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My First Communion was most unusual. I was 18 years of age and it was quite “illegal,” but it transformed my life. Months before, God had swept me off my feet with a dramatic experience of his love, and I burned for complete union with him.

Then I fell in love with a wonderful Catholic man, who introduced me to his Church. I will never forget the first time I ventured into a Catholic church with Jacques. It was overwhelming.

At first I thought this was because the Church was so full. I wasn’t used to statues, stained glass windows, candles or an altar. But in time, I saw that the fullness emanated from the tabernacle. Jesus himself permeated the church.

The more I accompanied Jacques to Mass, the more I realized that receiving Communion would bring me that union with God I had experienced in my conversion experience. And I wanted that—badly.

I knew the Eucharist was not to be taken lightly. I resolved to study and pray for three months, so I could worthily receive Jesus at the Easter Mass. No one told me this sacrament was only for those in full communion with the Catholic Church, but in his tender mercy, God honored the desire of my soul.

I don’t remember anything of that Easter Mass except a current of spiritual electricity as I bodily received my Lord and God for the first time. That night I came to know that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, and I could never again live without it.

For the next year and a half, I feasted on the Eucharist. But that blissfully ignorant liberty screeched to a halt when I visited Madonna House for the first time.

I was told, kindly but firmly, that as a Protestant I was not permitted to receive the Eucharist. That would imply a oneness which does not yet exist and for which we must all pray.

To say I was devastated would be putting it mildly! The Eucharist was now my food and drink and life. How could I live without it? As soon as I returned home after that two-week visit, I received a few instructions in the Catholic faith and within a couple of months was given permission to make my Profession of Faith, thus entering the Catholic Church.

A week before the great event, I was thrown into crisis when I learned that my Protestant family would not be given a dispensation to receive Communion at that liturgy. All the hurt, anger, and rebellion I had experienced swept back in a great tidal wave, threatening to drown me.

A blackness descended and doubts hissed from every side:

You have no sense of the Virgin Mary or the Pope’s authority, so what are you doing? What if you and Jacques break up and you then fall in love with a Protestant? Will you change your religion again? You’re hurting your family with this decision. You’re still angry with the Church for restricting access to the Eucharist.

How could I become a Catholic with these unresolved issues?

I couldn’t just use the Church to get what I wanted, which was the Eucharist. The Eucharist belongs to the Church, is protected by the Church, is of a whole with the Church.

The night before my Profession of Faith, I was still buffeted by the interior storm. In desperation I cried out to God and he gave me a tool of discernment that I have clung to ever since.

I felt him directing me to dive beneath all my conflicting thoughts and emotions to my deepest heart. Only then would I be able to hear God’s voice.

When I finally reached that place of union, I knew his will was for me to join the Catholic Church and to eat freely and drink deeply of his Real Presence in the Eucharist.

I needed to trust that he would gradually fill in the gaps, so that my fiat, my surrender to him, would be more and more true.

The next night, as I made my Profession of Faith, my face was as radiant as a bride’s. I was a bride of love, and my first legal communion was our wedding night.

God is faithful. In my 44 years as a Catholic, I have fallen more and more in love, not only with Jesus present in the Eucharist, but also Jesus present in his Church—the Church which safeguards and offers him in the Eucharistic Feast.

My heart bleeds for those who cannot receive him there, and I pray with Jesus that one day we may all be one.

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