“I encountered a high school literature teacher who changed my life… Every moment in my life since then that has had any value at all has been a participation in that moment. It was the beginning of my falling in love with Jesus Christ.”
1. I was raised Catholic but quite nominally so. The education I received at home was largely Protestant. We only attended church a few times a year. Easter/Christmas Catholics. I actually attended Catholic school K – 12 but the religious education was very poor.
2. I had always had a deep interest in the question of God but given the superficial Catholic education which I received, I spent my early high school years studying Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. I was looking for answers and open to finding them anywhere except Christianity.
3. It was at this time that I encountered a high school literature teacher who changed my life. He was devoutly Catholic, scholarly, speculative, and sarcastic. He subtly challenged our philosophical presuppositions and taught us authentic Catholicism through literature.
4. I began taking every class of his that I could. Every work pulled me in a bit more. Sophocles. Plato. Herman Melville. Walker Percy. In fantasy lit, we read Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. By this point, something had grabbed hold of me and would not let go.
5. The NICE in that story skewed all knowledge. St. Anne’s depicted authentic Christian community. I was being fed intellectually and spiritually. And this was done as I was vehemently set against the truth of Catholicism.
6. The clinching point, however, was less philo/theological. I think those chains had been broken and the stage was set for a true conversion. It happened in Bible as Literature. Same teacher.
7. We read the Gospel of John. Mr. Renner got toward the end of chapter 6, the Bread of Life discourse. Of course, he presented the text as revelatory of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. K – 12 Catholic, I had never been taught about the Real Presence.
8. However, at the end of the discourse many disciples leave Christ behind. It is easy to overlook how this must have saddened Christ. Mr. Renner began reading more slowly. He quoted Our Lord, speaking solemnly and sadly to the Apostles: “Will you, too, leave me?”
9. And St. Peter responds, “Lord, to whom else would we go?” Mr. Renner stopped there. The class room went quiet. He had turned his back to us. After several awkward moments for s students, he stepped out of the room and into his office next door.
10. We were all very confused. There was still a few minutes left of class. Should we leave? What happened? Did he get mad? We somehow realized, perhaps through a few students who had noticed and then told the rest of us, that he had broken down into tears.
11. This was a man that I would not believe could cry. We had gone through great Greek tragedies and American dramas together. But the love of Jesus Christ for the Apostles and their abandonment to Him… “Where else is there to go?”
12. I witnessed in Charles Renner that day palpable and profound faith, hope, and charity in Jesus Christ. I was absolutely shaken by this. I think of that moment and that verse often. And it still shakes me. Without that moment, I fear to imagine what I would have become.
Every moment in my life since then that has had any value at all has been a participation in that moment. It was the beginning of my falling in love with Jesus Christ. That love is woefully imperfect, but whatever is there, flows from this moment of gratuitous grace.
When one really contemplates Our Lord, we too with Peter ask, “To whom else shall we go?” In comparison with Christ, there is nothing else. He is the most beautiful thought imaginable.
One might even say that He is self-evidential. To know who Christ is is necessarily to admit that the beauty and transcendence and love of this being is beyond that which humans could have conceived on their own.
And He comes into our lives in mysterious waves, like the entire ocean entering in through a drip. At any rate, thus concludes my anti-pelagian screed.
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