joy of nine9

“We place our trust in God because God has full authority—God is, after all, the author of life! God, in turn, has given full authority to his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, in turn, gave full authority to Peter and the Apostles when he told Peter that he would build his church upon him and gave him the keys to the king- dom. (Matthew 16:18–19).

This means that we are called to place our trust in Church leadership, which speaks and acts with the authority that comes from God through Jesus Christ and the Apostles”

Well, all I can say is thank God for tradition.

To put it bluntly, when I became a Catholic at 19, I realized that as a Protestant who relied solely on sacred scripture, I was basically throwing out 2,000 years of wisdom and experience of fellow Christians. By denying the authority of tradition I was in a sense ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. Even the bible itself says that it has written down only a fraction of everything that Jesus said and did. As a Charismatic, I experienced hearing the voice of God, yet I was refusing to listen to thousands of years of divine revelation given to the saints and tested by those who could be trusted to discern those divine revelations.

Of course, I also struggled with Mary. So she proceeded to move into my heart. Hilariously, my mind was still Protestant for 10 years but Mary lived in my heart! I became a Catholic anyway because I was starving to receive the Eucharist and so I did not fit anywhere but in the Catholic Church. Yet I was still in turmoil, feeling like a heretic to what I thought was pure Christianity. Finally a dear friend, Fr. Robert Pelton, who was Director General of priests at Madonna House in Combemere, Ontario, Canada said,

Melanie, why don’t you just rest for a while by putting your trust in the teachings of the Church. Trust in the wisdom of thousands of years of experience and simply enjoy the wonderful gift your Heavenly Mother has given you. Put this theoretical debate on the back-burner.

Well, thank God for this priest, thank God for tradition and thank God that I did not have to figure out everything on my own. When I stopped the sophistry, the endless debates that circled in my brain, then the Holy Spirit had a chance to confirm everything that tradition told me.

Every  newborn Christian does not have to reinvent the wheel; they have a treasure trove of wisdom to lean on, to guide and teach them.