Rome Sweet Home

by Kimberly Hahn

  Then our daughter, Hannah (aged one and a half), was in the hospital at Easter with dehydration. It was one thing for me to be in the hospital with my own suffering and another to be at my daughter’s bedside with her suffering day and night. At the time she was hospitalized, she had a very high fever, and on the fifth day it spiked to 105.2 degrees.

  The nurses came racing in and began putting ice-cold cloths on her body to break the fever quickly. I had been sleeping in her room, so I jumped up to help. Thankfully, since I was not a nurse, I had no idea how serious the situation was.

  As soon as her hot little body heated up the towel, we took it off and put on another cold one. It was imperative that we get her fever down. Hannah was lying there with one arm bound by an IV tube and the other stretched toward me as far as she could reach, her whole body shaking so hard. She was screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”

  Hannah could not understand what I was doing. I was supposed to protect her from harm, yet here I was helping to put the cloths on her that were causing her much pain and discomfort. I could not explain it to her, but I knew I was doing the most loving thing for her.

  In the midst of this, I felt the Lord put his hand on my shoulder and say, “Kimberly, do you see what a good parent you are? You love your daughter, so you are causing her pain to heal her. Do you see how much I have loved you, my daughter? I have caused you pain to heal you, to draw you to myself.” Though the nurses focused on assisting Hannah, there was a deeper healing going on inside of me at that moment, and I wept for both of us.

  At this point in my life, I realized I might be facing a new grief: If I decided no longer to be the only Protestant in my immediate family, I was going to have a new separation as the only Catholic in my extended family. How could I choose to be separated from my family, within which I had been raised and had shared tremendous spiritual bonds? How could it be that the very persons who brought me to the table of the Lord would no longer be able to partake with me? These were new questions and sorrows.

  Conversations with my parents and siblings became more difficult over passages of Scripture—the very Scriptures my parents had taught me to know and love. It was also very difficult for my siblings to see the pain I was causing our parents. And I know my parents revealed relatively little of that pain to my siblings in order to keep my relationships with them intact. (They are noble souls, who bore much of their agony together before the Lord.)

  At that time I wrote, “The vibrancy of Mom and Dad’s faith and their own willingness to change as they grow are a clear witness to me to follow Christ in his Word where I am convicted he is leading. I cannot spare them the grief they have and will know as I walk this path. I have not sought this path, but God in his grace and mercy has set me upon it.”

  In Chicago, Scott and I discovered a special group at this time called the Society of Saint James. We made a number of new friends who were like-minded people (unlike our Protestant friends who did not want to hear anything, or our Catholic friends who could not imagine what was keeping me from committing myself to the Catholic Church). These were people on pilgrimage, in transition, asking many of the questions I was asking. It was a delight to meet people who valued the agonizing efforts it was taking us to reach unity spiritually and who rejoiced in the discoveries I was making.

  I took the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) class the next year at Saint Patrick’s church to sort through issues in a more conventional way. So much of the Catholic Faith made sense, but much was still unclear. It reminded me of our initial weeks in our new home in Joliet: Scott was already busy teaching classes at the College of Saint Francis, and I had full-time care of our newborn daughter and our sons aged three and four. That did not leave a lot of time for unpacking boxes. When I would get discouraged about the slow progress in unpacking, I would go into our lovely dining room, shield my eyes so I could not see the boxes, and simply enjoy the beauty of the room. Once again I could believe that soon life would be normal. Could it be that way in the Catholic Church? It could be, if only I knew what was in the boxes. In other words, the beauty of the Church was speaking to my heart, but there were still too many unknowns to act as if everything had been unpacked.

  One of the classes shed some light on a bothersome topic: statues and pictures of Jesus, Mary and the saints. I asked, “Why are those allowed and even encouraged, when one of the Ten Commandments condemns the making of graven images and bowing down before them?”

  Father Memenas responded with a question. “Kimberly, do you have a place in your home for family photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? What do they do for you?”

  “The pictures remind me of these wonderful people I love—our parents, siblings, children. . . .”

  “Kimberly, do you love the photos themselves or the people they represent?”

  “Of course, the latter.”

  “That’s what the paintings and statues do—they remind us of these wonderful brothers and sisters who have gone before us. We love them and thank God for them.

  “The critical question is not whether or not these images should exist, because the Old Testament records, soon after the Ten Commandments are listed, specific instructions for images that were to be made as part of the Holy of Holies—garden imagery and the cherubim over the mercy seat, for example. God even commanded Moses to make a bronze serpent on a pole, which the people were to look upon in order to be healed from a plague. Either God got his commands mixed up, or the point of the command is not to worship images (as the jews did at Mount Sinai with the golden calf) rather than not to have them.”

  This discussion and others gave me much food for thought. One dilemma loomed: Now that I was being drawn toward the Church, what was I to do with all the angry, sad feelings I had harbored toward the Church? I had detested the Church at times, blaming it for the disunity of my marriage, hating it for the disruption of happy family life, railing at it for the lack of joy in my own relationship to God because of its meddling in my life. I had grieved over the loss of dreams. Yet now my “enemy” was becoming my friend, or so it seemed.

