clip-on tie. If the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist were ever explained to me, it must have evaporated on the spot, contending with Saturday morning cartoons, syndicated reruns of Gilligan’s Island, and other forms of mid-seventy’s mind-candy.
Mom worked part-time at a hobby shop nearby to supplement Dad’s government salary. Her real labor was constant and unpaid: building culture out of thin air, inventing traditions, and insisting that our chaos bend toward meaning. And when she became “born again” through the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the spirituality of the household shifted permanently. Salvation became paramount. Bible reading and memorization were rewarded. Forgiveness, the fruits of the Spirit, and appeals to scripture governed domestic disputes. Above all, the name of Jesus was to be honored.
“…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Jos 24:15)
As a child, it was natural for me to attend Mass Sunday morning then watch televangelist Kenneth Copeland Sunday night. In summer, I went to Vacation Bible School at the Layhill Community Free Methodist church down the road. Jack T. Chick publications were scattered around the house as “wholesome” substitutes for Conan the Barbarian. It seemed the spiritual renewal came with a generous gob of ecumenism. I simply viewed each tradition as separate expressions of the same Christianity with Catholicism being the least understood and the least entertaining.
I had a childlike faith which I took serious enough to question its childlikeness. I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime as long as I was reading and I would often read the Bible. Our parish gave out paperbacks of the duology: Gospel of Luke/Acts of the Apostles. This was the Good News version with sketches by Swiss illustrator Annie Vallotton, making Scripture inviting to children and anyone more comfortable with pictures than theology. I read my copy cover to cover.
I liked the Word of God. I assumed everyone else did too. Perhaps that was the childlikeness of my measure of faith.
De Profundis
My lack of physical maturity was made painfully clear on the very first day of junior high when three girls, practically women, walked toward me as I crossed onto the school grounds.
The frontmost girl stooped, hands on knees, eyes level with mine. “Are you lost, little boy?” she cooed. This was not a cruel joke, like many I would endure—she was dead serious.
“He goes to this school, Jennifer!” rasped another, probably recognizing me from orientation.
By ninth grade my size had changed little. I was about that age when boys stretch upward and outward with a growth spurt, muscles, virility, and a claim to stake in the world, the birthright of every male emerging from boyhood.
The growth spurt eventually came, just not as advertised…
I remember my post-op appointment stretching on interminably—Mom inside the surgeon’s office while I waited alone, thumbing through Highlights, a children’s magazine whose primary educational mission was helping young readers locate woodland creatures while awaiting devastating medical news.
When I finally got called in, Mom looked undone. The surgeon spoke directly to me with paternal authority, explaining that he had made an appointment for me at Children’s Hospital and that I was “tough enough to take it”. He repeated the phrase, as if repetition might clarify its meaning.
Tough enough to take what?
Childhood cancer is rare—roughly one in five thousand children you don’t want to be. In 1980, surviving non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was far closer to a coin toss than it is today. The scale of treatment was so raw and unknown, it too required the consultation of a magic eight ball, vigorously shaken.
Adults, once acquainted with the news of my diagnosis, could scarcely hide their terror—the words everyone dreads, now spoken in my direction. People speak of a cancer “journey,” a word that sounds more manageable in retrospect than while living through it. The “journey” at that age is euphemistically character-building as if I needed more beyond what had been hammered into me by common schoolyard cruelty.
Mom launched an enormous campaign of prayer. The diagnosis spread through her spiritual network, carried into churches and whispered through intercessions long before I understood a shred of it. Anyone capable of petitioning heaven—clergy, laity, friends, relatives, scoundrels—was conscripted into service. In Mom’s theology, prayer was not symbolic, it was artillery.
After a battery of tests and a prognosis, the treatment plan was presented nonchalantly to me by Dad while Mom kept a brave face: pulled from school, daily radiation for a month, chemotherapy for six months, side effects such as nausea and hair loss.
Hair loss?!
Was it not enough that I was small, “rudely stamped”, without even a rumor of masculine presence, squirming through the primordial ooze of the public-school system? Losing my hair would drag me out of the arena like human refuse at the gladiatorial games.
You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them. (Ps 88:8)
I ran from the room, horrified.
Eucharistica Ultima
Cytoxan, Vincristine, Methotrexate—the drugs had names like racehorses at the Kentucky Derby and arrived chilled in syringes the size of caulk guns. That May 1980 at Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., chemotherapy began.
As she would at every dosing, Mom asked the administering physician if we could pray first. Judging from the physician’s expression, prayer had not featured prominently in residency. Nevertheless, he paused respectfully before injecting me with the chemicals, immediately filling my throat and nostrils with the taste of moth crystals.
