The joy of conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith
I have found that faithfully keeping a spiritual journal keeps me always ready for any opportunity to share my conversion story and ready to convey the compassion and mercy of God to others.
To know our faith story, we need facts and clarity about our faith life. For example, what was that first defining moment when you knew that God was real, that he loved you? That’s the most important experience. Focus on the God-moment that changed you.
I have never forgotten the encounter I had with Christ that day. It was as if I had been told all my life about the Lord, but this day I knew I had experienced something so amazing and wonderful. He didn’t ask me to start going to church and stop living the way I was living. He just showed me, unconditional love, by giving me an assurance of peace that I had never felt before.
When I look back to see how the Lord has been working all my life to draw me closer to Himself, I am reminded of a scene in The Silver Chair, one of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles: two children have been sent by Aslan (the Christ figure of Narnia) on a perilous quest to rescue the lost prince of Narnia. Aslan gives them instructions on how to complete their quest but, in the hardship of their journey, they get so tied up in their own discomfort that they forget to look for the signs he has told them to watch for. Only after much struggle and danger do they happen to look back over the way they have come; now they can see clearly that a series of troublesome trenches through which they have struggled are actually a message carved in the earth, spelling out one of Aslan’s instructions for anyone to see who cares to look. What the children in the story couldn’t see at the time is plain in hindsight—but they have left it almost until too late before they look back.
“Look to him that you may be radiant with joy.” (Psalm 34:6)
Joy creeps into our lives as we develop an intimate relationship with the Lord in prayer. Like the early Christians, God created us to display his presence through our happiness and joy so that the world will see that something is different. We are radiant with joy because God loves us. This transformation comes through the indwelling presence of God himself. These moments of radiant joy help us cultivate the habit of practicing the presence of God.
God’s presence dwells within us from our formation in the womb and then removes our original sin at our baptism. That sacrament eventually opens the door to the Eucharist, where we receive him ever more fully. Jesus calls us into a relationship with him through our baptism and shares his dynamic presence with us through every sacrament.
By age twenty-eight, I was knocking on death’s door with my worldly lifestyle of alcohol and recreational drugs. Being a flower child wasn’t about roses. In fact, it led to a dramatic suicide attempt. grew up in a Philadelphia suburb.
My first true realization of God’s grace was at that time. Deep inside, I desired life—not death. I knew where to turn because of how my parents raised me. I ran back to church, back to Jesus. God’s grace renewed me through a charismatic ministry my parents were a part of, called Jesus Focus. I have since made—or at least desire to make—a regular conscious effort to allow God to work through me and to change me, be it ever so slowly, into the image of his Son.
In 2000, I was sitting in a megachurch with a juice box in my hand, wondering what had gone wrong. The worship service had a back-to-school theme, and the church was trying to shoehorn a communion service into it as well. Thus, the juice box. Even as an Evangelical, I took the Lord’s Supper seriously, although I was taught that it was just a symbol. I didn’t have the words to describe it then but, if I had, I would have called this sacrilege.
“Thy will be done …” From heaven Jesus became a helpless baby, lived a human life full of work, sweat and pain, and fulfilled his destiny by dying in agony on the cross. He did that out of obedience to the Father and love for us.
Like a marathon runner who has finished the race he proclaims his victory. He appears to lose the race but in three days he will smash the chains of death. He has paid the price for our sins, a price that’s beyond counting.
“Thy kingdom come …” Every soul that God has ever created and ever will create he wishes to be with him in heaven for eternity. Jesus is so committed to us that he suffered torture and death to make that happen. His thirst is for the salvation of all people.
You can help quench part of his thirst by accepting him into your life. You can be a cup of fresh water for Jesus.