Mary and the Eucharist welcome couple to the Catholic Church
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The congregation Russ and Hether Pflasterer poured themselves into establishing fell apart shortly after they stepped away from it.
The loss still stung when they moved to Jefferson City four years ago.
“It was a demanding ministry, a tough ministry,” Mr. Pflasterer recalled. “We had done our best and tried to set up structures that would outlast us, but it turned out to be a painful exit.”
They prayed and read and studied and spent their Sunday mornings in numerous churches, looking for a new home.
“Our faith was never a question,” said Mr. Pflasterer. “We’re church people. We were both well-discipled. But we were feeling adrift.”
Now, the couple and their youngest son are preparing to receive Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil in the Cathedral of St. Joseph.
“We’re very excited,” said Mr. Pflasterer. “The whole process has been a blessing, and I’m very thankful for it.”
A time to heal
The Pflasterers are both Missouri natives who met in Tennessee while studying to become educators.
They wound up staying and teaching in Jackson, Tennessee, for 30 years.
They were active in their congregation, where Mr. Pflasterer became a deacon, an elder and eventually a pastor.
Through years of teaching, they saw how historical injustices in education led to racial and socioeconomic inequities in their city.
“We felt that the Gospel was the only thing we had to address these issues,” said Mr. Pflasterer.
With help from other Christian groups, they established a congregation with a special emphasis on racial reconciliation.
“There was a lot of intense work, much of it focusing on social issues,” said Mr. Pflasterer.
The couple wore themselves ragged and knew they had given all they could.
Eventually, they decided it was time to step away so the congregation could begin to flourish on its own.
They also needed to move to Missouri to be closer to his and her parents, who were in poor health.
Divisions in the church they started came to a head shortly after they left.
“Seeing all that blood, sweat and tears go down the drain was rough,” Mr. Pflasterer lamented. “So, we came here really hurting.”
Mrs. Pflasterer resumed her teaching career, while Mr. Pflasterer went to work as a chaplain for Phoenix Homecare and Hospice.
“I was no longer interested in pastoring, but I knew the Lord still had ministry for me,” he said.
Through healing, studying and prayer, Mr. Pflasterer began to question his understanding of what it means to be church.
“I really loved the idea of starting a church,” he said. “But all the time I was doing that, it felt like I was the pope of that church, and I felt the responsibility of that. I came out stressed and emotionally drained.”
His new ministry required a lot of travel, leaving him time to listen to audio books, including the letters of the Early Church Fathers.
“I did a lot of listening and reading,” said Mr. Pflasterer. “I got into the letters of Irenaeus and Ignatius of Antioch and Gregory the Great.”
These are records of what Christians who had learned at the feet of the Apostles taught and believed.
“A lot of what they wrote was simply Catholic,” said Mr. Pflasterer. “Things that I was taught were bad — Marian spirituality, Adoration, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.”
Meanwhile, the couple visited many congregations but never felt at home.
“We lived just down the street from Immaculate Conception Church (in Jefferson City),” Mr. Pflasterer noted. “We could clearly hear the bells from our house.”
One Sunday, they decided to go to Mass there.
“No one said anything to us,” he recalled. “But both of us immediately felt welcome — deeply welcome, arms-around-you welcome!”
They didn’t know how to describe it, but they are now convinced that the Blessed Mother was welcoming them home.
“By the time we got to the Eucharist and the priest held up the host and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ I knew Christ was present in that room,” said Mr. Pflasterer.
At Holy Communion, they both decided to go forward to receive a blessing.
“I get emotional just thinking about it,” said Mr. Pflasterer. “When Father Matthew (Flatley) put his hand on me and blessed me, I knew I was in the presence of Jesus.”
“Where else?
The couple’s objections to being Catholic began to diminish but did not completely disappear.
“I would not call them doubts or problems, but I still come across difficulties that I’m working through,” said Mr. Pflasterer.
But after their eucharistic encounter with Christ, “we could not stop going to Mass,” he said. “We could not stay away.”
They decided to enter the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) at Cathedral of St. Joseph Parish because Father Stephen Jones, the pastor, is also a convert.
Mr. Pflasterer noted that becoming Catholic is a huge cultural shift.
“We’re learning as we go,” he said. “The Mass and an Evangelical worship service are not the same. There are definitely things that overlap, but the whole point is different. The focal point of the Mass is the Sacrifice, not the sermon.”
He still feels the same reverent silence in his soul every time the priest elevates the Most Blessed Sacrament and says, “Behold the Lamb of God.”
“I can’t wait for the experience of receiving that!” he said.
The OCIA group, along with reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is helping the Pflasterers contend with hundreds of years of divisions within Christianity.
“Going into the process of conversion with an open heart matters,” said Mr. Pflasterer.
He likened it to John 6, in which many of Jesus’s followers go back to their old lives, and Jesus says to his disciples, “What about you? Are you going to leave, as well?”
“And Peter basically says, ‘We don’t understand it all either, but where else would we go? You have the words of life!’”
“Where else would WE go now that we know that’s Jesus in the Eucharist?” said Mr. Pflasterer.