  When I took this in prayer to the Lord, I really sensed God saying, “You’ve got to see me behind it. You’ve blamed Scott, and you’ve blamed the Catholic Church. But you’ve got to understand I’m the One behind it all. I can take your anger.”

  I felt like a little child when I went to bed that night, because I let God have it. I felt like a little kid sitting on her dad’s lap, pummeling his chest and crying until falling asleep exhausted. I did not resolve it further.

  In the morning, I received a call from a friend of mine, Bill Steltemeier from EWTN. He said, “Kimberly?”

  I said, “Hello!”

  “I was having devotions this morning, and the Lord told me to call you and say, ‘Kimberly, I love you.’ That’s all.”

  I did not connect that with the night before until my mother said the same thing later that day—and my Mom does not usually say such things as the Lord put something specific on her heart for me. All of a sudden I realized that what he was saying was, “Kimberly, I took that anger. I absorbed it. I still love you. You see, I’m really for you, I’m behind you, I’m guiding you.” I had a deep sense of peace.

  Besides taking the RCIA, I also helped out with Michael’s CCD class, as much to find out what those Catholics were going to teach him as to offer service to the parish. Every class, we went over the Our Father, the Glory Be and the Hail Mary. I prayed the Our Father and the Glory Be, but I would not say the Hail Mary. I learned it, but I would not practice it.

  By the time we got to first confession, I believed it was a sacrament. I was particularly glad for one little girl—if anyone needed first confession, it was she. When she came back from seeing the priest, she seemed about to cry.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked. “Father said to say the Hail Mary”, she replied. “Well, you better go ahead and say it”, I responded. “I don’t remember it.”

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p; Now I was faced with another dilemma. I was not saying the Hail Mary yet because I was not sure it did not offend God; but I knew she had to say her penance for the sacrament to be valid. I swallowed hard and said, “Repeat after me: Hail, Mary.”

  “Hail, Mary.”

  “Full of grace. . .”

  We went through the whole thing, and when we finished, she looked up at me with her big eyes and said, “Two times.”

  I knew she had really needed that sacrament! So I took another big breath and started saying it again. Many people can’t recall when they first said the Had Mary, but I have quite a vivid memory of my first time!

  A friend, Dave, from Milwaukee called one night to see if he could talk to me about what still blocked my coming into the Church. I told him the issue was still whether or not Mary was my spiritual mother. He said, “What do you think about Revelation 12?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever read that. Let me get my Bible.”

  When I came back to the phone with my Bible, Dave explained, “The chapter is about four main characters who are in battle. Even if they are symbolic for other groups of people, they are specific people, too. The woman with the man-child is Mary with Jesus.

  “Look at verse 17, ‘Then the dragon was angry with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. . ,.’ ”

  I was stunned. How had I missed that passage in my study on Mary? I had to admit, “I guess that means that if I bear testimony to Jesus and keep his commandments, then spiritually she is my mother. What do you know! Mary’s a warrior maiden who does battle through her motherhood.” I could relate to that.

  This passage helped clarify why, at the foot of the Cross, when he was in utter agony, Saint John 19:26-27 records, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” With this passage as the basis, the Catholic Church taught that Jesus’ gift of Mary to the “beloved disciple” was a prefigurement of his giving her to each of his beloved disciples.

  I was a beloved disciple. Did I, like John, need to receive her into my home as my mother, too? Instead of seeing Mary as a tremendous obstacle to me, I was beginning to see her as a precious gift from the Lord—one who loved me, cared for me and prayed for me with a mother’s heart. She was no longer just a doctrine to understand; she was a person to embrace with my whole heart!

  I was still undecided about becoming a Catholic by that Easter. On Ash Wednesday I dropped off our children at my sister’s home so I could look for housing for us in Steubenville. (Scott had just received a contract from Franciscan University of Steubenville.) Since it was Ash Wednesday, I was asking God what I should give up for Lent: chocolate, desserts. . . . major sacrifices on my part.

  And I really sensed the Lord say, “Kimberly, why don’t you give up?”

  “What? Give up what?”

  He said, “Why don’t you give up yourself? You know enough to trust me and to trust my work in the Church. Your heart attitude has changed from saying, ‘I don’t believe it—prove it!’ to saying, ‘Lord, I don’t understand it. Teach me.’ Why don’t you come to the table? Why don’t you give up you this Lent?”

  I really sensed the Lord was the One calling me into the Catholic Church. I spent the rest of the next four hours praying and praising him, having a deep peace that this was it. Was Scott in for a surprise!

  The next night, after listening to descriptions of the houses I had seen, he said, “By the way, I’m at this conference on apologetics out here in California and everyone’s asking where you are in relation to the Church.” He was trying so hard to sound casual about it. He had learned the difference between his sharing and the Holy Spirit’s convicting. “I’m not pressuring you at all. If it’s not this Easter, that’s no problem. But do you have any idea where you are in the process?”

