Scott:
When evangelical Protestants convert to the Catholic Church, they often enter into a kind of “ecclesiastical culture shock”. They leave robust congregational singing, practical biblical preaching, a conservative pro-family political voice in the pulpit and a vital sense of community, with various prayer meetings, fellowships and Bible studies to choose from each week. In contrast, the average Catholic parish usually finds itself lacking in these areas. While these converts typically feel that they have “come home” by becoming Catholics, they do not always feel “at home” in their new parish families. Kimberly and I both experienced this.
Places like Franciscan University of Steubenville prove that this need not be so. What has impressed us the most from our time in Steubenville is precisely the way it combines the evangelical and the Catholic. I am talking about the way in which the Catholic Faith unites what other religions tend to separate: personal piety and liturgical ritual; evangelistic outreach and social action; spiritual fervor and intellectual rigor; academic freedom and dynamic orthodoxy; enthusiastic worship and reverent contemplation; powerful preaching and sacramental devotion; Scripture and Tradition; body and soul; the individual and the corporate.
Since Kimberly’s conversion, we now share all of this as a family. We make an effort to attend daily Mass as a family at the University. With the Eucharist at the center of our lives, we are able to show our children how the Bible and the liturgy go together, the menu and the meal. Our kids see dozens of priests and hundreds of students who are living out the gospel in practical ways.
Teaching such students has proven to be one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. They have a passion to study Scripture, to learn theology and to ask hundreds of challenging questions. (I affectionately refer to the students as my “holy brainsuckers”.) When class is over, they seek to apply the lessons they’ve learned in their work and relationships. I am convinced that God is raising up many of the future leaders of the Catholic Church here at the University.
Besides my work at the University, the Lord has given Kimberly and me numerous opportunities to minister across the country. With several hundred of my talks on audio and video cassettes, the message is reaching far beyond our limited range of travel. These tapes are now circulating in many countries. People have written and called from Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Holland, Poland, Lithuania, Belgium, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Ghana, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and others; and to think that we feared we might never be able to minister together again!
All of this has been made possible through our partnership with Terry Barber and Saint Joseph Communications. Within one year’s time, “The Tape”, which recorded the talk that I gave to only thirty-five people back in 1989, had been purchased by more than thirty-five thousand. That number has climbed to the hundreds of thousands in the last few years. Besides the tape of my conversion story, Terry has released over two hundred of my tapes touching on a wide variety of subjects, explaining various aspects of the Catholic Faith.
My father was right after all—and he never let me forget it. He made sure that I knew how proud he was of his youngest son, the nonjeweler theologian.
After a long illness, he passed away in December 1991. It was one of the most difficult and yet most blessed experiences of my life. For many years he had been an agnostic, but through his suffering, he recovered a personal faith in Christ. During the last few weeks of his life, we were able to spend meaningful time together praying, reading Scripture and talking about his life and the Lord. I will never forget the privilege of holding his hand and closing his eyes when his heavenly Father called him to himself; nor will I ever stop thanking God for giving me an earthly father who made it so easy to love my heavenly Father.
One week later, my father-in-law, Dr. Jerry Kirk, called to invite me to accompany him to Rome the following month to meet with Pope John Paul II. Talk about the grace of God.
As the founder of R.A.A.P. (the Religious Alliance against Pornography), Jerry had been invited by members of the Roman hierarchy to conduct a three-day session in the Vatican with a group of a dozen major religious leaders from America. Cardinal Bernardin had organized the meetings in order to coordinate strategies with Vatican officials for combatting hardcore pornography worldwide. At the end of our deliberations, we were to have a private audience with the Holy Father to present our conclusions and to discuss them with him more closely.
So I went to Rome for the first time. In between meetings, I was able to visit Saint Peter’s and a few other sacred sites—not as a tourist but as a pilgrim. It was overwhelming.
At the end of the three days, on a Thursday afternoon, we were taken through a labyrinth of corridors and ushered into a meeting room. As we sat there waiting for the Pope’s arrival, I prayed intently. After he entered the room, the proceedings seemed to go by in a flash.
When they were over, Jerry had the privilege of introducing each of us to the Pope. When it came my turn, I heard my father-in-law say to my spiritual father, “Your Holiness, I’d like to introduce you to Scott Hahn, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville.”
I shook his hand, and that was it—on to the next religious leader in line. Afterward, I stood there rejoicing and thanking God for the privilege of meeting my spiritual father in Christ, even if it was for just a few seconds. Still, I got to squeeze the hand of the Vicar of Christ, the successor to Peter—no small thrill for this former anti-Catholic.
One hour later the leaders were regathering in the Vatican chamber where we had been meeting all week. When I walked in, I heard gales of laughter coming from the direction of my mother-in-law, who was standing at a table staring at a photograph, I went to investigate. Standing next to her, I looked down and beheld a picture of her husband introducing her son-in-law to the Pope. “Can you believe it?! After all these years, your father-in-law gets to introduce you to the Pope.” As she laughed more heartily, she hugged me warmly. What an awesome mother-in-law!
