I enjoyed this video from September 2020 of Daniel, a Messianic Jew, who shared his discovery of the Eucharist as the central act of worship of the early Jewish Christians.
September of 2020 is shortly after my own epiphany to join the Catholic Church and enroll in an RCIA. What I find so curious is that even after I declared my decision to become Catholic, my understanding of the Eucharist was still vague. It’s wonderful how clear Daniel is and how it has led him to join the Church. He found his way more purely by reason and truth.
It wasn’t the Eucharist that brought me to Catholicism. For me, the Eucharist is the unbelievable surprise that was waiting for me after I took the act of Emunah.
Although born Jewish, I was raised Evangelical Protestant which I undramatically exited at 18. I spent two decades of my adult life my adult life exposed to a myriad of secular ideologies but without ever committing to any of them in a very agnostic sense. It was only after having a third child did the gravity of actually raising children begin to weigh upon me. I’d had mystical experiences in 2016-17 which convinced me of the reality of divinity. But I did not have the clarity of “which way”.
In 2018 I was convinced Christianity empirically was the best the world had to offer. My knowledge of Christianity, despite a Sunday School upbringing, was so weak I could not bring myself to even consider returning to the Evangelical Protestantism. Even despite the pressure mounting, the clock ticking, that I needed to provide values, identity and community for the children. I began acquiring different Children’s Bibles and we began making our way through them.
I still lacked foundational understanding of Christianity to take any steps. Providentially, and belatedly, through what must be divine intervention, Jews of various perspectives—from Orthodox, Kabbalist, Secular, Zionist and Messianic—befriended me both online and in my local community. It dawned on my that I knew absolutely nothing about my Jewish half. My mother is Ashkenazi Jewish. She was raised in a very American atheistic, secular and socialistic family. I seemed to know that kind of Jewishness but I never considered how it connects…well, back to Abraham.
For the next two years I consumed possibly thousands of hours of Jewish rabbinic lectures and religious writing. It had the effect of convincing me that the Jewish faith was true—scientifically and spiritually. The foundation. I had what I thought I was looking for. Rock solid values to teach my children. But there was a square peg and round hole. As an adult who has already set up a life, lifestyle and family, the extraordinary effort it would take to convert my family to Judaism did not feel right. Nor was it ever a serious consideration. Why was the truth of religion so particular? What religion is appropriate for the rest of the world?
I looked at Noachidism and became extremely frustrated as it is not a religion. Why would Gentiles be excluded from the praxis of religion? It felt like a spiritual caste system even though I realize the Jews (and Gentiles) enthusiastic about Noachide don’t see it that way.
It was at this impasse, in the summer of 2020, where I became aware of Jewish Catholics. Just as I’d never explored Judaism, I realized I’d never looked at Catholicism a day in my life. My Protestant upbringing had left me favorably disposed to Jesus. Strangely, even with my upbringing, I still retained the same “scales” I feel most Jews have where we just don’t get Jesus.
I found myself on the shores of the Association of Hebrew Catholic website. I didn’t really understand the material. Yet as I dipped my toe into Catholicism I found every single value had its root in the Judaism I’d been so impressed by. With the revelation that I could be Jewish AND Catholic I took a leap of (faith) Emunah and declared to my wife that we should be Catholic. Can you believe I still hardly knew anything about the Eucharist when I made this decision?
That is when the connections really began to be made for me. After I was on the path. I don’t think anyone ever told me about what the Eucharist is my entire life. I think most people don’t know. I think most Catholics don’t know. I find it incredible that the truth is hiding in plain sight. The words of Jesus Christ in Scripture literally say what it is. And yet we can’t see and can’t hear even when it’s actually as simple and direct as Jesus describes.
I wasn’t ready or able to understand the Eucharist. But I was ready to take the leap of Emunah. It’s a blessing from my vantage point to be able to see the entire plan of Salvation unfold in history to the present. Abraham didn’t have that privilege. Moses didn’t get to enter the Promised Land. Yet we do.
