Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
2: Encounter - with Matt Selby
4 Plays1 year ago
This episode features a personal testimony from Matt Selby, the Director of Adult and Marriage Formation for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. He shares with Father Kevin and Father Jacob some fascinating details about his training as a missionary, his journey to the Catholic Church, and his encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist.
The websites and resources referenced can be found here:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Dubuqueristic Revival
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome, everyone, to the Dubuqueristic Revival. This is episode two of our podcast all about the Eucharistic Revival here in the Archdiocese of Dubuque. My name is Father Jacob Rouse. I'm the pastor of Notre Dame Parish in Cresco, Iowa, and I am joined by my brother in the priesthood and my elder, Father Kevin. Can you introduce yourself, Father Kevin?
Guest Introduction: Matt Selby
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello, Father Kevin Earlywine. I'm pastor of St. Patrick's Parish in Hampton and St. Mary's Parish in Ackley. So I'm glad to be here in the Dubuque Ristic Revival podcast. Yes, that's still what we're going with. For this second episode, we have a guest, Matt Selby, who is a worker in the vineyard. And Matt, can you introduce yourself and a little bit about your position here in the Archdiocese?
00:01:09
Speaker
Sure, great to be with you. My name is Matt Selby. I am the Director of Adult and Marriage Formation for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. I've been in that role for about six years now. Previously worked at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Marion as the Director of Adult Faith Formation for four years. So I've been in the Archdiocese for just over 10. And my wife, Anna and I have been married for 12 years and we have five boys, 10 down to three months. So busy household. A lot of energy there. That's right.
00:01:42
Speaker
Matt, you didn't grow up Catholic, isn't that right? Even though you worked for the archdiocese and worked at the parish. Part of where we ask you on is if you could share a little bit about your story, your journey as a non-Catholic Christian, like a little bit about background, what you were growing up and then some of the conversion moments of that where you fell more deeply in love with Christ.
00:02:04
Speaker
Sure. I never would have imagined myself working for a Catholic archdiocese. In fact, I said that I've been married for 12 years. I met my wife, Anna, when I was not Catholic. She was raised Catholic, but I was raised as an evangelical Protestant in the E-Free Church. So kind of non-denominational, evangelical was my upbringing when to
00:02:28
Speaker
a small Bible college up in St. Paul, Minnesota, studied theology there and kind of took a journey eventually, much to the credit of my wife as we met and dated and were engaged to the Catholic Church eventually, but that was certainly not my upbringing.
Matt's Evangelical Background & Missionary Work
00:02:47
Speaker
I had a very different experience growing up in an evangelical Protestant church.
00:02:51
Speaker
So, in that tradition, I assume you would have known and studied the Bible and the verses and the Gospels quite intently. Is that true?
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, I grew up, you know, we read the Bible at home. Of course, I heard scripture at church as part of Bible studies, part of youth group growing up. And I mentioned I went to a small Christian school. My degree was in biblical studies. So I studied scripture pretty formally as an undergraduate student and got a lot of exposure and really good foundation, good background in the Bible.
00:03:30
Speaker
Imagine you also I remember part of your story didn't you serve as a missionary at some point to to like another country somewhere for a time evangelizing folks and such Yeah, so I was just out of college my first
00:03:45
Speaker
full-time job out of college was, I was a full-time missionary working in the Middle East. So I was for two years working with an organization that would do short-term mission trips all over the world, but my focus was on the Middle East. And so I would lead teams of Americans over for like 10 to 12 days to countries like Jordan and Syria and Lebanon and Egypt and Iraq and Israel. And we would,
00:04:13
Speaker
evangelize in a lot of different forms, but we'd be working amongst various populations and we'd be doing some humanitarian aid, but our goal was always just to share the love of Jesus with the people we would encounter and to spread the gospel and help people to come to know Christ. While you were doing that, I mean, we're all called to be missionaries, but you were actually
00:04:40
Speaker
by title and employment and by baptism, a missionary. Did you have any thought even in the back of your head of the different denominations of different churches or even specifically the Catholic church at that point in your life?