A few minutes later the phone rang in an office down the hall. An older man came into the meeting room and asked, “Is Professor Scott Hahn here?”
I waved my hand to identify myself.
“A telephone call for you.”
As I walked down the hall, I wondered, Who could it be? I picked up the phone and heard a heavily accented voice.
“Are you able to join His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, tomorrow morning at 7 A.M. for Mass in his private chapel?”
At first I thought it was a joke. Then I remembered a meeting earlier that week with Professor Rocco Buttiglione, who offered to use his influence with the Pope’s private secretary to get me into the Pope’s morning Mass.
“Yes, I can make it.” But I was so nervous that I forgot to ask for the details.
Fortunately, Cardinal Cassidy, one of the Vatican officials in the meeting room, explained to me the procedure. I was to be at a certain gate by 6:30 A.M., where a Swiss guard would meet me.
The next morning, I got up after a futile struggle to sleep and took a taxi down to Saint Peter’s. I got there more than an hour ahead of time. Pacing around Saint Peter’s square, I prayed a Rosary and prepared myself for the privilege of a lifetime.
Sure enough, at the appointed time, someone came out to meet me. He led me down some stairs and through a series of corridors until I was standing amidst several bishops and priests who were vesting to concelebrate Mass with the Pope.
I stood there nervously, when suddenly the Pope’s personal secretary stuck his head through the doorway and looked around the room. Finally, he spoke up. “Vare eese dee tay-ologee professor frum Stubbenveel Ooniversitee?”
I could barely piece together the question through his thick accent. Then it finally dawned that he was asking for me.
I waved my hand rather sheepishly and said, “Here I am.”
He looked over and nodded his head. “Gute, I vill tell heem.”
I had no idea what that was all about, but I got a kick out of all the foreign prelates looking my way and wondering, “Who is this guy and how does he rate?”
Moments later we were led down the hall and into a small private chapel. Upon entering, I noticed that Pope John Paul II was already there on his kneeler praying before the tabernacle. As I knelt a few feet away, I asked the Lord for a special grace to unite my heart with that of my spiritual father as he renewed the covenant and celebrated the sacrifice of Christ in the Mass.
What reverence and love were shown by the Pope at every point in the eucharistic liturgy. I recall how never before had I felt so vividly the reality of Christ’s presence.
When Mass was over, the people were led out of the chapel while the Holy Father remained on his kneeler in thanksgiving. I was the last to leave. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I stopped and knelt a few feet behind him and prayed—there alone with the Pope for maybe half a minute—until I heard footsteps scurrying down the hall to the chapel. Just as I suspected, they had taken a count and had found that someone was missing. I got up to go just as the Pope’s personal secretary reentered the chapel. He guided me, firmly but gently, back into the room where the Pope would meet with us in a few minutes.
While waiting, I prayed and then rehearsed what I was to do—when suddenly the Pope walked into the room. What struck me almost immediately was how much more alert and energetic he appeared now, right after Mass, compared to the look of exhaustion I had seen on his face the day before during our private audience with him in the afternoon.
He seemed intensely interested in each one he spoke with as he walked around. He seemed to treat each person as though he were the only one in the room. He looked him right in the eyes and listened intently before speaking. Then my turn came.
He stepped up to greet me, and as I reached out with both arms, we embraced. I then handed him a beautifully packaged set of my tape series on “Answering Common Objections”, along with an envelope that contained a personal letter and two checks as tokens of love and appreciation from the Barber and Hahn families.
He looked me right in the eyes and said, “God bless you. Are you the theology professor from Steubenville University?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Please send my greetings and blessings to the community there in Steubenville.”
“Holy Father, my own natural father just died last month, and now my heavenly Father has blessed me with the privilege of meeting you, my spiritual father.” With that, we embraced a second time.
He stared intently and said, “I’m sorry to hear that your father died. God bless him. I’ll pray for him.”
My heart leapt as I immediately recalled a certain line of Scripture: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. . .”
Then I briefly explained, in about a minute’s time, all about my pilgrimage of faith as an anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister who had become a Catholic just six years before.
He listened carefully before giving me one more handshake, a blessing and a Rosary. As I left the presence of Pope John Paul II—the one anointed by my heavenly Father and eldest Brother to shepherd the covenant family of God on earth—I had a strong sense that God was saying, “Scott, the best is yet to come.”
Kimberly:
Six weeks after I was received into the Church, our eldest son, Michael, made his First Communion. I had been a Catholic only a short time, and I felt that my heart was going to burst. I could not imagine what it felt like for those parents who as cradle Catholics had dreamt of the time they would get married, have a child and bring him to the table of the Lord for First Communion. (We have now had the opportunity to bring Gabriel to First Communion and are eagerly awaiting that special time with Hannah.)
