It’s Okay If You Don’t Get It

In my last article I talked about a personal revelation from God dealing with the Eucharist. I mentioned that while, at the time, I understood and believed Church teaching on the Sacrament, it took me a while to really get it. I ended by saying that this revelation helped me to understand that it’s totally okay if you don’t exactly get it. (It being a wide range of things)

That may sound a little ambiguous, but stay with me.

Right before my conversion, I was still struggling with a few (mostly secular) views that I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, despite the fact that most of them went against Church teaching.

I sought the advice of a trusted confidant and fellow convert—my mother-in-law. She told me that she had been through a similar struggle when she converted and advised me to just trust God, trust the Church, and pray for understanding.

So that’s what I did and as I said in my last article, when you open yourself up to God, he delivers. It took some time, but after much prayer (and a little leg work on my end) I started getting answers. I gained understanding of God’s reason and I was able to see why some of my views on life, society, and morality were misguided.

What became abundantly clear to me in all of this is that our walk with Christ isn’t packaged as some immediate revelation with all the knowledge and understanding we’ll ever need. It’s a lifelong journey, one in which we never stop learning about the Lord’s mysteries.

So when it comes to God, when it comes to his Church, when it comes to being a Christian, we may not be able to understand everything. We may have a hard time accepting certain teachings or truths. We just might not get it.

And that’s okay.

It’s easy to get discouraged when something doesn’t click right off the bat. It can even make us feel a little guilty. I think this is especially true for converts like myself. Transitioning from one belief (or lack there of) to Catholicism is a huge step. There’s a lot of…stuff…to take in and process.

At the same time, there are a multitude of practices and beliefs that are strictly against Church teaching, but are painted by modern society as good, true, and moral. It’s really hard to reconcile that something is wrong when half the world tells you it’s right, especially when they make a convincing argument (which they do; never underestimate the power of secularism). As I mentioned above, this is something I really struggled with early on. And really, who am I kidding? I still struggle with it.

The important thing to remember is that even though we may not always get God, God totally gets us. He understands that we’re imperfect. He understands that we struggle. All he asks us to do is put forth some effort and trust Him. We have to say to God, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand why. I don’t understand how. But I trust that you’ll lead me there.”

So, if you have trouble accepting a certain part of the Church’s teaching, don’t feel guilty, don’t let it discourage you, but most importantly, don’t let it pull you away from God. It’s really easy for us to say, “This doesn’t make sense, so forget it,” and there are a lot of forces at work that want us to start thinking this way.

It might help to remember that even the Twelve Disciples had trouble understanding at times and these were the men closet to Christ. When we struggle, we should recall the words of Simon Peter:

“Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

We don’t have to know everything right this second. We just have to trust that God knows what he’s doing. We have to stay the course, and we have to pray.

It’s okay if you don’t get it now. You will.

Matthew Tyson

Matthew Tyson

Matthew is a Catholic convert, blogger, and freelance writer living in Alabama with his wife and baby son. After joining the Church in March of 2013, he started the Mackerel Snapper blog as an effort to reach out to other possible converts and help educate non-Catholics about the faith. Outside of writing, Matthew is an avid reader, hockey fan, and devout Whovian. You can follow Matthew on Twitter at @MackSnapMatt, or email him at matthewallentyson@gmail.com

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2 thoughts on “It’s Okay If You Don’t Get It”

  1. How do you know your church has it right on this issue? After all when you study the Scripture on the Lord’s supper you don’t get the real presence nor transubstantiation. You don’t see in the Scripture a priest praying over the bread and wine and changing it into Christ.

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