It is traditional to accept new catechumens (those being prepared to come into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church) during the Easter Vigil. This Easter will mark the third anniversary of the moment our family came into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

As far as anniversaries go, third anniversaries are always important ones. The number three contains its own poetry. As everyone knows groups of three work well in rhetoric and even when laying out a garden. Plants or trees in groups of three will always look better than in twos or fours.

The number three has mysterious philosophical importance too. I remember my father explaining to me once that a person presented with two roads who rejects one is in a sense forced down the other, but the presence of a third route of equal merit is necessary for what we might call choice. How many people in Ukraine feel there are only two roads, or not even one?

But chiefly, the number three has trinitarian overtones and reminds us of the Holy Spirit, our guide to full truth, to whom the month of April is dedicated.

This makes me think of Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa and his numerous writings on the Holy Spirit, especially his book Come, Creator Spirit: Meditations on the Veni Creator. Cardinal Cantalamessa is Preacher to the Papal Household, a position confirmed by Pope Francis and, as such, “the only man allowed to preach to the pope”. I am grateful that he preaches beyond the papal household, and hearing him on several occasions played no small part in our own journey of faith. 

The moment we crossed the Tiber was something new for us, but it also felt overwhelmingly like a return. On the one hand, there was the chance to celebrate sacraments fully, to venerate the Mother of God with an open conscience, to spiritually sing and dance fully in new ways. But at the same time there was a sense of return, of being finally back on solid ground, the warm glow of home, of having returned to a glittering spiritual citadel that we had only accidentally left and that had, perhaps, had a care for us even while we were far off.

Like many people, we have antecedents who were Catholic but the sense of return we felt when we came into full communion cut further still. England was Catholic for 1,000 years. In a tiny way we stitched a little repair in the cloth of rupture. It is lucky the Church thinks in millennia and not in modern five-year election cycles. Mother church will remain, come what may, Jesus promised us that.

Which makes me think about another, far more mysterious way becoming a Catholic also felt like a return of sorts. In addition to an array of English, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, French and German antecedents, my wife and I also have Jewish forebears.

I once heard Bishop Robert Barron describe how the eucharist would be unintelligible without the Jewish faith and the Temple Worship it stands on. Saint Peter, after all, was a Jew who went to Rome and on Jesus’s instructions established the Papacy. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus makes it clear he came not to replace or destroy, but to fulfil the law and the prophets.

Cardinal Cantalamessa first articulated for me the idea that the great original schism affecting and impoverishing the church is not “so much the schism between East and West or Catholics and Protestants, as the more radical one between the Church and Israel”. 

We must, like never before, resist the damage that flows inevitably from schism and instead open dialogue, and approach those who are different with a profound attempt to understand them.

The dark irony of a Jewish president being accused of Nazism tells. Lies are always, by definition, perverse. Weapons are perverse, everything about war is perverse, perversion is precisely the bending of truth, the bending and obscuring of God’s purposes and will. But still we must counter perversion with truth and try for friendship, even with our enemies, even to the very last. 

This moment when buds swell, leaves break and blossoms dazzle usually brings with it a visceral relief, a cavalcade of joy, crowned and perfected as we say with our lips and know in our hearts; “He is Risen”. Easter is a time for good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. But with war in Europe this year everything will be different.

Three years ago we, as a family, felt the joy of coming into full communion with the Church which carried both a sense of newness and, mysteriously, a sense of return at the same time. This year, we must think of the millions of people desperate to return home, of the politicians who must return to the negotiating table, and of the soldiers who must return to their bases.

We must hold on to Jesus resurrected come what may. Now, like never before, we need the Holy Spirit. Let our prayer this month be the ancient one: “Come, Holy Spirit”.

This article first appeared in the Easter 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.

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