March 5th 2023

I was chased out of the basement of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento by a nun who personally walked me to the front door. Yes. I was chased into a church by a nun.

I had been trying to get physically inside that church since Thanksgiving weekend last November when we were passing through. The night I failed to get in through the side door of that Cathedral was the night of the worst fight of our marriage. I’m talking, mysteriously bad. We also were to attend the Rite of Acceptance at St Rose the next morning. That’s when one who seeks to become a Catholic leaves the gathering information phase of courting and spiritually becomes something like betrothed to their new bride and are added to the pending adoption list of the Church. More on this another day, but it is nothing to be trifled with. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, where I had traveled to the Oakland Cathedral for a mass that was for the anointing of the sick. I was put on by the Knights of Malta, co-attended by the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, and it was like nothing I can even describe. I’ll share later. Anyway, I had actually met the janitor out front, but the church was closed at 6pm on a Friday night. He had to get home to his new baby. I have had guardian angels of churches let me in the side door more than a dozen times up to this point This time, I was told no. It was odd that the navigation also kept navigating me down an alleyway that I refused to follow, because who goes to a Cathedral by being navigated down smelly alleys. Mysteriously, God had placed a Catholic Police Officer right out front. I actually stopped and talked to him briefly. We talked for a few minutes, and then I went on my way, totally perplexed. I walked down the pedestrian block to the capitol building and could feel myself being repelled back away from the capitol building that looked and felt like a warzone. More on this whole pilgrimage later.

The next day, on returning home from the mass in Oakland, I stopped again. Of course, I didn’t let the navigation tell me to go down that alley. The church was closed. Again. WTH? Ok, now I was frustrated. I walked around the building looking for a side door or something, praying. I ended up down in the alley.. and two elderly people walked up a ramp from a door leading into the basement of the Cathedral… Umm….is that door open and does it go into the church? Yep. Are you kidding me, God? The basement? That’s a new level of mystery and is way better than a side door. Anyway, I popped through the door into a meeting area with a half dozen people sitting around a table. I glanced in their direction, and then turned and walked through the door the other way. My life travels in the army mostly have taught me that if you simply look like you are supposed to be there, and walk fast, no one will stop you. It was true this time as well. I hoped for a restroom, found them locked, and ran into a dead end of a hallway. I turn back, and there’s the nun. Can I help you? You can imagine this from her side. I have also learned to wear my crucifix on the outside for a dozen reasons. This is one of them. It says I am safe, but likely lost wandering in a basement of a Cathedral, caught red handed in my shenaniganry by a nun no-less. My father would be proud. Anyway, I told her I have been trying to get physically into this church for months. She said the Church will open to being preparing for mass at 3, which was probably 20 minutes from now. She guided me straight to the front door of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. There was a man who had the same body structure standing there waiting too. he was a pretty rotund guy and might as well have been the doppelganger of the one from last night. I spoke to him as though he was. After a couple minutes, we clarified that he wasn’t, and the door was unlocked by the true maintenance man, or as I have come to KNOW, the one guided personally by the Guardian of the Church. Because of course it’s him.

What I now just realized happened through that glorious day, that took place a few hours after the most profound spiritual event I had ever witnessed in Oakland, that occurred in the middle of an epiphany/vision, “heard from the heavens” that I need not enter through the basement or side door ever again. The front door will always be opened for you when you require. I just now realize this. It also resulted in two separate and lengthy blog posts today.

When the two of us were let in the Cathedral, I proceeded from the narthex (entry vestibule, but bigger) into the Nave. In my travels before finding the Catholic Church, I would have referred to this as the auditorium and indeed it would be appropriate to use this word to describe many evangelical/protestant churches. Here, I intentionally use the term Nave because that is what it is called. I stepped in and all word, thought, and even breath left me. It was replaced with the breath of life that fills the church on the next inhalation. It was the most beautiful building I have ever seen in my life.

I’ve been in the United States Capitol Building. I’ve been to the National Archives in the room where the Foundation Documents of the United States reside. Those places simply command silence, sometimes with shooshing or security guards screaming or nagging. The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, in the city of Sacramento, the capital city of the biggest blessing God bestowed upon the US in the form of California, which contains the California missions with Churches that are indescribable, did not command silence. This Church made silence.

This Cathedral didn’t contain a mere three founding documents, it contained images, painted on the ceiling of three writers of gospels of Christ, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Don’t ask me why the fourth one where John should have resided was/is blank.

This Church didn’t contain an empty dome with leaders of this country and pillars of Roman stone. This dome has the Holy Spirit at the apex, covering over the savior of mankind suspended in time, crucified on a cross, pouring out His blood, over the alter of His Sacrifice, for a priest to transubstantiate the hosts into the body and blood of Christ for all who are willing to let the one who created everything fix our broken self, lives, and family, every single day, for the remainder of the physical existence of this Cathedral

Why? Because our Heavenly Father loves us just that much. And to think, this all took place because a nun, who gave up everything for a lifetime, which we recklessly take for granted in the form of our children and families to serve others, recognized a seeking heart who sort of snuck into the basement of her church and obediently lead me almost by hand, with so much kindness to the front door of this Cathedral, on that day.

The night before, I met a homeless guy outside the Archdiocese Church in San Francisco about midnight. He was raised Catholic. He hadn’t talked to his mother in 3 months. He had been homeless for six months. He said he was waiting to go into the church until things were better, maybe a bit cleaner. I gave him the $7 I had in my pocket after talking to him for a bit on the steps leading into the “basement” of one of the most beautiful Churches I have ever seen. He lived in a tent across the street.

Talk about a prodigal son story, he did not even make it across the street from his Home in his attempt to run away from Home before he plopped down and set up his own packed tent and belongings stinking of pig feces.

