Last night, I watched The Journey Home on EWTN, a program to which I've become addicted in the past year. Converts or "reverts" tell their stories of how God's grace led them to the Catholic church or in some cases back to the church of their childhood.
Last night, Dr. Diego Ospina, born in Columbia and brought to the United States as a small child, told his story. He lost both his mother and his father when he was a teenager, and he felt at home neither in the United States nor in Columbia. He could barely speak English, and he was not fully accepted in the United States, but when he went back to Columbia, they said that he did not sound like he was a native --- and they did not accept him either.
One day, someone watching him play soccer on a playground asked if he wanted to go to college -- and he was offered a scholarship, his only hope of obtaining an education. In college, he became an All-American player, and soon was offered a contract with a professional club. Dropping out of college to play professional soccer, he was soon caught up in the life of a pro-player. But nothing brought him the stability and acceptance he was seeking until he met his future wife, who was a Mormon. In relief, he joined the Mormon church, married, and started a family.
Even in the Mormon church, however, he found that there were differences. In the words of Animal Farm, some "animals were more equal than others." The Mormon church taught that there were two races created by God, a superior and an inferior race, and he belonged to the inferior race. He could not attain the next level of priesthood that he sought in the church.
One day, when his wife returned to her South American roots to visit her family, she was invited to attend a Mass. There, despite having absolutely no past experience with the Catholic church, she had an experience during Mass with the Blessed Mother. Returning home, she begged Diego to tell her about his early years as a Catholic in Columbia, before his exodus to America, where he started going to his sister's Pentecostal church. In Columbia, his family had been culturally Catholic, but without depth, although he said that both his mother and his father did pray privately.
He knew almost nothing about what Catholics believed, so he decided to begin studying, as he had studied to become a doctor and then a Mormon. In studying about the Church, and in beginning to attend Mass with his wife, Ospina found something he had been searching for his entire life -- acceptance. In the church, he found that he was neither Columbian nor American --he belonged to the family of God; he was Catholic. The blue-eyed, fair-skinned Americans fully accepted him as "family" in the church; there was no difference between them.
Ospina said on the show that the Church is the family the whole earth is searching for. When he attends Mass in the small chapel in Ohio with his family, the priest says the same words he says in Columbia--- all those who attend in both places belong to the same family of God, and all receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. They all have the same flesh and blood binding them together.
St. Paul has a lot to say about belonging to the family of God. In Romans, he says, A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code (2:28-29).
And again, ...the promise comes by faith...and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring -- not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." (4:16-17).
In Ephesians: ...you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone....in him you are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
In Colossians: Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
The universal church is the one family of God in which all are accepted and all are equally loved in the Beloved Son.
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