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say I was raised implicitly anti-Catholic. It wasn't like explicit in my family growing up or in my experience, but even in college, there was just an anti-Catholic bent amongst the school. I went to the studies I was doing. I mean, there were a handful of Catholic students, but most of them ended up
00:05:17
Speaker
unfortunately, leaving the practice of the Catholic faith through their experience at that school. And then when I became a missionary, I remember actually my first missions trip, I was in training. And one of the things they trained me how to do was how to evangelize Catholics. Because even in these countries in the Middle East, for example, that training trip was to Israel. And there's a
00:05:40
Speaker
a decent number of Catholics who live in Israel and obviously there's a historical presence of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and all these historical holy sites that we go to. It's either a Catholic Church or it's an Orthodox Church typically. And so definitely an exposure through going over to that part of the world to more of the historical
00:06:02
Speaker
church and ancient churches, the ancient Catholic church, ancient Orthodox churches. But our perception, our approach was that Catholics need to be evangelized and converted.
00:06:14
Speaker
to the true form of Christianity. So that was my viewpoint. Catholics need to come see the light and come to Jesus and then leave the Catholic Church and become Protestant. So I was trained, you know, these are the verses that you use with Catholics to show them that they need to be born again and they need to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, all those types of things. That was my mindset. That was the approach we would take.
00:06:37
Speaker
So I'm very curious about that. What, um, just a little more, just about that perception of Catholicism, like was there, um, did you guys ever talk about like, what was some of the, I guess the particular teachings of Catholicism that were seen as problematic or seen as anti-gospel or, um, or just, yeah, or whatever. If you could say a little more about that, I'm just always very curious. Like, what is it? What, what was the, like, that inspired the view that they thought Catholics needed to be evangelized and didn't have the full gospel.
00:07:07
Speaker
Sure, so I probably had all of the typical misperceptions and typical stereotypes of the Catholic Church. So, you know, a big thing was believing that Catholics think they need to earn their salvation and the Catholic Church teaches that it's all works based. The saints, Mary and the saints, a big thing, this perception that Catholics worship Mary, worship the saints or make a bigger deal out of Mary and the saints than they should be.
00:07:36
Speaker
do things like that, praying to saints, praying to Mary, that in my mind took away from the focus on Jesus. So it was kind of like a zero-sum game where any attention you'd give to Mary, any attention you'd give to the saints, any, you know, talking about the sacraments or anything that we would do, our own actions, that would take away from Jesus. My perception was, you know, that was kind of,
00:08:04
Speaker
our view of salvation was it's all the work of God and we're just recipients. And I thought that the Catholic view was kind
Encountering Catholicism Through Marriage
00:08:14
Speaker
of flipped on its head. That's all our work and that, you know, we're, we're focusing on human action and that takes away from Jesus's work of redemption on the cross and through his resurrection. So those are big things. I mean, there's,
00:08:28
Speaker
There's more from the papacy to the Eucharist itself that I had a lot of different misperceptions about what the church teaches, what it believes, and just thought it was...
00:08:42
Speaker
unbiblical. But I found that I was wrong. I was very surprised that I found that actually is very biblical and very true. That's fascinating you say that you believed that Catholics thought we had to earn our salvation. We actually had
00:08:59
Speaker
Back in our past heresy called Pelagianism which talks about how it's all our work and we have to do it ourselves and I think actually I'm a recovering Pelagian actually myself thinking that I have to do it all myself my ego my hard work, but I mean really it's all grace and it's all Christ and
00:09:16
Speaker
All that to say, you had quite a view or a lens you were viewing the Catholic Church through. And just as someone who's raised either Democrat or Republican or a Bears fan or a Packers fan, and they come to see either both sides being valid or coming to the other side. What was, if there was one point or a series of points in your life that you kind of had your eyes opened to the beauty of the Catholic Church?
00:09:46
Speaker
Sure. So I mentioned earlier that it was through my wife that I was exposed to the Catholic faith. Um, so Anna and I started dating, she was raised Catholic. She was actively practicing her Catholic faith and going to mass, not only on Sundays, but oftentimes the daily mass going to adoration, just, you know, very active in her faith. And, um, you know, I, I thought.
