Why I am STILL a Catholic

“How is it that we do not die of love in seeing that God Himself could do no more than shed His divine blood for us drop by drop? When as man He was preparing for death, He made Himself our food in order to give us life. God becomes food, bread for his creatures. Is this not enough to make us die of love?”
~ St. Teresa of the Andes

“Why are you STILL a Catholic?” is a question that I have been asked time and time again, not in words, but rather in a tilt of the head and an eye roll.

Throughout my time spent in college as an undergraduate student, I watched a vast number of my close friends walk away from our Catholic faith for a laundry list of reasons, which ultimately led to the end of many friendships. I never judged them for the decisions they made to leave the Church, but I was not going to stop loving my faith, and being a practicing Catholic to make them feel better about themselves. It seems that being in my presence led them to judge themselves for their own choices and actions, and I guess their conscience simply could not handle it. And if I had to make the decision again to choose between their friendship and my relationship with Christ and His Church, I would still choose the latter without any doubt in my mind.

So many of the young adults around me were getting into a “hipper” faith, as they called it, a faith that they felt was more adapted to the modern age and the young adult lifestyle. Catholicism was an out-of-touch, ancient tradition with too many rules, and needed to be modernized and adapted to the present time. It was much more appealing to go to the mega church with prolific speakers and catchy music.

I was invited multiple times to attend these churches, and it was difficult time and time again to keep dodging my friends’ invitations because I knew that turning down their invites was causing a strain in our friendship. One of my friends insisted that I should come to her church because becoming Born Again is the next step of Catholicism, which is what her pastor told her, and another friend insisted that her pastor very much wanted to meet me, and that I needed to come to their young adult group that met on Friday nights.

Each Friday after class my friend would text me begging and pleading for me to just try it once, and one day I almost yielded to the pressure along with another one of my Catholic friends, who was also a practicing Catholic like me. As I was walking to my car across campus, I felt this sudden nudge to call my friend, and there was dead silence when she answered the phone, then a couple of breaths, and finally I said to her, “I can’t go, it doesn’t feel right to me,” and she responded with “I know, I feel like I’m cheating on the Church”. I told her how I felt the exact same way, and the night ended with us both not going to the other church. We lost a friend that night because of our decision, but we are both still practicing Catholics today, and she is even happily married now after having been married in the Catholic Church.

So what is it that made me stay? How is going to another church cheating on the Catholic Church? The Catholic Church is the only church that holds the whole and complete truth, even though the other churches do hold parts of the truth. They have pieces of the puzzle, but it is the Catholic Church that has the complete puzzle together with all of the pieces. Any other church is an imitation of Christ’s One, Holy, and Apostolic Church as we have the true Body and the true Blood of Christ; the Real Presence in the Eucharist. How can I believe that the bread and wine actually transform into Christ’s Body and Blood, and then suddenly not believe that truth, and walk away from the Eucharist?

At every single Catholic Mass I know, believe, and understand that a miracle is taking place by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the same sacrifice that took place at Calvary is being re-presented upon the altar (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1366). Christ appears to me in a tiny, white host veiled before my eyes, and it is because of the gift of faith that I truly believe He is present as He sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven; Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity as True God and True Man, in His Glory. “The whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” (Council of Trent (1551): DS 1651) By consuming the true Flesh and true Blood of Christ, we become living tabernacles that radiate the light and love of Christ to the world.

As the years have gone by, there have been new challenges that again and again lead to the question “Why are you STILL a Catholic?” and the answer is still the same: the whole truth is in the Catholic Church. I have been hurt, betrayed, and humiliated by people within the Church, those whom are supposed to be witnesses of Christ, and reflect the beauty of the Church; but ultimately, their behavior has nothing to do with my relationship with Christ, my Beloved Lord.

He has not only saved me from my sins by shedding His Blood on the Cross, and then rising as to give me eternal life, but He has never abandoned me by offering the precious gift of His Sacrament of Love. How is denying that through my Baptism I am forever a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, and refusing to accept Christ’s gift of the Eucharist, lead me to my ultimate goal of being happy with Him forever in Heaven? Walking away from the truth once we know the truth does not lead us to salvation, and if all of us Catholics truly believed in the Real Presence, we could never settle for anything other than the Catholic Church.

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Photo: Bundo Kim, Unsplash / PD-US