I was attached to an IV and admitted overnight. That first dreadful day, doctors rotated frequently into my room, reading charts, asking questions, palpating.
During a lull in this activity, a young Catholic priest appeared with a small gold container—a pyx, a word Scrabble players should know and probably why I remembered it. Inside was the consecrated bread. I knew it simply as Communion, a ritual performed with little thought and no understanding.
The priest spoke but my head was elsewhere. Then, after praying, the priest extracted a single white wafer.
The Body of Christ
In the same perfunctory way, I received The Blessed Sacrament.
Amen.
I ate.
I stopped going to Mass.
Be angry, but sin not; commune with your own hearts on your beds,
and be silent. (Ps 4:4)
I did not turn sour with the priest, the pyx, or the Catholic Church specifically. In my mind, every expression of Christianity had equal footing. I was angry, yes, and every indictment led to God.
Why did You allow this to happen to me? Were not other kids more deserving? Kids doing drugs, having sex, vandalizing property?
All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and chastened every morning. (Ps 73:13–14)
I was the smallest in my family, smallest in my grade, smallest in my school (except poor Alan in the seventh grade but that’s beside the point), getting the dirty end of the stick and here was God piling on!
I sank into depression.
Friend and acquaintance you have put far from me
And my only companion…
… is darkness. (Psalm 88:18)
I considered suicide.
Protestant Vobiscum
The crisis took a spiritual toll on the family. Dad also stopped going to Mass but then returned to his Protestant roots, attending the Layhill Community Free Methodist church nearby.
I do not remember when I started going with him later that summer. Dad attending church of his own volition was high entropy, so it got my attention. Although I was still simmering with God, I was smart enough to know one thing: The House always wins.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).
Layhill was nothing like the solemnity of the Catholic Mass. People talked loudly, fanned themselves with the bulletin, and strolled into the pews without reverence. The sanctuary itself was plain: white walls, simple wooden cross, central pulpit.
Through Layhill and everything that followed, my relationship with God returned, though far less innocent than before. Like my biblical namesake Jacob, it would be tumultuous, combative, full of suspicion. At least then, my diet consisted entirely of God: no secular music, no media, nothing that might sully a faith upon which my life literally depended. I listened to teaching tapes, memorized Scripture, attended church, and read many books. Word-Faith theology convinced me to police my thoughts and speech, as though the right words in the right spirit would secure a desired miracle.
The horrors of treatment continued until late November, when Dad finally ended it. The doctors wanted another year of chemotherapy, but Dad overruled them. Only many years later would I realize how breathtaking that decision was, one that may have saved my life or just as easily hastened its end. At that moment, I was simply happy to be done.
As new as treatments were, the traditions that evolved around them did not yet exist. When chemotherapy ended, there was no bell rung, no Make-A-Wish, no sloppy kiss, no kick in the keister to mark a finish line.
Cancer has no finish line. The trauma of dealing with death each day does not suddenly vanish with appointments. Nevertheless, I re-entered society as if nothing happened, returning to high school already in progress.
Outwardly, fragile life resumed.
Inwardly, the search for certainty began.
Tegimus Corda
Any declaration of survivorship comes after five years with no recurrence. Until then, you live on probation where every ache auditions as an omen, every fever arrives with a question mark.
Even after five years, the body can no longer enjoy the presumption of innocence. Ordinary ambitions like college, career, romance, became provisional, as though making long-term plans while strapped to explosives.
Joy became provisional too. Happiness no longer arrived alone but dragged sorrow behind it like a shadow while any good day came burdened with its own obituary.
More than anything, I wanted release from the condition of having been ill, even after the illness itself was presumably gone. I wanted out from its lingering jurisdiction over my thoughts and future.
To secure that release, I was on a private mission to locate God and put Him in a comfortable box with airholes and clear labeling. The rest of the world, with its headlines and haircuts, felt irrelevant, faintly stupid.
In time I became a member of Layhill, submitting to adult baptism in a backyard pool. I remained there through high school and college until the young adult group dissolved into marriages and careers. And when the pastor left unexpectedly, I took the opportunity to follow suit.
Fractura Prima
What followed for me were nearly two decades of church hopping reflecting an internal quest for certainty—for an airtight theology, reliable answers, and a linear God I could predict like a system.
Truth be known, I was also on a quest for a wife. But what woman could handle my immense woundedness?
I met Kimberly at a friend’s house. She was serving Brethren Volunteer Services (BVS) as a missionary attending a Baptist Church. After my father’s death in 1990, we began attending Redeemer together, a non-denominational Bible church my parents had joined and where its pastor helped the family navigate our grief.
