Thanks to Cari’s Theme Thursdays, I met the blogger Micaela over at California to Korea. She has a great blog and on Friday she started a fun link-up called  3 Reasons I Love Catholicism. Kim writes:

Catholicism gets a pretty bad rap these days.  I’ve seen it written in many a comment box: How can anyone remain Catholic in the light of [insert heinous event/practice/teaching here]?! 

I can sympathize.  If you’re on the outside (or even the outskirts) of Catholicism, you may only really know what the media tells you.  It can be repulsive to non-Catholics, and confusing and disheartening for all of us Catholics.  The uncomfortable truth is that there are lots of negative things that have been done in the name of the Catholic Church.  But there are also many intelligent, beautiful, joyful, even wondrous reasons to love Catholicism.

There will be a link-up every First Friday of the month where you can share three reasons you love Catholicism. What a great idea! Here are my three reasons for April.

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The Eucharist

Years ago in my 20’s, when I was contemplating leaving the Catholic Church, I heard Scott Hahn give a talk about the Eucharist and his words never left me. He spoke of Fulton Sheen and a lesson he was giving about the Incarnation. Sheen was trying to help us grasp the depth of humility Jesus undertook by taking the form of a human. He compared it to a human taking the form of a dog. I have been searching google to find the quote and I finally came upon TransitusTiber.net Blog that talked about the Life Is Worth Living episode. She summarizes it here:

You are a human. You have intellect to do great things, and you can do things that other animals that God created cannot do. Now, imagine that you traded places with a dog, but still had the experiences of being human. You, as a dog; act like a dog and associate with other dogs; but you know that at one point you were able to reason science, write poetry, love each other, appreciate a sunset, and listen to a beautiful symphony. You must remain being in a dog’s body and doing dog things and associating with other dogs.

Scott Hahn then took it a step further. He went on to explain that after imagining what it would be like if we were to take on the nature of a dog, while still retaining our human intellect, now imagine if we took on the nature of a dog biscuit for dogs to consume. That barely touches the surface of the magnitude of  the Son of God being present in the Eucharist – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. Our Lord loved us so much that he did not want the apostles to be the last humans to physically embrace him. He comes down from the heavens at the beckon of the words of consecration, day in and day out, waiting and longing to enter into our hearts and embrace us once again. There is no greater miracle in life than that. There is no greater display of love than that. Love for you. Love for me. In my eyes, that alone trumps everything else.

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 Source

The Communion of Saints

Growing up in a family of 11, you can’t help but learn how to live, love and lean on one another. We all have different personalities, strengthens and weaknesses and we may not always see eye to eye but one thing is certain, we always have each others’ back. So it is with the Communion of Saints. We are all linked together. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains it as such:

The communion of saints is the spiritual solidarity which binds together the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven in the organic unity of the same mystical body under Christ its head, and in a constant interchange of supernatural offices.

As one of the faithful on earth, I know that we are sinners and we don’t always work together but when we put aside our pride and allow the grace of God to work, we can see that we are all one big family with our own talents and gifts working towards the same goal. And once a person dies, they are not gone and forgotten. The souls in purgatory are in our daily prayers. The saints in heaven are even more alive in the family because they can intercede for us and help us on our journey towards heaven. We have each others’ back.

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Catholic Media

I love that Catholic media not only shares, teaches and brings the Gospel of Jesus to all who will listen, but it also keeps brothers and sisters in Christ close to one another. Whether you are blogging with fellow Catholic moms, researching online Church documents, emailing a convent on the other side of the world, reading the Holy Father’s tweets, or watching Fulton Sheen on YouTube, the Church is using modern means to preach a timeless Message. It makes the world smaller and the ability to reach out greater.

As an added bonus to #3, I found the Life Is Worth Living episode from Fulton Sheen that I was mentioning.

Part 1 – The section about the dog is at the end near minute 8:00.

Part 2