The Universality of the Universal Church

                                                                      (St. Mary's in Potsdam before mass)
Every year that I have gone on vacation since I have been Catholic, which is 7 years now, I still can't get over the universality of this faith we share. On this past Sunday we were in a small lake town near Potsdam, NY and within a short distance was a Catholic Church. We didn't have to fore go keeping the sabbath command because we couldn't find a church with a theology and worship style we could agree with.

In the olden days, before I was Catholic, when I took my family on vacation, we would make a cursory review of local churches in the yellow pages after settling in.  We wouldn't be comfortable going to the First Pentecostal Assembly of Jesus-Only Believers ( "I think they don't really believe in the trinity there") or the "dead" ______ church ( weren't they the "liberal ones who didn't take the bible literally") or the wishy-washy _____ church ( "I think they just approved of  homosexuality, didn't they?") or  the stuffy 10th _____( "They are 5 pointers and don't believe in free will, aren't they")

Instead, when Sunday came, we would then try to then try to coral the kids together to read scripture and say a prayer. For all those years, there was probably a Catholic Mass being prayed right down the street from where we were staying at our beach rental house.  But with my anti-Catholic bias at the time, I am sure I would have over-looked the Church that was worshiping with the same theology as the early Christians and praying the same prayers over the Lord's Supper that had been prayed for over 1800 years Instead I decided to lead my family to break one of the ten commandments.  This is just one of the many reasons that one universal church makes so much sense and going on vacation now, always reinforces that for me.
One, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith. Yeah, it just makes sense.