Dominus Vobiscum

by Dwite Espe Brown

The new college was near a famous park, a half hour's walk away, which became my daily destination. Our interpreter was a Christian, and we gave him a number of books. His grandfather had been a pastor and had died in prison during the Cultural Revolution.

A letter came in March from my step-mother, telling me that my father had died three weeks earlier. She did not write for ten days, and the letter took ten days to get to me. Communist China allows one day off work to mourn a loved one. I went to the college office and told them my father had died, and they gave me the next day off. My students came to visit me to express their condolences. In the morning and evening, I read the prayers from the Office for the Dead. The prayers seemed to accomplish their purpose of commending my father to God, and the strange sadness I felt when the letter came, was quieted.

In May we visited the Catholic Church with other friends. The church was quite big, just three blocks from the main street of the city, down a quiet alley. It was completely full. Our friend had a missal in Latin and Chinese, and we were able to follow the mass, which was in Latin.[1] When the mass began, the congregation began a vigorous chant in Chinese. Perhaps they were praying the Rosary. We could see the ninety-year-old priest facing the altar turn around to say, "Dominus vobiscum" ("the Lord be with you"), but we could not hear him. The congregation fell quiet at the Scripture readings and for the sermon. We longed to receive communion, but could not.[2]

In May we learned that the young American who had fired me was bitter, because he had been removed from his position. The foreign language department of the host college had told me I was their best foreign English teacher that year, and that my being fired without their being consulted was a scandal to them. The head of the American organization stopped by to be reconciled with us, on one of his trips through town.

God's view of things and our view are different. I did not even know the head teacher needed to be removed, until after he fired me. The head of the American organization did not know until the Chinese college complained. The pattern of scapegoating and mind control had gone on for years. The experience was humiliating and profoundly disturbing for Judith and me, but I accomplished what God sent me to do.

At home in California, we began to wonder if we should become Catholic. It would mean I would no longer be a priest.[3] I was originally drawn to the Episcopal Church by a beautiful liturgy, and because I thought I would be free to think for myself. My impression of the Catholic Church was that it had everything written down.

After eighteen years I could see the value of having everything written down. In my experience, Episcopalians liked popular modern ideas, and looked down on Christians.[4] We knew that Catholics in the United States would have similar American attitudes, but we also knew how different the Catholic Church was in other countries. I liked the idea of belonging to a church that was international, and that cared about its beliefs. I decided that the people who wrote everything down in the Catholic Church were reliable.[5]

In California, on the first Sunday of Advent in 1988, we began attending mass at the Catholic church in the small town where we live. Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas, and it is the beginning of the year in the church calendar. The priest thought that because I was already a priest in the Episcopal Church, my family and I did not need instruction. He received us into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 1989. Our oldest son Aryae telephoned home a few weeks before, from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and said "I think I'm going to become Catholic." We said, "We are too."

Eleven years have passed since that time, during which our boys have grown up. Aryae graduated from Steubenville in 1990, and married his wife Elizabeth, whom he met there, in 1991. They have three children. Our son Avram graduated with honors in 1997, magna cum laude. Elijah has finished two years there -- he will graduate in 2002.

In 1998 Judith was badly injured in an auto accident, on May 7, the anniversary of the day she and I fell in love. She was in intensive care for three weeks, and one day nearly died. I visited her several times each day, and sang morning and evening prayer in plainsong chant, as we do at home. I thought it would be something familiar in a strange place. One day the nurses were angry with me for disturbing Judith with my singing, and I knew they were frightened. She had a tube in her throat to help her breathe, and they were having trouble adjusting her breathing machine. After that day, she grew steadily stronger. The day the tube came out, her first visitor was the Catholic bishop. Our son Avram is a seminarian, and the bishop was visiting his mother in the hospital. They had a serious talk about the Christian meaning of suffering. After Judith got out of the hospital, her mother took care of her for several months.

I am writing this in the summer of the year 2000. I am on vacation from my work as a teacher of computer programming. Judith is home from the annual Iconography Institute at Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon. She is working on an icon of Our Lady of Solitude (Domina Nostra Solutidinis). Aryae is a pilot flying cargo in 727's. Avram, the seminary student, is improving his Spanish this summer, at a parish in Mexico that has three canonized martyrs. Elijah is working in a grocery store, and plays guitar at mass in our little church while he is home for the summer.

Pray for us. If you write to me on the Internet, I will pray for you.

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Send comments or questions to Dwite

1. The Catholic Church in China has been cut off from the Vatican since 1950, and is controlled by the government through the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting). The Patriotic Church has not been affected by the changes that came to Catholic churches all over the world after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Of course the underground Roman Catholic Church, which we could not visit, has not been affected either.

2. The ninety year old priest had spent many years in prison during the Cultural Revolution. All of the Protestant ministers and Catholic priests in the Patriotic churches spent years in prison.

3. In 1989 I had not heard of the Pastoral Provision, that allows former Protestant ministers to become Catholic priests, even if they are married.

4. Most of the people I heard Episcopalians disparage, were Christians.

5. The Catechism of the Catholic Church was written with extensive collaboration.