00:10:07
Speaker
When we started dating, I'm the Protestant missionary, I'll convert her. And just like that perception of Catholics see the light and then they become Protestant, I'd actually never heard of someone going the other
Matt's Conversion Journey
00:10:21
Speaker
direction. I knew tons of people who had fallen away from the Catholic faith and become Protestant, but I'd never heard of someone who was active in their Protestant faith becoming Catholic.
00:10:31
Speaker
Well, through my wife, I started being exposed to these things. I mean, she would recommend books like by Scott Hahn. So I started being exposed to people who had taken that journey into the Catholic Church, wrestling with their claims, with what they had wrestled with.
00:10:48
Speaker
And then I started actually experiencing Catholicism. I had all these perceptions about what Catholics believe and what Catholics do. I had never been to mass before. I had never really studied in an intentional way Catholic teachings.
00:11:03
Speaker
And so now I was kind of forced to do that. I mean, Anna invited me to come to Mass with her, so I went to Mass with her. My first Mass was June of 2010. I didn't realize it at the time, but ironically, it was on the feast of Corpus Christi. And so that was my first experience of Catholic Mass, and it was at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota, this magnificent, beautiful
00:11:29
Speaker
old church with a very beautiful liturgy. And I recognize the beauty to a certain extent, but I actually left that mass pretty angry, pretty frustrated because I'd been raised Christian. I was a practicing Christian and I felt totally lost in the mass. I had no idea what was going on. I didn't know
00:11:50
Speaker
what hymns they were singing, when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel, when, what to say. I was used to everything up on a screen and just follow along and this was totally foreign, totally new experience to me. So that was kind of initial exposure. I would say, you know, because I was dating Anna, I had motivation to come back. So I didn't just walk away frustrated and angry. I kept coming back to mass with her.
00:12:17
Speaker
Um, I started being exposed to things like Eucharistic Adoration, other opportunities that she would invite me to. I started reading, um, started studying honestly to prove it wrong at first. I thought, well, let me, let me.
00:12:32
Speaker
study what you know the the church actually teaches so that i can show anna that it's wrong and i can talk her out of it and convince her to leave the church um that was my perception that was my approach but um it kind of backfired so to speak as far as uh i was it was proven right it was proven true and i found the truth beauty and goodness of the catholic faith and you know a lot of that had to do with the eucharist um so
00:12:59
Speaker
It was a journey over the course of kind of a concentrated year of really investigating, studying and experiencing the faith. But there were a lot of things in the background that had led up to that year before I actually joined the church in 2011 at the Easter Vigil.
Understanding the Eucharist: A Personal Journey
00:13:18
Speaker
Thank you. So, since we're in this and, you know, the focus of this podcast is the Eucharist. And we're in this midst of Eucharistic revival. Could you just say a little more, just like, what was, what were some of your perceptions of what Catholics believed about the Eucharist going into it? And like, maybe, and what was sort of your
00:13:38
Speaker
Maybe some of what you perceived as your strongest arguments against the Eucharist, and then how were those overcome? On the flip side then, what was presented in some of the stuff you were studying that was most convincing to you about what Catholics thought about the Eucharist.
00:13:57
Speaker
Sure. So I knew that the Catholic Church taught about the real presence of Christ. I might not have known that terminology, but I knew that there was this belief that there was this change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. I probably had a more
00:14:14
Speaker
of literal understanding than a sacramental understanding. I didn't really have an understanding of sacraments. I didn't grow up with a sacramental theology or worldview. I grew up in a church that
00:14:28
Speaker
maybe at most celebrated communion once a month. So it wasn't a regular part of our Sunday services. We believed it was just a symbol, a little wafer, a little cup of grape juice. So I didn't have, even as some others who are raised Protestant have maybe a more liturgical experience or more of a
00:14:50
Speaker
a similar experience as far as the liturgy and regular communion every Sunday, even though it's not the real presence of Christ. It wasn't really emphasized in my upbringing. So I didn't really wrestle with that a lot until I was exposed to the Mass, until I was exposed to the Catholic Church. And then pretty early on in the process of wrestling with Catholic teachings, this became a crucial subject and it became very black and white for me.
