After looking at Jesus face to face in adoration today and thinking about why I am Catholic, I thought to myself, how could I not be? I grew up in the Catholic Church, but during my freshman year of college, some questions started to arise in my mind. People approached me with questions about Jesus and the Catholic Church, and I didn’t know the answers.
As I began to look at Church history and learned that Jesus started a Church that is indeed the Catholic Church, I knew that not only did I want to be Catholic, but Jesus did, too. How could I not want to worship the Lord in the way he wants to be worshipped? The Lord wants communion with us during our life and for eternity in heaven, and he gave us his Church and a glimpse of heaven on earth. I also had heard of the importance of prayer and having a relationship with Jesus, but how?
Sitting in the Newman Center chapel at South Dakota State University during my first year of college, I gazed at the tabernacle day after day and my life began to change. I didn’t immediately know the impact of a simple question asked by a FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) missionary: “What is your prayer life like?” He went on to invite me to stop by the chapel for 10 to 15 minutes every day to be with Jesus. As I sat there each day, looking at Jesus in the tabernacle, for the first time in my life I began to have a peace, and a joy, and a purpose that I couldn’t explain.
It has been 10 years since my first year in college. In the last couple years, I have been so convicted every time I read Revelation 2:4. Jesus is talking to the angel of the Church in Ephesus, and I have felt as though Jesus is talking directly to me. Jesus said the angel had shown endurance and suffered for his name and not grown weary, but in verse 4 Jesus says, “but I have this against you: you have lost the love you had at first.”
What I realized is that as my daily prayer life had decreased, my love had decreased. And as my prayer life increased, my love increased. Like in 1 John 4:19, we hear that we love because he first loved us. We can only give with what we receive from the Lord, and I am grateful for all the amazing people the Lord has put in my life to point me toward Jesus. My wife’s daily model of persisting in prayer by waking up early before the kids encourages me to do the same.
Wieneke, 29, and his wife, Brenda, have three children and spend half of the year in Canada, where Jake plays football in the CFL, and the other half of the year home in Minnesota. This offseason, Jake is working at his home parish, St. Thomas the Apostle in Corcoran, where he is the faith and young adult minister. He is loving building relationships and watching the Lord work in this exciting time in a growing community at St. Thomas the Apostle.
