As I've said before, I joined the Catholic Church by way of a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter parish. So although I thought I knew what the process of being welcomed into the Church would be like, I was very mistaken.
First, there was the small matter of my baptism to get straightened out. I was baptized back when I was 16 by my grandfather. He was an elder at his local Church of Christ church. But there are some difficulties there. For starters, that was half a lifetime ago for me. I truly have no idea if he baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It stands to reason that he would have. But I couldn't swear to it.
Second, even if he had and even if I remembered it, I don't have a certificate of baptism. For one thing, that's not really a Church of Christ thing to do. But even if it was, it still wouldn't matter because I was baptized at a church but not by that church. My grandfather baptized me at the church I attended at the time. It was my church; not his. Someone from the church came down, unlocked the building for us and my grandfather baptized me. But it wasn't done by the church proper.
Third, that church technically no longer exists anymore. Or if it does, not in the form it was in back when I was 16. And certainly not at the same building.
The combination of all these things made me a very good candidate for a conditional baptism. If that's an unfamiliar term, a conditional baptism should be self-explanatory. But if it isn't, it's basically the priest offering words to the effect of "If you weren't baptized already, you are baptized now". It doesn't "rebaptize" you as such because that's impossible. You can only baptized once. But in cases where one's baptism is up for grabs, a conditional baptism is a good way to settle the matter once and for all.
However, since that potentially leaves half a lifetime of unconfessed sins on the table, there's really no way to do it during the proper Easter Vigil because the priest can't very well stop the Mass to hear confessions from people who may have already been licitly baptized before. So that part had to be done earlier in the day on Saturday.
And I must say that confessing my sins to Father was a pretty unusual experience. I expect it'll get easier in the future but it was hard to think of very many major sins I've committed. But some very important mortal sins I've committed came to mind and needed to get straightened out. It'd be stupid to mention them here but by any standard this is definitely stuff to mention in confession.
What I discovered though was simply talking about them and getting them off my chest helped a bunch. I'm really sorry for some of the things I've done in life. I did them with my eyes wide open, in spite of everything my own conscience, Sacred Scripture and probably even the Spirit could say to dissuade me. But I did them and then I confessed. Father absolved me and prescribed my penance.
Earlier today I took care of my penance. And you know what? Danged if I don't feel like a burden I was never even aware of has been lifted.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I've never been one of those fuzzy-wuzzy spiritual feeeeeeeeeeeelings types. It's just not my thing. Subjective experience is fine in its place but there is such a thing as an objective reality and experiential nonsense usually isn't what motivates me. But at the same time, I can't pretend something important didn't change, first, by confessing and, second, by doing my penance.
Once the baptismal rite and then confession had ended, it was off to get dinner just before Easter Vigil started.
Now, I come from a decidedly Protestant family. My friends are either Protestant or not religious. Because of that, I wasn't expecting much of anything in terms of recognition from anyone for joining the Church. So imagine my surprise when my girlfriend presented with me rosary beads, a Catholic Bible, 'Heretics' by GK Chesterton and a few other things!
After that, it was back to church for Easter Vigil. Now, I knew this was going to be a major lu-lu. I'd heard that this was the single longest Mass the Catholic Church has to offer. Apparently it's second to none in terms of length. And I found that to be quite true.
Even so, the sights, sounds, prayers and chanting, incense and everything else... I mean, THIS is how you worship God. So I didn't mind the length of the Mass.
This is probably a typical experience for a lot of people but I was not expecting total strangers to want to take pictures of and with me just because I was joining. But that's what happened. My fellow candidates and I were almost treated like celebrities or something with everybody, of whom not least was the parish's photographer, wanting to take pictures of us standing with our sponsors in front of the altar, standing with Father in front of the altar, standing otherwise alone as a group in front of the altar, standing as individuals in front of the altar, etc. It was nuts!
But then they just saw all of us get welcomed into the Church. As converts. Whatever our lives would've become before we joined the Church, that's all changed now. We have a new destiny. A better destiny. And they witnessed us take our first clumsy steps in that right direction. And as adults in such a traditionalist church, you can well figure that we're probably doing it for all the right reasons. And so perhaps that is what those people wanted to commemorate.
Either way, it was hard to not get a little emotional about the whole thing. I've been trying to join the Catholic Church ever since October 2013. My fellow candidates only started in July 2014. If, shall we say, "time served" is a factor, I don't think the experience meant as much to them as it did to me. This took a long time to finally get sorted out. It was worth the wait, to be sure, but joining the Church has been uppermost in my mind for a very long time now.
And now that I'm officially a member, I don't quite know what the next step is. But I'll figure something out.
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