00:15:16
Speaker
Um, I think one of the first Catholic books I ever read shortly after I went to that first mass was, uh, Scott Hans, the lamb supper. And that just opened up this whole new understanding that, you know, I didn't buy into it all at once, but I was wrestling with it. I never heard this stuff before. And so now, you know, I'm looking at scripture and looking at the church fathers and trying to understand, um,
00:15:43
Speaker
And what is this mass and what is this Eucharist thing all about? And it became very black and white in the sense that I recognized the Catholic Church makes a very bold claim by saying this is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. And I started being exposed to Eucharistic adoration. I quickly recognized that either the Catholic Church has this right and that really is Jesus. And if that's Jesus, I want to follow Jesus. So I want to be where Jesus is at.
00:16:11
Speaker
or it's not Jesus, and then I should continue to try to pull people away from the Catholic Church because then they're just worshiping a piece of bread up there on the altar. So that became kind of a very...
00:16:26
Speaker
black and white sort of watershed topic for me in my discernment of my journey to the Catholic faith was, okay, this is true and I need to become Catholic or this is not and I need to run away and take people with me away from the Catholic church because they're worshiping just a piece of bread.
00:16:47
Speaker
Wow, I'm really glad you used the word wrestling. My namesake in the Old Testament, Jacob, wrestled with God or an angel or however you want to read it, and he had his head broken. So what I think in our discussion here, this isn't about whether Protestants are right or wrong or which church or whatever. This is about Matt encountering the truth or
00:17:11
Speaker
Really Matt encountering a person and what I think is cool is that your your wife is a living breathing person and You can read as many books as you want about your wife or your children or even about me or father Kevin But like until you actually encounter a person namely Jesus Christ Every person who meets Christ in the Gospels is never the same whether they run away or Embrace him there. They're always different
00:17:41
Speaker
So it sounds like you read a lot of things and you know a lot of things, but you actually met the person of Jesus. Is that accurate?
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say that I studied and prayed my way into the church. And when I say the study part, I was looking at scriptures like John chapter six. I was reading books like by Scott Hahn. I was looking at the church fathers. I say I prayed my way in the church. It really was that experience, that encounter of Jesus was especially in the Eucharist through going to mass, but especially through Eucharistic adoration. I would say there's a few examples that I can give
00:18:19
Speaker
One, before I even knew what Eucharistic Adoration was, Anna had invited me to this young adult gathering where we did some service and then we were invited. It was at a convent that also served, I think, as a care facility. So we were doing some service with the residents and then we were invited into the chapel and one of the nuns exposed the Blessed Sacrament. And all I knew was that this was this prayer service. And when they,
00:18:48
Speaker
put the Eucharist up on the altar in the monstrance. My literal thought was, that's a nice decoration. I wonder what that's for. I had no clue at that point that this was the center of our prayer, the focal point of our adoration. In fact, at that point, had I known that
00:19:05
Speaker
I probably would have walked out. So sometimes ignorance is bliss, and I was just at this prayer service, and I was like, I don't know what was up on the altar. And I just remember that that was some of the most profound prayer time I had had in years. And I felt closer to Jesus in that time than I'd felt for a long time. So I had this sense of Jesus' presence, but I had no idea that it was Jesus' presence in the Eucharist, in the Monstrance on the altar.
00:19:32
Speaker
And then I recall a few months after that, you know, I've been going to mass fairly regularly on Sundays with Anna and just, you know, one mass that we went to at, um, I think it was at, I think it was at Holy Hill, a shrine in Wisconsin. Um, yeah, very beautiful. And it was beautiful mass. And there was a sense that when the priest elevated the host after the consecration, I just had this sense. I can't explain it, but this experience that,
00:20:00
Speaker
I just knew in my heart, that's Jesus.
Desire and Frustration in the Journey to Eucharist
00:20:02
Speaker
And I've been wrestling with it intellectually, but I just, at that point, really knew and had come to a belief. I was not quite ready to join the Catholic Church at that point, but from then on, there was a change that
00:20:16
Speaker
I really had a sense that this is Jesus in the Eucharist. And then I would go to Adoration. My wife is a die-hard Catholic who signed up for the 2 to 3 a.m. Adoration slot at the Perpetual Adoration Chapel.
