I disse dager er jeg ferdig med årets kurs i katolsk tro her i St Hallvard kirke, og flere mennesker skal de neste ukene opptas i Kirken, enten gjennom dåp eller på grunnlag av sin tidligere dåp. Og det er allerede noen mennesker som har vist interesse for neste års kurs, og kommende uke skal jeg møte to av disse – bl.a. for å svare på spørsmål de har nå før kurset begynner.
I mange år har jeg hatt kontakt med The Coming Home Network i USA og i deres siste nyhetsbrev, som jeg fikk (pr e-post) i går kveld, skriver dr. Kenneth J. Howell:
The Coming Home Network International is twenty years old this year. Who would ever have dreamed when Marcus Grodi began it as a small newsletter in 1993 that it would grow into a major Catholic apostolate? As one bishop told Marcus, “We are glad you’re here. There’s no one doing what you do in the Church today.” The CHNetwork has been a privileged vantage point from which to view God’s children finding their way home to the Catholic Church.
In Catholic circles you often hear the question, “Are you a convert?” addressed to those who did not grow up in the Church. A new term has gained currency in the last twenty years: revert. Reverts are those who have “turned back” (from the Latin revertere) to the Church, often after being involved in Protestant churches for some years. It seems that their Baptism never ceases to draw these cradle Catholics back to Holy Mother Church. And the Trinitarian Baptisms of non-Catholics operate the same way. They too are being pulled in, as by a tractor beam, into the fullness of the Faith.
As I have been writing my own conversion story over the last months, two things have struck me between the eyes: 1) my joy and gratitude to God for allowing me to see and to embrace the Church in all her fullness, and 2) my realization that membership in the Catholic Church is not a destination but a definitive beginning of lifelong conversion.
Whether we were brought up in the Church or outside it, one thing is certain. Conversion is an ongoing process extending over our whole lifetime. The Church’s official teaching, as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, makes this clear, “Christ’s call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, ‘clasping sinners to her bosom, (is) at once holy and always in need of purification, (and) follows constantly the path of penance and renewal’” (CCC 1428). … ….