The concerns on my heart each time have been these: first, I hoped the feast of the Passover Lamb from heaven was more important than the feast of the party afterward; and second, I hoped that the focus was on the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist rather than the presents the children would receive later.
Once, at the consecration of the Mass, Scott leaned over to me and said, “Can you imagine what the angels must think?”
His question led me to think about realities I’d not considered before. Certainly the angels are present for the liturgy, but they do not receive the Lord. They must peer down in wonder and awe at the incredible love our heavenly Father had for us in sending Jesus to earth to take on lowly human nature, to lay down that life in sacrifice for us and, finally, to feed us with that resurrected and glorified offering of his Body and Blood. What a glorious mystery!
Fasting for the hour beforehand has been a good experience, too, because it has been a small mortification (of which there are all too few in my life) to point to my need to hunger for souls.
Our move to Steubenville has been such a blessing. We have all made many wonderful friends at the University and in the community. There are more than forty families in our Heart of Mary Homeschool Support Group. And the college students have been a great reinforcement to our children of our own commitment to the Lord.
How is our life different? My heart is so full of the goodness of the Lord and so full of that joy of my salvation which for five years I really wanted to sense but could not. I guess I could summarize it in three phrases: unity restored, ministry renewed and family refreshed.
Our unity has been restored. We hold deep convictions in common once again—even deeper now after all we have been through. I love to sit under Scott’s teaching once again. Instead of chafing during his Bible studies, I really enjoy them.
We come to the Lord’s table together often at Franciscan University with a committed group of believers who love the Lord and want to share their love for God faithfully. The children had sensed our disunity, though we did not talk a great deal about our disagreements in front of them. Yet more than a mere sense of relief, the children have really shared our joy in being so deeply reunited.
We have had ministries renewed. Certain dreams died, but God has restored them superabundantly. In our home, we have had tremendous opportunities for hospitality, with over three hundred people for meals at our home yearly. In addition, having had a succession of college students move in with as has been a new adventure for us in extended household living. And our large living room accommodates crowds of between twenty and fifty for both Scott’s and my weekly Bible studies.
Scott and I have begun speaking together on trips. We have had the privilege of meeting and sharing the Catholic Faith with so many wonderful, committed and growing Catholics all over our country. The tape ministry through Saint Joseph Communications has enabled our messages to go much farther than we could ever have traveled. And the ongoing ministry by phone and mail has challenged us to the limits of our time and energies! And to think these are all ministries that I thought were gone permanently, only to be restored in the Lord’s time.
Our family has been so refreshed because there are new channels of grace open to us: regular confession and almost daily Eucharist. We have enjoyed learning about the liturgical calendar, observing the fasting (Advent, Lent, Fridays) and enjoying the feasting. (Besides birthdays and Christmas, we celebrate our saint days and our baptism anniversaries.)
I have had our first baby as a Catholic, knowing that every day as I received the Eucharist my baby was being fed and nurtured by the Lord himself. After our miscarriages, I really did not have a certainty that I could bring this baby to term, but I did know each day that I had the opportunity to bring this little baby before the Lord and receive the blessing of the priest. I also harnessed the saints in heaven for the first time, asking for their intercession on my child’s behalf. What joy it was to deliver Jeremiah Thomas Walker on July 3, 1991, and have him baptized in early September. And it was a tremendous joy to us and a bridge to my family to have my father participate in Jeremiah’s baptism.
We had not gone to daily Mass as a family until the day I was received into the Church; now it’s the goal of our day. We have been blessed by many priests who stop in Steubenville and assist at Mass. Amazed at the number of priests, Hannah’s regular question has become, “Is he my father, too?”
We appreciated our evangelical tradition, where people sing and pray wholeheartedly. So, one of the elements of worship our family has most appreciated at Franciscan University is the way people participate. As Scott says, “If the Eucharist doesn’t make you want to sing, what would?”
Though it is not always easy, it is always good to be together at Mass. It is a good time for physical closeness and for teaching the children about the Lord. Even though there are times when it seems the grace received has already been spent on the children before the end of the closing hymn (due to discipline and distraction), it has been better to have brought them into the presence of Jesus than to have left them out. At the end of the Mass, we have what we call our “holy huddle”. We get real, real close and offer a prayer of thanksgiving as a family.
I’m thankful for the unity of our family under Scott’s spiritual leadership.
How sweet it is to be home in the Roman Catholic Church! And what a privilege it has been to reflect upon our lives and to share how our Lord has guided our steps to him and his Church. Surely, as the psalmist says, “He has caused his wonderful works to be remembered, the Lord is gracious and merciful” (Ps 111:4). May our Lord through his abundant mercy enable us all daily to give ourselves more fully to him.
The Hahn family. July, 1993.