FROM FRANK: WHY I’M CATHOLIC

– May 25, 2021

Over the next few weeks, one of our parishioners, Frank Norton, will be sharing his life journey as a Catholic: how his faith has developed and grown over the years, how he lives out this faith on a daily basis, and lessons learned along the way. Please join us in following this series!

The list of reasons I’m Catholic would probably fill a terabyte of storage. At the top of the list

  • family bonds
  • learned humble openness
  • church history
  • life lessons of saints and priest
  • my own life experiences of what works and what doesn’t
  • the burst of joyful relief that comes with a guilt-draining Confession
  • God’s gift of the Eucharist and the Living Sacraments.

At different points along my life path, I’d probably have highlighted one or another of these reasons. It’s taken a long time to understand and feel them integrated as I do today – happily, wrap-around Catholic  24/7. As a kid, it was Family – a large, close, Irish Catholic Family. And it was a family parish where we all – parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, 17 cousins – attended mass together every week.

Then came the celebratory times – First Communion, Confirmation, 12 years as an altar boy and four years of Catholic University. I thought I knew it all and had become an apex-Catholic.

Wow, was I wrong. Studying, working, and traveling abroad opened my eyes, mind, and heart to the real world. There were lots of “in-my-face” life lessons – different cultures, languages, and people barely subsisting in long, generational poverty. Yet, these same people lived their Catholic faith at a far more profound level than I ever knew existed. God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Virgin Mary lived their poverty with them, consoled them and were the center of lives lived in appreciation of God’s gifts.

As my life focus became family, career, and material progress, I struggled with personal setbacks, disappointments and doubts about who I really was an individual, as a family member and as part of the world community. It took some years to figure it out, but the lessons of the poor and suffering people I had lived with gradually opened me up to FEELING a personal relationship with Jesus and the Holy Family. My intellectual Faith practice needed emotional surrender to rediscover why I Am Catholic. Now, I better understand and feel what it means to Live My Faith.