Laurie O'Driscoll | 23rd February 2022 | Blogging

“For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.” -John 3:17   As the weeks went on, I eagerly attended every RCIA class and looked forward to every Mass I attended.  I was totally and utterly intoxicated with the Church.  The Mass held my attention in a way that nothing ever has.  I had butterflies in my stomach when I would walk into the Church.  I just loved all of it!  Everything! From the first, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," to the Priests and Deacons genuflecting in unison at the end of the Mass, I was hooked.    The High Altar was of particular fascination to me.  It had gotten to the point where when the Mass was over, I would wander around just taking everything in.  I would find myself transfixed on the image of Christ on the cross.  After a lifetime of thinking of this as just another myth, I was finally in full belief of the reality and in awe of the enormity of what I was viewing: Love.    Thoughts that I couldn't understand were constantly in my head now.  Why did God love us so much to sacrifice his son?  Why did Jesus let this happen to him?  I would reflect on the horrors of the human race and wonder how in the world we could be worth loving and more to the point, worth the trouble of saving.  Even more critical were my thoughts toward myself and all the awful things I had put out into the world in my forty-four years.   The only bible verse I knew by heart was the King James Version of John 3:16 and it kept playing in my head:  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." When this verse came to mind the automatic response from deep within my soul was simply, "Even me?"    We were already into February and the days and weeks were being weird to me.  Sometimes it felt like I had never been anything else but Catholic.  Those pesky forty-four years where I lived immersed in the occult seemed as if they either happened long ago...or not at all.  The reality of my new Catholic beliefs were planted so firmly in my heart that I couldn't understand how I had ever believed any other way.   Yet I had only 'come to my senses' about six weeks ago.  Furthermore, no matter how at home I felt in the Catholic Faith, I was still not a Catholic. Not yet anyway.   Fortunately, the Rite of Election was coming up!  On this day different parishes in the Diocese would send their catechumens (unbaptized) and candidates (baptized) to the Mother Church of the Diocese to affirm their intention to join the church and lead a life of discipleship.  These other parishes would have recently undergone their 'Rite of Sending.' This is where the Godparents or sponsors affirm that the catechumen or candidate is of good character and ready to move toward receiving the Sacraments of Initiation.  We had a Rite of Sending too...in a way.  As our parish WAS the Mother Church, one of our Priests joked, “This is where we send you to stay.”     Our Rite of Sending was a couple of hours before the Rite of Election where many other Parishes would also be in attendance.  During the Rite of Sending, we each get to sign the 'Book of the Elect.'  This Book is given to the Bishop at the Rite of Election and shows that those who signed have been deemed ready by their respective Parishes to partake of the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil.    As you may have guessed, my awkwardness had decided to attend this with me, and it was not being kind.  Prior to coming into the Church, we had an RCIA class where we were learning how the Rites would go.  One lady asked what we were supposed to call the Bishop.  Bishops are formally addressed as, 'Your Excellency.'  We were told that our Bishop, however, just wanted to be called Bishop.  That's easy enough I thought to myself.  I probably won't mess that up!�...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 15th September 2021 | Blogging

For the next couple of weeks, I continued to devour anything I could about Catholicism. I was studying on my own as well as attending the RCIA classes at my new spiritual home.  Honestly, learning as many aspects as possible about this Faith, getting closer to God, was all I wanted to do.  I would find myself falling asleep while reading or listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos.  The RCIA classes had a rotation of speakers who were Clergy.  Each class had most of the same people in attendance as the first day I started going to them.     One of the classes was about the Eucharist.  As a child, some of the Churches my maternal Grandmother took me to had something kind of like it. I don't recall what denomination any of these churches were. One of the ones we went to, passed around a platter with bread and tiny cups of red liquid.  Whether it was actually wine or grape juice or whatever, I have no idea.  The people in the Church took turns passing this around as each took a piece of the bread, and the 'wine' and consumed them.  Adults did this and some children did too. It is because of seeing what they were doing that when the tray had been passed to my grandmother, I sought to imitate what I thought was the correct thing to do:  I reached up to take the bread and red liquid for myself.  My Grandmother pushed my hand away.  