12/19/2020 0 Comments Becoming Catholic - Part 1So much of my journey to becoming Catholic feels accidental and filled with coincidence. Yet, on looking back, through the window of now, there appears to be a pattern, almost a guiding hand, unnoticed at the time. Was it pursuing me? This series of blogs is an attempt to tell my surprising voyage to becoming Catholic. 1968- I was 21, had graduated college and moved to Boston to “find” my spiritual adventure. I chose Boston because of a particular person (Cesareo), whom I hoped would become my friend and mentor. This indeed did occur, and we stayed in very close relationship for 20 years. He had been brought up as a Cuban Catholic and trained by Jesuits. However, his relationship with Catholicism and the Church was anything but conventional or literal. In fact, from my perspective, his being Catholic hardly existed in my world. Even though in the 1950s and 60s, Christianity and Catholicism accounted for 90% of the people in the United States, I knew nothing about it. I had been brought up in a middle-class Jewish family where 99% of my surroundings and friends were Jewish. My only childhood familiarity with Christmas was one neighbor in my apartment house who always had a present under her tree for my brother and me. I became more familiar with Christmas and Easter in college because my girlfriend was Italian / Catholic. However, our holiday celebrations were all about food, not church. I don’t remember ever actually going to Mass for any reason at all until three years later. I was far more interested in what Jacob Needleman called the “New Religions” and in the spiritual and humanistic traditions that were being explored in psychology. At that time, Cesareo urged me to learn the basics of hypnosis as well as karate, both of which I willingly did. However, I thought it was a bit odd when he suggested that I do a weekend retreat at St. Joseph's Abbey, a Trappist monastery in Spenser Massachusetts, which was two hours from my little apartment in Cambridge. When I called the monastery to make a reservation, I was asked “what is your religion?” “Jewish” I responded. “Are you aware that we are a Catholic Trappist Monastery? I asked if I were still welcome. “Certainly.” I brought some of my Hermann Hesse books with me to the monastery. The monastery was located on the way to the Berkshires and is situated on a very high hill overlooking the entire area. The grounds were breath-taking and it was necessary to follow a long winding road to the top of the hill. When I got out of the car, it was quiet, very, very quiet. I instantly knew I was going to like this place. The retreat gave me the opportunity to be alone, to reflect on my life, to walk and to sit quietly in my room and begin to explore prayer. We were invited to join the monks as they prayed all the offices throughout the day. Father Cletus was in charge of the retreat and he was very kind to me. I was significantly younger than the other people on the retreat and he was intrigued that I was Jewish. We had a few private conversations and he invited me to spend some time with a few of the monks. Although the Trappists are essentially a silent order, they were given permission to speak with the people on the retreat. One of the monks, Brother Leo, I met was about 50 years old and a very simple and gentle soul. He liked painting watercolors and had his paintings hung up all over his room. He was remarkably childlike and open as he showed me his paintings. This was the first time I experienced that some humans actually choose to live a life like this. Another monk that I met was 85 years old. We took a long, slow walk together down to the bottom of the hill. He told me that he had joined the order when he was a teenager, when talking was strictly prohibited. When I inquired what this was like for him, he said that talking was actually far less significant than most people might expect. He also had a quality of thoughtfulness and presence about him with no pretense. Upon my departure, Father Cletus gave me several books to read that he thought I might enjoy. I gave him my copy of Magister Ludi, my favorite book by Hermann Hesse. 1971 – It would be another three years before anything “Catholic” occurred in my life again. I was living at a retreat center in New Hampshire started by Cesareo. Father Cletus had visited and actually baptized the first child born in the community. Many marvelous people from different religious and spiritual traditions would come on weekends to teach us and our paying guests. One of the frequent visitors was a Father Joe, an older Priest who had a very nice way about him. He would do a Mass sharing bread that we had baked. I became interested in communion and found out that an appropriate pre-requisite was baptism. Cesareo told me that anyone who was baptized could baptize another if the circumstances made it necessary to do so. He suggested that our circumstances fit the bill and so, in a lovely little ceremony, he baptized me. This act would have very significant ripples in my life almost 30 years later. The next event on this journey occurred in 1976 when Catherine and I got married. I will start with that on my next blog.
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