Scott Hahn: A convert’s story
Scott Hahn was converted, as we saw in last month’s column, during the first Mass he had ever attended, in the basement chapel of Marquette University. From his studies he knew that in the writings of the early Church Fathers there were numerous references to “the liturgy”, “the Eucharist”, “the sacrifice”. For them it was evident that the Bible was incomprehensible apart from the event which today’s Catholics call “the Mass”. He had to see for himself.
So there he was in a pew at the back of the chapel, seated in the shadows, with his Bible next to him, in the role of a spectator at Mass, “the ultimate sacrilege of re-sacrificing Jesus Christ”, as he, an Evangelical Calvinist, had been taught.
As the Mass moved on, however, “something hit me,” Scott said. “The Bible wasn’t just beside me. It was before me—in the words of the Mass: Isaiah, the Psalms, Paul—the experience was overwhelming.” The words of consecration followed: “This is my Body…This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” Scott was no longer a spectator. He felt all his prejudices evaporating. “As the priest raised the white host,” he said, “I felt a prayer surge from my heart: My Lord and my God. That’s really you.”
In addition to this, he realised that the Mass, far from being blasphemous, was in fact the very action that sealed God’s covenant with his people, “the sacred bond of the people of God”. His excitement intensified as he heard the congregation reciting: “Lamb of God…” three times, and the priest responding: “This is the Lamb of God…” as he raised the host.
Scott had spent several years as a student, then as a minister, studying the Bible, his favourite reading, seeking in vain to make sense of the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible. “Now,” he said, “I knew immediately where I was. I was in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is called the Lamb 28 times. I was at the marriage feast which John describes at the end of that very last book of the Bible. I was before the throne of heaven where Jesus is hailed forever as the Lamb—I wasn’t ready for this, though; I was at Mass.”
Each day, as he returned again and again for the Mass, it became increasingly evident that the Book of Revelation was the key to the liturgy, and the liturgy the key to the Book of Revelation.
His satisfaction at having made this “discovery” was deflated when, resuming his studies of the writings of the early Church Fathers, he found that they had written and preached about this relationship in the early centuries of the Church. At least, he thought, he should be credited with having “rediscovered” the connection between the Mass and the Book of Revelation. Here again he had been thwarted, this time by the Second Vatican Council.
In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (No 8) we read: “In the earthly liturgy (the Mass) we share in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem towards which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ sitting at the right hand of God, minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle.”
“Wait a minute,” Scott thought, “That’s heaven. No, it’s the Mass. No, it’s the Book of Revelation. Wait a minute: it’s all of the above.” He recalled: “I found myself trying hard to go slowly, cautiously, careful to avoid the dangers to which converts are susceptible; for I was fast becoming a convert to the Catholic faith. Yet this discovery was not the product of an overwrought imagination; it was the solemn teaching of a council of the Catholic Church.”