She wasn't being mean or anything, but she had made it clear that for whatever reason, I was one of few here who could not participate in this ritual.    Many years later, I would find myself sitting at a coffeehouse in Monterey, California.  It is highly possible that I happened to be there because I was skipping school that day, but we'll save that for another discussion.  In any case I sat at a table with a deck of Tarot Cards and was trying to teach myself how to use them.  As a teen, the Cartomancy my mother's family practiced, with its plain red or black cards of four suits was getting boring to me.  Tarot seemed so much more colorful and interesting and mysterious with its varied styles and imagery.  As I sat there, a lady in her early twenties sat down next to me and started asking questions about what I was doing.  I explained it to her a little, still not knowing much about it myself.  Somehow, she had managed to turn the conversation into an opportunity to proselytize to me.  For whatever reason we wound up talking about that day in my grandmothers Church where I had been denied the bread and wine the others were having.     "Are you baptized?" she asked.   I was puzzled, wondering how this had anything to do with what we were talking about.   "No." I replied and sat there staring blankly at her as I waited for her to continue speaking.   She began quoting bible verses to me and explained that I had not been allowed to participate because only those who were baptized could do so.  Why hadn't anyone ever told me this before?     So very many more years later, I sat in a classroom at the very top of a Catholic School and began to learn about the Eucharist.  We learned that when Jesus instructed his disciples to partake of bread and wine in memoriam of him, that it was not simply a symbolic gesture.  The bread and wine are literally the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ.  At any time in history since the Last Supper, when a Catholic has received Holy Communion, they are participating in that same event in the here and now.  What a gift for Christ to leave with us!  I suppose this should have seemed like a neat little story that was something 'charming' to listen to but not to be taken seriously, right?  I don't know that I will ever be able to explain it but whatever had happened at Midnight Mass was still alive and well in me.  Somehow or another I readily accepted the Catholic teaching of the Eucharist.  It is neither strange nor farfetched to me, it just simply IS.  I longed even more for my baptism and to be brought fully...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 30th June 2021 | Blogging

As I walked into the classroom where the RCIA class was held, I reminded myself to breathe.  Considering the state, I had worked myself into, just coming up the stairs, I was preparing for another onslaught from my awkwardness. Oddly, for me anyway, as I walked into this room, I was at ease.  I felt at peace.  I felt safe.  There was a Priest sitting at the front of the classroom and a lady sitting behind a desk.  The priest put his mask on and walked over to greet me.  I walked up and noticed that this was the same Priest who led the Midnight Mass.  The lady at the desk, was one of the people I recognized from that Mass too.   We all exchanged greetings.  The Priest told me not to be afraid to ask questions if they said something I needed clarification on or used a specific term that I wasn't familiar with.  I nodded and thanked him.   The lady gave me a Bible, a Catechism and a notebook to write in.  A bit of my awkwardness popped in as I wondered if I was supposed to pay for these or not.  I nervously accepted the books and asked, "For free?"  She nodded and said, "Yes."  I thanked her and happily took the books to a nearby table.  She also directed me to a sign in sheet and told me where the bathrooms were and that there was coffee or juice, I could help myself to if I wanted.     I was looking at the bible I had just been given, the first Catholic Bible I'd ever owned in fact.  I told them both that I had found out a few days earlier that there are more books in the Catholic Bible than the protestant one.  The Priest acknowledged this and explained how that all came about. Apparently in the sixteenth century, after translating the Bible into German, Martin Luther removed Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, I & II Maccabees and Esther from the Old Testament.  He thought these seven books were not equal to the others. I had stumbled upon that information just a couple days earlier. I never knew that before and that fact seemed amazing to me when I learned of it.  I went to my husband and told him, "I never knew Catholic bibles had more books in them than protestant bibles!"  He looked at me blankly and said, "Do they?"  I playfully rolled my eyes at him saying, "You're supposed to be my 'in-house' catholic. You're useless!" I quipped.  He shot back with, "Just because I'm Catholic doesn't mean I know EVERYTHING about Catholicism."  We laughed and continued to talk about the things I was learning about Catholicism and things he remembered about it.     I was one of the first to arrive and it was nice to have that little bit of time to get acclimated to my surroundings.  