Hello there Rosary lovers! In this post, we will answer: what is it like to be a Catholic?

A little about me …

I am a convert to the holy Catholic and apostolic Church. I converted in 2019, through confirmation into the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church in FULL COMMUNION with the Pope).

These days, I fellowship exclusively at a local Roman Catholic Church, and this is where I receive my spiritual growth and priestly guidance, as well as the sacraments. I love the Roman Catholic tradition, and am very grateful to God that I can be a part of it all.

In this post, I would like to share about my own personal experiences being Catholic.

Being Catholic is the Best Thing in the World

It’s the best thing in the world to be a Catholic. It really is. You cannot describe it to someone who isn’t a Catholic, or to someone who is a lapsed Catholic, or a Catholic who has never really understood what it is that they are part of.

There is such a certainty and a hope that comes from being Catholic. No longer do you have to wander the earth, studying all the works of human thinkers, hoping to find truth. It is ALL here in the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

Intimacy with Jesus Christ

There is the closeness of Jesus, that is very palpable when you really step into Catholicism. Jesus is really present in the Eucharist, and the Eucharist can be accessed whenever you step foot into a Catholic Church anywhere in the world.

Right at the front of every Catholic Church is a Tabernacle, covered in a veil. This Tabernacle is the Temple of the New Covenant, in which the presence of God resides. Inside the Tabernacle is the Sacred Host, that is, the Holy Bread of God. This is Jesus Christ – truly, really, sacramentally.

This was prefigured in the Old Testament, when the Jews had Moses’ Tabernacle, in which was placed the Bread of the Manna which came from Heaven. Jesus Christ is the true Bread from heaven, the one who gives us eternal life. He resides in the Tabernacle of each Catholic Church.

I often visit my local Church to prostrate myself before Jesus in the Tabernacle. And then I just sit silently before him, sometimes offering all my concerns and my family, friends and all the world.

Silence. I know so little of this, but Jesus calls us all to silence before his Presence in the Tabernacle.

Help and Guidance whenever you need it

As a Catholic, you have access to an immense amount of help and guidance. It far outweighs all of the help and guidance I had when I was Protestant and before that, when I was Agnostic. Here are just a few examples.

There’s Mary, the Mother of God, always there to hear our prayers, always there to help us, always there to love us and embrace us and bring us to Jesus. We can offer her ANYTHING that we need help with, and she WILL always come through for us.

There is a popular Catholic prayer to Mary which begins: ‘Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided.’ This is a reality for Catholics.

Then we have all the other Saints, especially St Joseph, our Father in the faith and the Head of the Catholic Church on earth. St Joseph is the Patron of the Catholic Church, and he watches over the Church and all her members at all times. We can confidently go to him about ANYTHING, and he will always come through for us.

Likewise, we can approach any saint we please for help, and they will pray for us. The Scriptures teach that: ‘The fervent prayer of a righteous person has great power with God.’ (James 5:16). The saints are completely purified and are as righteous as it is possible to be, because they are in heaven. Their prayers for us have tremendous power with God, and their prayers are FAR more powerful than the prayers of any individual living on earth, including the Pope.

We have our local priest/s, to whom we can turn regarding anything. We can approach them for Confession and confess our grievous faults and receive direction, with the assurance of knowing that our confession is ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENTIAL – with no exceptions. We can also ring or see our local priest when we need help about some matter in our lives.

I have found this to be of great benefit to me, often saving me from some serious situations. My priest is a wonderful man, always happy to hear from me and always willing to help me. It’s amazing how often he tells me exactly what I need to hear.

So many of us are like sheep without a Shepherd. We are wandering through the wilderness of this world, and don’t know where we are going, or what decisions to make, or what to do. It is a beautiful thing to have a spiritual father and confessor in the local priest, a person who represents Jesus to us, to whom we can really confide the things that are deeply troubling us.

Indeed, as a Catholic, God reveals himself to us in all sorts of ways. Through the Eucharist and Jesus supremely, but also through the saints, through Mary, through the local priest, and through other Catholics.

So many other reasons

The things I’ve listed in this post are the immediate things that come to my mind, but each Catholic would have a slightly different slant on what it means to them to be Catholic. Our lives are all so different, but the Catholic faith meets us all no matter what our lives are.

A few other mentions would be that being Catholic means having a VERY, VERY large family. You never really feel alone again when you are Catholic, because you always know you are part of a family of 1.3 billion brothers and sisters. You know that all the saints in heaven love you, and most especially Mary, the Mother of God.

‘I believe in the communion of saints.’

Another thing would be the forgiveness of sins, which is so potent in the Catholic Church. No matter what we have done (and I do mean NO MATTER), God stands very ready to forgive Catholics and ‘cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ if, as Scripture says: ‘we confess our sins’ (1 John 1:9).

All sins are forgiven without Confession in the Sacrament of Baptism. But after Baptism, we have the Sacrament of Confession as the mean way our sins are forgiven by God.

We all mess up from time to time, and some of us sometimes mess us very seriously. This causes a sense of guilt (sometimes strong guilt) and this is what the great Sacrament of Confession is for: to remove this sense of guilt from our conscience. I have found that Confession really does this.

We could also mention all the great prayers of the Church. My life has been totally transformed thanks to the prayers of the Church, especially prayers to Mary and her Rosary.

Mass is the main Prayer of the Church, because this is how we worship God. Attendance at Mass is a very precious gift, and is our opportunity to finally worship God as he deserves and requires to be worshipped: through the Holy Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ.

The true worship of God is the reason we were all created. To be Catholic means to engage truly in that worship.

God bless you.