In 2008, I was driving along Harwood Rd. in Bedford minding my own business. Having moved back to Texas from New Jersey a couple of years before, I was in no hurry to do anything about faith or religion but on that day was in a hurry to get someplace (I’ve forgotten where) when I noticed all the churches I was passing – Concordia Lutheran, Emmanuel Presbyterian; then I saw a banner in front of one Church reading, “Catholics Come Home – Meet Here Tues Nights at 7” in front of St. Michael Catholic Church. 

It didn’t literally stop me in my tracks but it definitely caught my attention. Never had I seen this direct an invitation to return to the Church. Baptized Catholic, raised in a nominally Catholic home, Catholic schooled for the first four grades, confirmed at St. Paul CC in San Antonio – you could say I was planted in the Church, but the roots did not keep me past junior high school. It was the 1960’s and jumping out of Church found plenty of soft places to fall. Fast-forward fifteen years — public HS, rock & roll and soul music (playing in a garage band and the dawn of “album oriented” radio programming), college (off and on), the so-called “sexual revolution,” …and drugs. If you read about a drug in Time or Newsweek in those days, I probably took it sometime between 1968 and 1983. I stumbled through college and two failed marriages by the time I was thirty. Rising from those “soft places to fall” led to some pretty hard places for me and many others.

Life began to change for the better. I met my wonderful wife of now twenty-six years in 1984. We fell in love, married in 1987 and have two terrific, grown daughters.

All the while, I was fascinated by religions, Eastern philosophies, spiritual writings and worship (just not Catholicism). My meandering path back to that momentous day on Bedford Rd. had led me to worship and sing in Protestant churches, dragging my wife and kids along sometimes, but mostly not. God led me to be a better husband and father, little by little. Still, the music in churches I attended kept moving my soul and drawing me in. Remember the soul music I mentioned above? It’s the first cousin of African-American church music.

There is a balm in Gilead,

To make the wounded whole;

There’s power enough in heaven,

To cure a sin-sick soul.

 

There was a God-shaped hole in my heart, in my sin-sick soul, until I started coming home in 2008 at St. Michael CC, led by a banner posted outside the Church. The “Coming Home” weekly meetings, the lovely staff and priests and deacon guided me.

In 2010, I discovered Good Shepherd was closer to my home, so my journey was almost complete. This parish, its wonderful people and friars have led me to more and more service and all the way home to Jesus.

 

How lost was my condition

Till Jesus made me whole!

There is but one Physician

Can cure a sin-sick soul.

Don't ever feel discouraged,

'Cause Jesus is your friend,

And if you lack for knowledge,

He'll never fail to lend.*

* The “balm in Gilead” is quoted in the Old Testament, but the lyrics of this spiritual refer to the New Testament. This difference is interesting to comment. In the Old Testament, the balm of Gilead cannot heal sinners. In the New Testament, Jesus heals everyone who comes to Him.

 

What Does the Bible Say?

“For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: Though you be to me like Gilead, like the peak of Lebanon, I swear I shall turn you into a waste, with cities uninhabited. Against you I will send destroyers, each with their tools.”

— Jeremiah 22:6-7

Evangelizing Challenge This Week

Invite a Catholic friend, relative or neighbor who has drifted away from the Church to come to Mass with you, to “come home;” Lent would be a great time to do that. 

 

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