As more and more people showed up, every properly socially distanced seat (per pandemic mandate) in the room was filled.  I was happy to see so many people were also on a similar journey as me.  In the new age world, you can easily get the idea that nobody is even interested in Christianity anymore, let alone Catholicism.  Supposedly, open minded intellectual types were too 'woke' to buy into that 'nonsense.' Yet, sitting around me, were all kinds of different people.  Some were seeking to convert, like me and some were already Catholic and wanting to deepen their understanding of their Faith. In this one room, was proof that another lie from my old life had been quashed.       Class began at 8:30 am.  The subject was Baptism.  I suppose it is an opportune time to say that when I was following the pagan paths, I had followed for over three decades, I had mixed feelings about Baptism.  Long ago, I used to think that it was the Christian stance to believe that innocent babies went straight to Hell if they were not Baptized.  If you believe that, you also tend to believe that there is a strong vein of hatred in Christianity.    Slightly related but worth noting is that Pagans, Wiccans and New Agers don't believe in Hell.  In those practices, it is widely believed that Hell is a thing of fiction.�...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 08th May 2021 | Blogging

  After about a week of searching through all kinds of Catholic information online, I finally started looking into how adults become catholic.  Most of what I knew about becoming Catholic is that most people were simply born into it, like my husband and his ginormous family.  Surely, there was a way for heathens like me who weren't even baptized to do it.  I went looking at the website for the Cathedral where we had gone to that Midnight Mass.  It didn't take me long to find out how to become catholic as an adult.  I learned of the adult process of coming into the church.  It was known as, the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, or RCIA for short.  In fact, the class itself was called, "Becoming Catholic."  As I read further, I discovered that this class had started in September and went through May.  So, if I could go to this current session, I would be entering it right in the middle.  My heart sank.  I wanted to be Catholic yesterday and this class took like eight months, and I would be beginning in the middle.  I wondered if that meant I would have to wait till next year.  There was an email address to write to for more information, so on the 30th of December, I did:   Hello, I hope this email finds you well. I really want to find out about becoming Catholic. I don't know what else to put in this email except to tell you a little about myself. My name is Laurie O'Driscoll. I'm 44, happily married since 2002. We have two children who are fifteen and eighteen. I work as a bus driver and lunch lady. I'm originally from California and my husband is originally from Ireland. We've lived in Oklahoma for the past seventeen years. Also, my husband is Catholic, but he doesn't really practice. As far as religions go, I wasn't raised in one and rarely went to church services when I was growing up. I've never been baptized either. I've always prayed though, I've always believed in God and have looked into all kinds of spiritual practices in my life. Many of which were pagan, wiccan and "new age" type things and such. I feel somewhat silly saying that now but that's the truth of it. Catholicism was always something I had a bit of an interest in and that interest has rapidly increased over the past several years. I really look forward to learning more and am grateful this class exists. I will end my letter here and look forward to your response. Thank you very kindly,Laurie O'Driscoll   I sent this email, and immediately thought that maybe I should not have been so up front about prior spiritual practices.  Then I quickly thought that I wanted them to know what they were getting with me as a student.  If I had not told them up front, I would have worried myself sick about when or if they found out about my past.  So, better to just say it and get it over with.  In a few days, I heard back.  As I clicked on the email to read it, I was a little scared that I would be told not to come, a sort of 'witches need not apply' response fixed itself in my head as a very real possibility.  Thankfully, the email said no such thing.  The lady who sent the email was warm and welcoming.  She even said she was excited to hear from me and about my story.  She told me about the class and the day and time to be there.  The email mentioned where the class was held, which was in the school next to the Cathedral on the fourth floor.  I was so relieved and excited!  One step down and what, like a million more to go?  I had no idea I had never done this before, but, I now knew when and where to do it! Which is a start, right?!     On the following Sunday, I made my way to Tulsa and parked in the lot across from the Cathedral and the School.  I was a nervous wreck.  My awkwardness was in fine form this morning.  It made sure that I was fully aware that I was this mess of a broken human being and that no God or Church would want me anywhere near them.  Fortunately (or not) this was the same story it ...