A year later we married and would raise two daughters, Kolleen and Shealinn, in the same evangelical world that had become our home.[1]
In those early years a thoughtful Catholic friend from work, Mike, handed me Scott Hahn’s Rome, Sweet Home. Hahn’s account was interesting but not persuasive. Catholicism still felt needlessly complicated, a dense forest of beliefs and traditions I had already left behind. As far as I was concerned, I’d been there, done that, got the alb.
I wasn’t anti-Catholic, never. I simply regarded Catholicism as another denomination, albeit one with many moving parts. Every denomination, it seemed, had taken one thread of Christian teaching and woven an entire tradition around it. Catholicism had a lot of threads, threads that I later learned were treasures.
After moving to Northern Virginia, we attended McLean Bible Church, the largest megachurch in the Washington area.
Among other ministries, I joined one in which cancer survivors served cancer patients—a noble idea complicated by the tendency of patients to prefer isolation. An announcement called for cancer survivors to join. Twenty years after my own chthonic journey, I thought I might qualify.
Sophia, a woman in her forties, was another volunteer, and we worked together on digital media. But then her esophageal cancer returned aggressively and she died not long afterward. On a cold winter day, I, along with the ministry leader, attended her funeral in a small town up in Pennsylvania.
While driving back, a disturbing thought pressed in: if cancer returned, who would visit me? Who would pray for me, anoint my head with oil? If I died, would any pastor at this enormous church even know my name?
Those questions lingered.
For that and other reasons, I became disenchanted with McLean and the Megachurch concept. There was a massive disconnect between leadership and ordinary members like me who participated and tithed but also had questions when teaching and scripture diverged. We also sensed the need for community—not just drive-by fellowship and worship-tainment. To fill that void, we “hopped” to a much smaller Four-Square church nearby.
As usual, during my work commute, I consumed sermons and Christian audiobooks, determined to construct a theology with no unanswered questions. On one commute, while listening to an audio edition of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, I was convicted of church hopping so I made a resolution: the current Four-Square church would be the last.
It wasn’t.
Fractura Secunda
I also began to recognize a problem in Protestant Christianity after watching a sermon online. From the pulpit of a United Methodist Church, an activist[2] had assembled an impressively persuasive argument from Scripture normalizing same-sex marriage.
It struck me: if he could marshal Scripture so convincingly toward a conclusion I thought axiomatically wrong, could I be doing the same thing with my beliefs?
That bothered me.
Before, I saw myself well within the circle of what was biblical/orthodox and anyone who disagreed was either ignorant or disingenuous. But thereafter, I started wondering if the circle was somewhere else, and was I cleanly outside of it? Was the activist right, or was I? Who decides? The Bible? Isn’t that the problem?
Sola Scriptura, a pillar of the Protestant Reformation and core to Bible Christianity, suddenly looked academic: when is the Bible ever alone in a practical sense? The moment I open God’s Word, it is no longer alone: Ego et Scriptura, the Bible and me—my views, culture, beliefs, and desires all swirled in with the true meaning.
I began to see that I might be among those who misused scripture to prop up a self-serving belief. Why would I be immune?
Solution: if Christianity was to be more than countless competing private interpretations, I needed to submit to a teaching authority.
But which one?
Baptist? Methodist? The reckless Four-Square church I was attending? Another Bible church founded by someone with a smile and a shoeshine?
The Catholic Church was VERY NOT on the radar.
Evangelium
Then, at work, I met Thomas, a Ph.D. in computer science with a master’s in catholic theology. After circulating a sponsorship request for my daughters’ 30 Hour Famine fundraiser, I somehow wandered into his crosshairs.
Not a place to be.
Thomas was to Protestant theology what a wrecking ball is to a clapboard house. He would rush into my office mid-paragraph on Augustine, Aquinas, encyclicals, and subjects I was not remotely thinking about because I was eating a hummus sandwich.
But I welcomed the challenge. Here was a Catholic who genuinely believed his faith could withstand scrutiny.
Bring it.
Thomas was convinced I was misguided and insisted I was still Catholic deep down and needed to get back to Holy Mother Church. In my mind, I wasn’t a fallen-away anything. Catholicism had been tried and discarded when it offered no solution to the trauma of my youth.
At about the same time my old friend Mike unexpectedly invited me to a men’s silent Ignatian retreat. With Thomas filling my head with Catholic questions, beating me with a Bible seven books larger than mine, I accepted. For the first time, Catholicism seemed worth a second look rather than outright dismissal. Although I appreciated the beauty of the retreat setting and the spiritual exercises, some teachings were perplexing: Marian theology, the communion of saints, and things I considered extra-biblical. It was then I decided to read the books found in the Catholic Canon, cleanly omitted from the NIV I had been using for years[3].