00:20:35
Speaker
Committed to impressing her wanting to you know, please her and and so okay I'll come with you 2 to 3 a.m So there are a lot of nights, you know that once a week going to adoration in the middle of the night in the chapel where I would just sit there and
00:20:50
Speaker
And my prayer throughout that whole time became, Jesus, if this really is you, show me. Because I want to know, it was this very black and white, I want to know, is this you or is this not? And over time, through those experiences I shared and other moments of encounter, he really did reveal that it is him. And that's what helped me take the step to join the church.
00:21:17
Speaker
That's beautiful. It's him. Yeah. I just also want to add, I can very much empathize. I was born and raised Catholic, but I did not always believe in the real presence of Eucharist. And a big part of that also involved a pretty girl inviting me to late night Eucharistic adoration. So there's something to that. So I can, I can empathize with that and relate. So beautiful.
00:21:43
Speaker
I really like the black and white part that you mentioned because it's very intellectual and we can understand it.
00:21:51
Speaker
But then at the same time, the dichotomy of the complicated step-by-step personal relationship day by day, because there's really no magic bullet. Like if we had a little no-card of Bible quotes and Church Fathers references that we could make and just convince someone, but really it's a personal invitation from Christ and it's a personal encounter with Him that has to be done.
00:22:18
Speaker
based on the person's heart and mind over days, weeks, months, years. It's not a one and done thing, it's an ongoing journey. Last week we talked about the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. But then Father Greg brought up that it's a mountain, like we are going through life scaling, climbing and playing and adventuring all through that mountain. And I think you've done both of those. Yeah, yeah, it really was a
00:22:48
Speaker
journey of the head and the heart, like I needed to be convinced intellectually. There's that part, but it wasn't that alone. You know, it was really encountering Jesus and my heart being convinced and drawn and that yearning. Actually, I remember in that process, so I was in RCIA and it was Christmas and I think we went to midnight mass and it was literally midnight mass, you know, done at like 2 a.m.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I just remember at that point, I had that yearning, I believed in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And there is starting to be that desire to actually receive him in the Eucharist. And honestly, I was kind of frustrated at that point because I knew, you know, it was a few months till the Easter Vigil, I wasn't a hundred percent all in on becoming Catholic, but I was pretty all in on the Eucharist.
Significance of Eucharistic Revival
00:23:45
Speaker
And I just remember watching all these people going up to communion. I'm like, I know they don't believe this. I know, you know, I mean, they're just going through the motions and I believe it. And I can't receive like, there was this kind of wrestling in my heart of I want to receive Jesus. I believe it. Seeing all these people that just take this for granted. And, you know, there was this mixed emotions of it, this excitement, this desire, but also this kind of frustration over the reality of
00:24:12
Speaker
people taking the Eucharist for granted when I had come to this strong belief through a difficult process getting there.
00:24:22
Speaker
along those lines that might be a good segue into so we are in this eucharistic revival uh... you know the church in the united states is called for this movement of eucharistic revival uh... exactly for in some ways exactly for that reason unfortunately are people of the church born and raised catholic who don't believe it don't understand that they just go through the motions you know that's what you do you go to church you receive your little wafer and sip a wine and move on with your life and not really understanding the fullness of what this is so
00:24:51
Speaker
So I guess as we're kind of landing the plane here, as our country, as we're in this state of Eucharistic Revival, Matt, just some thoughts on why you perceive this Eucharistic Revival is important and kind of, I guess, what would you want fellow people listening, whether fellow Catholics or if there's any non-Catholic Christian brothers and sisters listening to, what would you want them to know about
00:25:17
Speaker
But the Eucharist Eucharistic Revival, I guess what might be a takeaway thought you would want them to know. Yeah, I think this Eucharistic Revival is a great invitation for all of us to renew our understanding and our commitment and our experience of the Eucharist. So kind of like I journeyed, I mean, I was coming from a different background from those who are raised Catholic, but
00:25:41
Speaker
just to dive into seeking to understand why we believe what we believe about the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, and then dive into encountering Christ in the Eucharist. And most especially, like I experienced, I invite people to Eucharistic adoration to really just sit before Jesus
00:26:02
Speaker
as it says in the Catechism just to gaze at him and let him gaze at you and maybe wrestle with those things like Jesus is this really you show yourself to me in the Eucharist help me to experience you and encounter you in the Eucharist and then at the same time dive into
00:26:20
Speaker
celebration of the Mass and if you're going to Mass regularly, really try to seek to understand what we're doing and why we do it and participate more fully. If you're not, try to go to Mass more regularly and encounter Jesus there because he is there waiting for you.