One of the things that was put clearly on my heart to share with him, after I found out he was Catholic, was that someone must be praying their ass off for you. Your mom is probably on her face weeping tears for you right now. Go Home. Walk in the door tomorrow and simply ask them to help you get Home.

What people often fail to understand is that the homelessness that surrounds Catholic Churches across the planet and likely fills towns is actually the physical manifestation of the prodigal children of the Church. Reno has lots of lost children. It’s easy to judge the Church in her opulence and beauty thinking that man spent money on that without recognizing that God spent the money for us, each and every one of us. This gets really easy to do looking from the outside of the Church, especially at the level of the Vatican, and then attempt to point fingers and slander the Church. What those pointing their fingers and judging should really ask themselves is if they’re actually looking at a mirror in the homeless person sleeping on the curb across the street from their Church.

All the prodigal children need to do is turn around and walk across the street in the front door of the Church, and She will receive them as the story shows, with open arms and a return celebration. Wow.

Having an epiphany now. Sacramento, California and the state of California as a whole are a mess. The governor is a fool, walking in the wilderness in ways we can’t even articulate. The speaker of the House had her husband’s skull nearly caved in as consequence of likely his, hers, and their marriage prodigal child story. It had gotten so bad in her loss of even listening anymore for the Church to talk to her that the Church formally stopped talking to her demonstrated by being formally excommunicated by the Archbishop of San Francisco after ten years of ignoring repeated requests for communication by the priesthood up to and including the Archbishop of San Francisco and efforts to get her to come back Home to the Church.

My heart broke for her when her husband was nearly beaten to death. The manner in which people responded to what occurred is proof of what lay outside the Church. I was terribly similar to the visual portrayal of Aslan being marched off by the White Witch to be sacrificed on the alter in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was purely demonic. For good reason, I am lead to believe that being excommunicated shook her to the core, reason of which may be revealed another time. And of course, the demonic came back again when she flew to the Vatican a couple days later.

The problem is, the young homeless guy sitting on the steps of the basement side door was closer to coming home than Nancy Pelosi in the physical sense. They sat on the equivalent of opposite ends of the spectrum of all things in the world we can describe, yet when both had finally started to become aware of how much they smelled like pig feces of sin and self, they both wanted the same thing. They both wanted to come Home. One took an airplane across the ocean to take her case to the Vatican itself.

Any bets on which “homeless person” sleeping on a bench across the street from the Vatican was saving Nancy Pelosi’s place in line at the front door? The other prodigal child had the prayers of his mother finally answered when they broke through his stench when God dispatched me, from a different state to meet him exactly where he was in a manner where I would not be surprised if he never tells anyone what happened while sincerely wondering if an angel had manifested to him, because of a pilgrimage that included four diocese cathedrals in 12 hours leading to me attending a mass, that my sponsor into the Catholic Church, Michael, who had a kind little old man in his 90s mysteriously appear out of nowhere in the tomb of Saint Peter at the Vatican on September 30, 2022, in the basement of Saint Peter’s Basilica, at the end of the Tour of Keys, which he had finally decided to go on during his sixth time visiting the Vatican that started at 4 AM with two hours of unrestricted near private access of 10 people, where the little really old man appears seemingly out of nowhere and starts a conversation, after Michael was in prayer for an unknown period of time, by putting his elderly hand on his shoulder asking him, “What troubles you child,” where previously he was totally alone with the entrance in his field of view while being surrounded by the tombs of numerous Popes, where the same kind elderly man with the red cap and red buttons, responds to his revealing that his Catechumin (me) is having visions and he wants to get me something from the gift store of the Vatican, who then says that he knows exactly what to give me, and then leads him through the passage the Pope walks to go to mass to the gift shop where he asks the Nun to get him a Benedictus medal, for which my sponsor asked him how much and of course said, please nothing, and blessed the medal, who then shared a couple things for him to share with me regarding warnings that his visions are to be taken as true and there will be those he needs to be cautious of that will seek to take advantage of these visions, where then Michael went about his way to find his family in the Vatican and took the medal to be blessed by the Pope, of whom the little old guy in a red cap with red buttons, whose identity was forgotten by Michael until the Wednesday after his return, something near the sixth or seventh week into RCIA, when Michael shared the identity of the kind little old man in the red cap and red buttons to be Cardinal Segio Seebastiani, current head priest of the Society of Hospitallers, whose sponsor Michael invited me to attend, because Michael is aware of some of the other mysterious events/visions/epiphanies that have and are transpiring for and through me, to attend the anointing of the sick mass with the Society of Hospitallers, also known as the Knights of Malta, who were putting on the mass the next day, that invited members of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, of which Michael is a member while himself never having met a Knight of Malta prior to this event, to find this 27 year old prodigal son sitting hopelessly on the steps perfectly positioned while I was talking on my phone to a dear friend in Texas witnessing the whole thing take place of which there was a lot more, who also heard the exchange between us while on the phone waiting for me, whose wife was brought to tears and prayer in Texas at 2AM their time, to bring this prodigal son home soon, safely. As I just typed all that out of nowhere, I would probably fall over dead if this young man is not home safely right now starting the process of cleaning up the mess that he made when he ran away from Home.

And people wonder how much God loves each and every one of us. Just that much. We think we are not worthy of having an army, or a rescue party sent out for us after we made some stupid choices hiking, or we wandered off in the wilderness. The thing is, the reason I have seen the exact same level of resources available for each and every one of us sick and in danger in a hospital bed at the push of a button or the detection of a fatal rhythm from some hidden room in the heart of the hospital where some stranger is sitting watch overnight to be there to sound the alarm when something goes wrong. I have been entrusted to be the one who leads those response teams in the middle of the night as a physician in my professional life.