  I could hardly wait to tell him. “It’s going to be this Easter, Scott. The Lord spoke to my heart in the van and said it’s going to be this Easter. Scott? Scott, are you there?”

  It took him a minute to regain his composure. “Praise the Lord!” For the first time Scott was able to dream about what was possible if we were a united Catholic family. There was such joy! There was such freedom!

  It was time. Time to be reunited under Scott’s spiritual leadership. Time to have a common vision within the Church for ministry we could have as a couple. Time for me to decide that the answers I did not have I could find in the Church Jesus himself had founded and preserved from error. Time for me to let go of the struggle and to be thankful to God for what he had revealed to me.

  Though I had believed in transubstantiation for more than a year, I had had no yearning to receive. But now a hunger for the Eucharist became the last thought of the day and the first thought of the morning. I had received Jesus as Savior and Lord by faith when I was a teenager, but now I longed to receive his Body and Blood. For not only had Jesus humbled himself on our behalf in taking on human flesh to be our perfect sacrifice; he had even condescended lower—to offer us that same flesh to be the life and food of our souls! All this so that we could have him within us—not only in our hearts but in our physical bodies as well, making us living tabernacles. I felt that my heart would burst with so much joy!

  Sharing the news was not easy. There were some people who rejoiced so much that it was very humbling, to say the least. (“You don’t know how many Rosaries I’ve said for you to convert!”) There were Protestant friends who were incredulous that after four years I had folded. (“That’s tragic!”) For my family, there was a lot of sadness; they did not reject me because of my decision, but their hearts hurt for love of me and concern over what ramifications this decision could have in our larger family.

  When I called my parents to let them know I had decided to be received into the Catholic Church that Easter, Dad did not discourage or encourage me. He just asked me, “Kimberly, Jesus is the one to whom you are accountable. When you put Jesus in front of you, what can you say to him in good conscience?”

  And I replied, “Dad, I would say with my whole heart: Jesus, I have loved you at great cost, and I have been obedient to all that I have understood, following you right into the Catholic Church.”

  “Kimberly, if that’s what you would say, then that’s what you must do.”

  The weeks of Lent were filled with special graces for Scott and me. My concerns about going to confession melted—I could not wait to get there.

  One day a couple of weeks before Easter, Scott said, “Why don’t you pray the Rosary?”

  In my typically docile manner I said, “I’m becoming Catholic, Honey. Don’t push it.”

  He responded, “Well, it was just a suggestion.”

  The next week Scott was visiting EWTN when Bill Steltemeier said, “By the way, the Holy Spirit told me that I’m supposed to mail my Rosary to your wife.”

  Thinking of our recent conversation, Scott said, “I don’t know if I would do that.”

  Bill was not put off. “The Holy Father gave this Rosary to me, and I never thought I’d part with it. But the Holy Spirit told me to give it to Kimberly, so I’m going to mail it to your wife.”

  Scott recounted this story to me and gave me a book on the scriptural Rosary, leaving it all in my hands. When the Rosary arrived, I looked at it and I thought, what a treasure for anyone who is Catholic. I really can’t just let this sit in my drawer. And yet, dare I use it?

  I was concerned that the Rosary was an example of vain repetition that had been clearly condemned by Jesus, However, an introduction to the Rosary by a nun helped give me a new perspective. She urged believers to see themselves, not as great, big adult Christians, but as little children before the Lord. For example, she reminded the reader that when our own young children say, “I love you, Mommy” ov
er and over in a day, we never turn to them and say, “Honey, that’s just vain repetition!” Likewise, we as young children were saying “I love you, Mommy, pray for me” to Mary through the Rosary, Though repetitious, it became vain only if we said the words without meaning them.

  The first three days I prayed a decade of the Rosary, saying, “Lord, I hope this is not going to offend you.” After a few days I really felt the Lord was giving his approval and ministering to me through it. It became a regular part of my life. Then I decided to tell Scott that I was praying with the Rosary. This was another in a series of times when, through tears and hugs, I was humbled to admit to Scott he had been right about various things. And I read what I had just written in my prayer journal:

  Break apart my cold heart in the spring thaw of your Spirit. I want to get out of the way and let you work through me. Please forgive me for the years I have rejected Scott’s spiritual leadership and replace my heart of stone with a heart of flesh—your eucharistic flesh. Thank you for the opportunity to have my filthy sins taken away by your powerful graces in the sacrament of confession and penance, allowing me to participate in repairing the damage I have done to the Body of Christ.

  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Bridegroom and his Father, and I’m anticipating the wedding feast to come, but Jesus wants me also to know his Bride, the Church, and to realize more fully with whom I will be celebrating. What groom would want me simply to come to the feast and stare at him? He wants me to know his bride and to cherish her, too. The Church has been an abstraction until now for me, only spiritual and not tangible. But now she’s becoming more than uplifting sermons and challenging services; she’s becoming personal. More than a collection of doctrines that are truer and richer than what I’ve had before, the Church is becoming a living, breathing entity filled with faulty persons, like myself, who are sick and needing a physician, all the while covered with the tremendous glory of God.