When I returned, the conversation with Thomas continued. One afternoon he showed me recordings of worship services spanning Christianity. When the Coptic liturgy played, Thomas explained the significance of each movement. Everything seemed deliberate, ancient, and ordered toward worship in the presence of beautiful icons haloed in gold. It was remarkable.
Suddenly, in stark contrast, the video CUT TO: an evangelical worship service where a couple sang a contemporary praise song on a stage littered with electronic gear. One service felt as though it belonged to centuries of tradition. The other felt as though it belonged to a Potomac River cruise on The Dandy.
Seeing those videos, I began to wonder about the purpose of church each week. Many seemed devoted to another program, another book, another activity. But if I could hear better sermons on my commute and read dozens of books on my own, what made gathering essential? What was worship? Where was the community we claimed to be building?
Once Thomas learned that I listened to sermons on my commute, he carpet-bombed me with Lighthouse Catholic Media CDs. Among the many Catholic teachings and testimonies, the interpretation of John 6 was of startling significance. This was a passage I must have read a billion times yet never associated with the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. In fact, in a series of sermons from MBC,[4] that understanding had been summarily dismissed, construed to mean one’s intensity of belief—not the Eucharist. But that could not explain why Jesus’ disciples abandoned Him over what they considered “a hard teaching” (John 6:60).
As Easter approached, I knew I was leaving the haphazard Four-Square church after Easter sunrise service and, because of my no-church-hopping resolve, attending any church whatsoever.
Secretly, I wanted an out. I had been attending some kind of church all my life. At least I was hearing the Word of God, occasionally inspired, culturally galvanized to others including my family. With attendance I was tethered to something influential and good; without it I might barely be human.
So I uttered a careless prayer: if God wanted me in a church, He would have to invite me to one, even if Catholic. I considered the last stipulation risk-free. Catholics don’t invite non-Catholics to church. Come to think of it, they don’t invite Catholics either.
Easter came and went. Kimberly returned to MBC while the girls stopped going to church for different reasons[5]. I resigned myself to becoming my own authority, seemingly the logical conclusion of a Christianity requiring nothing more than myself, a Bible, and Big Buddy Jesus. This was the deepest point of the Far Country: a church of one—myself as head pastor, chief theologian, and quasi-obedient laity—issuing infallible decrees from a beanbag chair, one hand on the Bible, the other buried in a monster bag of Cheetos.
Mysterium Fidei
Then, two weeks after Easter, the improbable happened: I was invited to someone’s Catholic church.
My neighbor Sigrid, a German octogenarian and devout Catholic, had been answering my questions for months, placing books on the Church Fathers and Catholic teaching into my hands without ever pressing. When she invited me to Mass, it had nothing to do with religion.
I was helping her with another computer problem when she learned I loved early music, a fascination dating back to high school. I had recently been rediscovering Dufay, Lassus, and Franco-Flemish high polyphony, without realizing I was frequently listening to parts of the Mass: Gloria, Sanctus, Credo. My rediscovery was obsessive, listening to the same PalestrinaCD[6] repeatedly like an addiction.
Sigrid casually mentioned that this music formed part of the worship at her Church and that the performers there were, literally, paid professionals. She asked if I wanted to hear the music myself.
I accepted. Sure. Why not?
She would pick me up that Sunday…
Only days later did it dawn on me: was that an answer to the careless prayer I had forgotten about?
No… no… could it?
Wait a minute…
Oh no.
I tried to disqualify it, but clearly, clearly, I had been divinely punked. As usual, the prayer’s fulfillment bore no resemblance to what I had imagined it might be. Invitations to church came from galaxy-eyed evangelicals levitating off the linoleum, not Catholic neighbors with a computer woe.
It started to really sink in that I wasn’t going to a concert. The appointed Sunday, April 29, 2012, arrived and along the way Sigrid talked about The Church as I fidgeted nervously like Joe Gargery visiting London. She explained that it would be traditional: the priest faces the altar, people receive the Eucharist on the tongue, most of it would be in Latin. This did nothing to ease my nerves.
As soon as I entered St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Church[7], something inside me began to transform. Everything—the chant, the incense, the candlelight, the ancient words, the kneeling and rising together—seemed ordered toward a worship I’d never quite experienced before: meaningful, liturgical, ancient, in spirit and in truth (John 4:24) to the Triune God who was our sacrifice for all time. It was that historical event, re-presented, while all participated:
HOC FACITE IN MEUM COMMEMORATIONEM.[8]
(DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME)
Could THIS be why we go to church each week?
