The first time I read the documents of Vatican II for myself was in the summer of 1971 between my first and second years of college.  I had experienced the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" in Peter Kreeft's "Modern Man" seminar in January, but could not find a Catholic Pentecostal prayer meeting nearby.  My pastor, a very orthodox and kindly monsignor, suggested that I could pray with "The Lost and Found," a group proud to call themselves "Jesus Freaks" that had been founded and was led by Sunshine, an exuberant and attractive young man who had worked his way east from California after his own dramatic conversion.

Within ten minutes of my first visit to "The Lost and Found," I had been quizzed about the Church's teaching on the Rapture and had been prayed over to receive the gift of tongues.  As I returned daily to the group and traveled with them from church to church, I also set myself to reading the documents of the council.  I was comforted by the Decree on Ecumenism, which seemed to bless my participation in non-denominational prayer meetings, and I was deeply impressed by the way in which the documents taught about and appealed to Scripture.

I did not understand much of what I read, but it was enough to see me through two crises later that summer.  My love affair with the Jesus Freaks began to unravel as I realized that they were, in fact, founding a new denomination and not just encouraging teens to find Jesus in their own congregations.  Sunshine began to conduct baptisms in Green Lake for those who had been baptized as infants, he encouraged us to take Communion wherever we went, and he celebrated his own Communion services in an old hall loaned to him by the Wesleyan Methodists.  I found this very disquieting.

The second crisis was the recognition that I could create my own church, just as Sunshine had done.  Some of the teen-age "elders" in the group liked my interpretations of the Scriptures better than Sunshine's, and I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I had the power to carry them off with me into my own new version of Christianity.  Looking back, I am glad that I didn't put this theory to the test, because I can see that I am no Sunshine.  I could never have attracted or cultivated teens as he did.  I did not have his personal or spiritual gifts.  More importantly, on the day when I realized that I did have some gift for teaching, I immediately decided that I had no interest in founding my own church; I wanted to be taught by the Church, the Body and the Bride of Christ, and to receive the gifts that she had preserved and developed in her mystical union with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I see now that the same principle applies to the development of the Scriptures of the Old Testament.  God walked and talked with Abraham and with the Israelites descended from him.  They, too, like the new Israel, produced sacred writings under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that did not dissolve the living body of knowledge of God's nature and purposes, but supported, sustained, and clarified the gifts that they had been given.

This, of course, is all in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: "Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church" (10).  I have only stumbled across a way of putting this great truth into my own words and seeing for myself what a profound truth this is.  The Lord does "work in mysterious ways" (Is 45:15), but they are not wholly unintelligible.  We can see what He has done for us in the history of Israel and in the history of the Church.  The Church is the living "Mater et Magistra" of all Christians, whether they know it or not, and I am grateful to take refuge in her loving embrace.