The Creed - St. Andrew's Cathedral (Roanoke, Virginia)

We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord
And we pray that all unity
Will one day be restored…

Once again, our Lenten season is upon us.  Once again, I prepare myself for the arguments that I know will come from my family: arguments over cleaning the house, meatless meals, Stations of the Cross on Friday evening, late night adoration.  Arguments about my legalistic religion and my list of laws.

You see, my extended family comes from a mixed religious background.  My husband’s parents and grandparents are (and have always been) devout members of the United Methodist Church.  My grandparents were Catholic, but I am the only one of my mother’s five children to practice the faith.  My husband and I are the only children in our generation to raise a Catholic family.  Our devotion is often misunderstood by our family, and in a season that focuses on penance and being like Christ, I find myself angry far too often over these petty fights.

But the Lenten season also reminds me of a most joyous occasion in my life: my confirmation.  I was not confirmed until I was an adult.  I graduated from high school at the age of 15 and left for college without ever receiving the sacrament of confirmation.  I was well into my twenties, attending mass and confession regularly, before I even remembered that I had “missed” my confirmation. To rectify this, I was confirmed in the wee morning hours of April 12, during our parish’s Easter Vigil.  My confirmation was emotionally beautiful, just as I feel all liturgical services are.

Even more beautiful than my confirmation was the baptism, first communion, and confirmation of my friend, Dallas, that same year.  Dallas and I first met while attending a Protestant four-year college.  I was a rebellious Catholic teenager who was angry at the world, and he was a lonely Protestant young adult who was searching to fill the gaps he felt within his Protestant religion.  While I wasn’t the first Catholic he had ever met (he was from French Louisiana), I was the first Catholic that he befriended.  I was the first Catholic to whom he could ask “those difficult questions.”  His questions forced me to reexamine my own faith, which led to a strengthening in my own beliefs.  I knew what I believed, and Dallas knew what I believed as well.

After five years of searching and discerning, Dallas finally made his own declaration of faith during his parish’s Easter Vigil on April 19.

No, we didn’t hold two Easter services that year.  Nor did I make a typo.  While I follow the Western rites of Roman Catholicism, my friend Dallas is a proud Eastern Orthodox.  To each other, however, we’re both just Catholic.  After years of search, years of discussing, we’ve both come to the conclusion that we accept the same essential doctrines.  We believe the same truths about the Church and about the Body of Christ.  Somewhere in the past thousand years, our similar faiths have splintered and become divided by spiritual disharmony.  We’ve simply taken different roads to reach the same true faith.

St. Joseph's Cathedral (Columbus, Ohio)

This year is unique in many ways, not the least of which being that both the Eastern rites and Western rites will hold Easter / Pascha services on the same Sunday.  Only a few days ago, I sent Dallas a note reminding him that our Easter celebrations would fall on the same day, as would the anniversary of our confirmation.  He replied that we should meet during Lent to celebrate our Easter unity over bean soup and pray for the permanent unity of East and West.

He does not wish to change his beliefs and traditions, nor I mine.  But we see in each other a faith not so different than our own.  With the acceptance of the traditional Anglicans back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, we see the potential for the Christian unity that we celebrate privately as friends to become public through the Eucharistic celebration.  For now, though, we will content ourselves with breaking bread in our homes.

The outside world, the non-religious world, is always attacking us.  Even the Christian, non-Catholic world seems bend on belittling the Catholic faith.  Perhaps this year, more so than years past, we should take this Easter season to focus on the ties that bind us as followers of Christ, rather than the differences that divide us East from West, Catholics from Protestant.  St. Peter and St. Paul were both brothers in Christ, celebrating their mutual faith together in Jerusalem; Martin Luther was once a Catholic and practiced a faith not so different than ours.  Whether our Lent begins with Clean Monday or Ash Wednesday, whether we will abstain on Fridays or choose not to abstain at all, let us keep our hearts focused on the unity that Jesus Christ offers all who follow His way, instead of focused on the discord and division we have brought about through our fallen human nature.

Melissa is a college English professor and a full-time mom to one.  She can be found writing about faith and family (and working mom troubles) at And Baby Makes Three.

Related posts:

1. Are you an authentic Catholic?
2. The Season of Lent is almost here!
3. Resource for Catholic Families

Tagged as: Eastern Rites