It was beautiful and slightly terrifying.
In the weeks that followed, I found myself thinking constantly about the Mass, like a man who thinks constantly of a woman he just fell in love with. I am not given to premonitions, but I knew I would become Catholic, I knew that was what I needed to do.
Even after Sigrid moved overseas immediately thereafter, I kept returning to St. Catherine’s on my own.
I could not stay away.
Oremus
Almost a year later, after RCIA, on March 30, 2013, at the age of forty-seven, I was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church under the patronage of St. Thomas More.
For years I had been searching for certainty and found the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church–a two-thousand-year-old certainty that survived every empire, government, and failed institution.
At the time of my confirmation, it was fashionable to demand one “get on the right side of history”.
I did: I submitted myself to the Catholic Church.
The following is a brief account of what has happened since I entered the Church, as requested. This is not part of the 4000 word essay above.
Dimissio
In the wake of my conversion, I was on fire, confident I could convince the Devil to repent. I wanted everyone to see the pearl of great price I had discovered.
That included my sister Janet facing her own disappointment with the Baptist church she was attending. When she first attended Mass with me, and somewhat reluctantly, the gestures and phrases immediately returned to her like a lost language. It ignited something inside and by the time she arrived back home she decided to contact a priest. The next Easter Vigil I was sponsoring her and my brother-in-law, Steve.
I wasn’t looking to write about my conversion, but when it was time for my domain renewal, I went looking for a name that pinpointed the essence of my experience. I secured accipite.com[9] which I used to blog and write about Catholicism and my conversion, helping evangelical Christians to see why the Catholic church deserves their consideration.
Overall, my prayer was that my immediate family would cross the Tiber with me. Kimberly was not enthusiastic about Roman Catholicism, but nor was she hostile. When the priest interviewed her regarding my decision to enter the Church, she wisely adopted the perspective of Gamaliel: not going to fight something that might be from God. Smart. On March 17, 2013, our marriage was confirmed in the Catholic church and our daughters served as witnesses.
Four years later, God granted my prayer but not in the way I expected, as per usual. Kimberly did become Catholic—Greek Catholic (Melkite). I must have forgotten to be specific. For the sake of unity, I transferred rite. Her conversion is also a remarkable story and when it came to defending Catholic teaching—icons, Mary, the communion of saints—she takes no prisoners, gladly setting heretics on fire.
Years later my oldest daughter Kolleen, at age 29, was chrismated in the same tradition then immediately met and married a very devout Roman Catholic man, Eric, a year later. Their daughter, my miracle granddaughter, Bernadette, born one year after, is named after the saint of Lourdes and was baptized, chrismated, and received Eucharist 40 days after birth, the first food her mouth touched; Byzantines don’t mess around.
My youngest daughter, Shealinn, has been considering the Church along with my son-in-law, Stephen. They have an icon corner and Stephen has taken a shine to St. George. They are still turning it around. I get it; it took me thirty-three years.
Faithfully, my mother still attends Redeemer. We often have good discussions about Catholicism and I have had many moments to share Catholic teaching and how the Bible support these. Just weeks before my confirmation, Pope Francis had just succeeded Pope Benedict and Mom had emailed me to ask what I thought about the new pope; apparently, I was now the family expert on all things Catholic.
I told her that the new pope was way better than the previous one…
me.
Bio
James Metzger, husband, father, grandfather, lives in Hume, Virginia with his wife Kimberly. Even though he has a BS, MS in Electrical Engineering, he likes to write.
11520 Hume Road
Hume Virginia, 22639
[1] That we were able to have children without issue was something of a miracle: the cyclophosphamide injected into me at fifteen would permanently impair fertility in boys. Today, a teenage boy facing fertility-threatening chemotherapy might bank sperm. In 1980, the priority was more basic: keep the kid alive. Fatherhood was a problem for a future no one was counting on.
[2] Matthew Vines
[3] The NIV forward explains contributions from different Protestant tradition to avoid sectarian bias. Strangely, no Catholic contributors unlike the NAB which invited Protestant contributors.
[4] Lon Solomon, “Jesus Most Outrageous Sayings – No. 5 Unless You Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood”
[5] Shealinn was incapacitated with an illness. Kolleen was wrestling with God.
[6] Palestrina, Missa Ad caenum Agni providi, Brabant Ensemble
[7] As I learned years later, April 29 happened to be St. Catherine’s feast day.
[8] Eucharistic Prayer, words of consecration.
[9] Accipite et Manducate (Take and Eat) Accipite et Bibite (Take and Drink) words of consecration.