Hi all! I'm new to the forums here at Byzcath and I just wanted to get acquainted with some of you before I do anything else.
Bio: To make a very long story short, I'm a young former Evangelical Protestant who's been on a journey of faith for the last two and a half years of investigating the Catholic Faith, studying the Patristic writings, altering my perception of the Scriptures, and gradually falling in love with ancient Christianity to the point that I readied myself to become Catholic a year ago. However, at that time I had never encountered Eastern Christianity in any serious way, and my only exposure to Catholicism was the Latin variety. I postponed entrance into the Latin Church, and at the dawn of 2013 I gave Eastern Orthodoxy a fair hearing for the first time. I was mesmerized, in general, by the beauty of Eastern Christianity. It wasn't long before I was thoroughly hooked on the glory of the East; particularly captivating is the Eastern interpretation of the dogmas of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and as flowing from those two realities and inseparable from them, the Eastern approach to theosis in the energetic self-revelation of the Trinity. While these doctrines continued to enthrall, I began to critically evaluate Eastern Orthodoxy, not just as a communion in the present, but in terms of their fidelity to the Fathers concerning the role of St. Peter in the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, as personified by Rome. I eventually came to believe unhesitatingly and firmly in the essentials of the self-witness of the Papacy as contained in the writings of the Popes of Rome in the first millennium, especially Pope St. Agatho and Pope Adrian I in 680 and 787, respectively. This led me to explore Eastern Catholicism, and to seek to enter the Catholic Church through the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, which has a parish relatively close to me, the beautiful St. Constantine's in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That is where I currently am at in the present, on the cusp of entry into the UGCC.
