For me, faith has never been an easy thing. After a pretty rough childhood, two divorces, and plenty of tough times and bad experiences, one of the toughest challenges for me has been to just believe and have faith in anyone or anything.

While I was raised Southern Baptist, with my mother's family well-known in local Baptist circles, I am now a Catholic of the Melkite tradition. While I'd spent my later teenage and twenty-something years alternately looking at other churches and being generally agnostic, I'd looked at Catholicism, but never completed the journey to the Church. In the fall of 2003, as I was (finally) in my senior year of my undergraduate studies, going through what would be over a year-long divorce fight, and coming to the realization that I had never had so little control over my life, I saw a poster for the campus Catholic student group, and that moment in the first floor of the Maybank Hall is when something inside me changed, and I knew that it was time for me to make a decision in my life.  I made it to their next meeting, and by the end of my senior year (thanks in no small part to their tolerance of the token non-traditional member), was faithfully attending Mass and Eucharistic adoration.  I even learned how to pray my Rosary.

But the biggest change in my life was my realization that my life was not mine, and that all control over what was and what would be was in the hands of God, and that He had called me to make this journey of faith.  That's something you don't get from church - that's something you have to figure out for yourself.

After graduation, I began attending with the fledgling Melkite Catholic community.  With my interest in Byzantine culture and history, the complex liturgy and their embrace of ancient traditions and customs helped me better embrace my Catholic faith. A little over a year after that first meeting on campus, I stood in front of the church, recited the Nicene Creed, and was Chrismated (confirmed), becoming a Catholic.

Some would think that's the end of the journey, but it's not. I have a lifetime ahead of me, and look forward to every bit of it.

The Melkites are one of the not-so-well-known Eastern branches of the Catholic Church, in full communion with Rome, but led by our own Patriarch, using the 1600 year-old Divine Liturgy given to us by Saint John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople.  Other Eastern Christians, who often come from Orthodox backgrounds, have opted to reunite with Rome. In return, they keep their traditions, their liturgies, and most of them even have ... MARRIED CLERGY!

There are many other things which stand out about the Eastern churches. Many of them would appear, to the relatively-uninformed visitor, to be Orthodox churches. The chanted liturgies, without musical instruments, the incense, the churches full of abstract icons, and the use of leavened bread, instead of communion wafers, for communion. Indeed, at times, there is a certain feeling that we are somewhere adrift, between the Roman Church and Orthodoxy. Both Roman Catholics and Orthodox have a hard time understanding us, and wondering why we're not on the other side.

Many of us have a deep appreciation for both sides. For example, I chose Maximilian Kolbe, a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, not an Eastern church saint, and attend Roman Catholic Mass on occasion, but have also attended Orthodox liturgies on more than one occasion, maintain contacts and friendships with Orthodox church clergy and lay leaders. Many of us do, and the split between the churches isn't a point of conflict or pride, but a source of sorrow and hurt, as we long for the day when Catholic and Orthodox are one and the same.

If you're wondering what it's all about, I invite you to email me and find out more.

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