Why be Catholic?
If you had asked me this question a few months ago, I probably would not have been able to answer you.
As a cradle Catholic, I always had a childlike faith, and a rooted loyalty to the Catholic Church that I understood to be the Church that Christ founded. That was an easy position to hold, especially here in Singapore where the majority of Christians are Catholic. Add onto that a non-confrontational Asian culture, and you get a good Catholic boy who was never challenged in his faith.
It was only after interacting with American protestants when I was faced with the responsibility of justifying what I believed to others, and after much heckling from zealous evangelicals, I found myself doubting my faith in the Catholic Church.
I talk a lot about my faith journey and the things that I’ve learnt about my faith on this blog, Instagram Page and my Youtube Channel, but if I had to boil it down to just two things that solidified my faith in Catholicism as Christ’s True Church, it would be the Eucharist, and Mary.
In this article, I’ll be focusing on the Eucharist and how coming to understand it drew me into a deeper, and more intimate relationship with Christ.
Since this is being written on the Feast of Corpus Christi, let’s keep in our prayers the 70% of Catholics who do not believe in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
And honestly, a part of me feels like I can’t blame them. After all, as a cradle Catholic, I simply took this as a fact without actually questioning it. And while childlike faith isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does get complicated once you start getting questioned by unbelievers. And when that happened to me, I realised that I couldn’t answer them.
Here are 4 things that helped me to fully understand the Eucharist.
1. John Chapter 6
Even though I could never confidently answer the question of “Why are you Catholic?”, there was always a specific Bible verse that perfectly conveyed how I felt in my heart. This verse is none other than the declaration of our first Pope, Simon Peter at the end of John Chapter 6 that goes:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” John 6:68
I was rather lazy back then, and I never actually read the entire chapter. Hence, I always cherrypicked that verse simply because of how “relatable” it was. Not unlike how most Christians do so.
All I knew was that I was 100% sure that Protestantism made zero sense to me, effectively making Catholicism the only remaining option, hence,
“To whom shall I go?”.
Now, upon fully understanding the entirety of this passage, John 6 is a chapter that will leave me in tears after every read. I never thought of myself as the teary sort, but this passage does it for me, and I owe this to a talk by Father Mike Schmitz that I came across on Youtube.
2. Father Mike’s Talk (Youtube: The Hour That Will Change your Life)
This was the talk that made me fall in love with John 6.
Father Mike beautifully goes through the entire chapter and explains how Jesus explicitly insists again and again that:
“my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” John 6:55
even after his disciples started leaving him as they could not accept this teaching.
“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” John 6:60
“After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” John 6:66
To sum it up, Father Mike’s talk helped me to understand that if Jesus only meant this metaphorically, he would’ve had many opportunities to clarify what he meant instead of losing disciples over a simple misunderstanding. He could have easily clarified this when the Jews murmured:
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” John 6:52
Instead, he doubles down like a CHAD.
Father Mike also explains how this gift of Jesus’ body to us is so significant in the sense of how we as humans were created for intimacy, and in particular, intimacy with Christ. He uses the perfect analogy of how when we love someone, all we want to do is touch them, and be physical with them, and ultimately, make a gift of our entire bodies to them. With this understanding of how we humans were designed by God to desire intimacy, we can truly appreciate the significance of how Christ gives us his entire, physical body to us, in parallel with how a married couple makes an entire gift of themselves to each other, body and soul.
The sacrament of the Eucharist is so packed with theology that a single article would not be able to fully cover everything, but I do highly encourage you to check out the talk on Youtube. It is not the shortest video, but it will truly change your life.
3. The Tridentine Latin Mass
Not unlike most Singaporean Catholics, I grew up in a rather modern Novus Ordo parish. Back then, all I had to compare it to was the Protestant megachurch services that were popular in Singapore. To me, my little NO Catholic Church was the epitome of reverence, drums in mass and everything.
Experiencing my first Tridentine Latin Mass was what truly helped me to understand the divine meaning of the mass, the importance of the Eucharist, and how it really is the centre and focus of the entire celebration. It really ingrained the reality into me that at the end of everything, it’s not about the singing, the music, how entertaining the priest is, or how much we get to “participate” in the mass.
It is rather, all centred around the Eucharist itself. That is truly all that matters.
Furthermore, there are so many little details in the TLM that one can pick up and learn from that will further deepen one’s understanding of what is really happening at the mass. One such detail actually being a common criticism of the TLM, which is the congregation not being able to hear most of what the priest is saying.
As they like to say, “You can’t hear the priest because he’s not talking to you, he’s talking to God.”
This response left me in awe.
4. Understanding the Jewish Link
Both the Bible in a Year Podcast and my good friend Daniel of @messianicmetv have been huge blessings in my faith journey. They were instrumental in helping me to understand how the New Testament literally FULFILS the Old Testament. The blatant parallels are so undeniable, and when you understand Jesus as the Passover lamb, (and many more links) it ALL connects and makes perfect sense.
The Bible in a Year Podcast is a podcast by Ascension Presents, hosted by Father Mike Schmitz. The Bible reading plan they follow is strategically arranged to help listeners understand the parallels between the Old and New Testament, and every episode ends off with extremely insightful commentary by Father Mike. I’ve learnt so much from this podcast, and incorporating it into my daily routine has done so much for my spiritual life. I highly recommend that everyone do the same.
As for my friend Daniel, he is a Jewish convert to Catholicism who has a Youtube Channel: Messianic Me TV. He and I have done several livestreams together, and we get into how Catholicism truly is the fulfilment of Temple Judaism. He also has plenty of videos on his channel that I highly recommend. Understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity is something that so many of us unfortunately neglect. The Jewish context provides an incredibly rich background on why we believe and do the things we do as Catholics, including but definitely not limited to the sacrament of the Eucharist.
Those were just 4 main things that helped me to come to a deeper understanding of the Eucharist, and I hope that it will help you as well.
So, that does bring us back to the question of, why am I Catholic?
Perhaps, not understanding the Eucharist was the biggest reason why I couldn’t answer this question in the first place, because the Eucharist IS the reason why we’re Catholic.
Because if Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist, and if that’s where Jesus is, then our response to that can only be as our first Pope Peter when he says, “To whom shall we go?”, despite not fully understanding what Jesus means with this admittedly hard, but true teaching.
I am a Catholic because I am a Christian, and I believe what the Bible says in Luke 22:19 where Jesus says:
“This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
This is my body, not this is a symbol of my body.
And so in remembrance of him we’ve continued to do so, for over 2000 years through an unbroken chain of apostolic succession.
I’d like to leave you with a beautiful quote by Archbishop Fulton Sheen:
“The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white host.”
The mystery of the Eucharist is something that I may never be able to fully understand, because if we could fully understand God, then he wouldn’t be God anymore, would he? But what I can simply accept, is Christ’s love for me, and that accepting Christ means being in communion with his Church, partaking in the sacraments, and eating his flesh.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” – John 6:53
I do hope to be able to help as many others to come to this acceptance of the fullness of Truth in Catholicism.
And hey, even the famous evangelical Pastor Francis Chan has come to realise this, that all the early Christians truly believed that communion is the literal body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.
So why shouldn’t you?
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“Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words.”
