Reason #10002349 I Love Being Catholic

I am currently reading Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion by Cardinal Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict) for a Theology course I'm taking this semester called Church and Sacraments.

Early on in the book I came across this wonderful quote:

"There are no foreigners in the Church; everyone is at home everywhere, and not just a visitor. It is always the one Church, one and the same. Anyone baptized in Berlin is just as much at ome in the Church in Rome or in New York or in Kinshasa or in Bangalore or wherever he may be as in the Church where he was baptized. He does not need to report his move; it is all the one Chuch."

This is something I have experienced while travelling. I love the fact that no matter where I am in the world, I can simply look up the nearest Catholic Church and go to Mass and I feel perfectly at home. No matter where I am I can have this intimate encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist in communion with my brothers and sisters in Christ. The people sitting next to me at Mass in some little German village or in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris are just as much my brothers and sisters in Christ as the familiar faces in my hometown parish. The Jesus Christ I encounter in the Mass in Rome or New York is the same Jesus Christ present in the tabernacle at the parish down the street from where I live. Doesn't this just leave you in awe? It leaves me in awe.