00:26:38
Speaker
Oh, thank you, Matt. You can quote me as saying, back to what you thought before, that Catholics do need evangelizing. I need evangelizing. I need conversion every single day. I think through the sacraments and through prayer and God's grace, my salvation and conversion is an ongoing process.
00:26:57
Speaker
Would you say that too, Father Kevin, as well? It's an ongoing thing. Absolutely, in a certain sense. Yeah, that's why we're calling for Eucharistic revival, but not evangelizing us and taking them away from the Catholic faith, but rather evangelizing the sense and helping them understand more deeply what it is, how the gospel is present and what we do. Yeah. And like I shared a little bit last week, just for my own self, I was born and raised Catholic, but it wasn't until college that
00:27:22
Speaker
I came to encounter the gospel truth of Jesus being present in the Eucharist and that literally changing the course of my life.
Eucharistic Events & Participation
00:27:33
Speaker
Do we have anything coming up that Catholics could participate in or anything in that Eucharistic revival up on the agenda? Yes. Yeah. So there's various things around the diocese. First of all, I guess I didn't know if there's anything coming up that you, Matt, wanted to specifically plug or name or anything in the archdiocese that you knew of or anything that you wanted to specifically name. Otherwise, I have a few things I can name here too.
00:27:56
Speaker
I just, I keep hearing about the great things going on at parishes around the archdiocese. So I would encourage people to check out their local parish or a neighboring parish to see what's going on. Cause a lot of parishes are running the USCCBs. I think it's called Jesus and the Eucharist series or doing other things or increasing Eucharistic adoration opportunities. So just to explore what your local parish or a neighboring parish is doing to, to grow in your understanding and devotion to the Eucharist.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, so many things going on. We do have an Archdiocese and Eucharistic Revival website at DBQARCH.org slash Archdiocese and Eucharistic Revival that we try to update with various upcoming things. There are many events going on at parishes that aren't necessarily up there. So as Matt said, certainly check out your local parishes and your area parishes.
00:28:49
Speaker
But a couple of things coming up, I know we have in November 4th, there's a Eucharistic Adoration, Praise and Worship night at St. Patrick's Parish in Cedar Rapids that'll go on November 4th and December 2nd. Also, our own local traveling speaker Anthony Digman of Dyersville, he will be in
00:29:09
Speaker
the Makoketa Parish Cluster in December. So it's Makoketa, Preston, and Otter Creek. It's Sunday, December 10th through Tuesday, December 12th. He will be giving talks three nights in a row on Eucharistic Revival. Those talks are at 6.30 on those various nights. So those are some things coming up. As was said, I know there's many more things I've heard of that aren't necessarily on here.
00:29:33
Speaker
Check those out and we will try to keep you up to date. Lastly, we'll be coming out with more of these Eucharistic Revival podcast episodes. We'll try every couple of weeks or so. They'll be posting a new one. So be looking out for those in your various places where you can find podcasts as well as you can find them on the Archdiocese of Dubuque website. We will get them posted. And yeah, anything else?
00:29:58
Speaker
We are now on iTunes, no, what's it called? Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Wow. Pretty cool.
Closing and Invitations to Future Interaction
00:30:08
Speaker
Awesome. So thank you so much for your time, Matt. This was a pleasure and a very fascinating look into your past and your conversion. So thanks for joining us. And thank you listeners for joining us. We will see you in the Eucharist and we will see you next time.
00:30:30
Speaker
Bye.