The joy of conversion, Christian community, and the Catholic faith
Born Protestant, Nancy Ward was an introverted bookworm. At age 15, her prayer under a tree during a retreat in New Mexico changed her life! A “thunderbolt of love” when she met her Catholic husband-to-be led her even deeper into God’s embrace. See how Nancy shed her shyness, chose conversion, and stepped out to proclaim God’s graces, in this episode of Jesus My Savior.
Discovering the Holy Spirit is an amazing and endless pursuit. From the beginning of my awakening to the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit, I’ve frequently called on him with the prayer, “I can’t do this; come, Holy Spirit.” He always shows up and reminds me of everything he has told me about my faith, as Jesus promised in John 14:26b. The Holy Spirit is my secret weapon in everything from seeking guidance in the presence of chaos, consolation in times of grief, or overcoming my shyness while speaking to a large audience.
Growing up Mormon allowed me to experience my teenage years in a safe and secure environment. While our family had periods of being considered “inactive” (infrequent attendance at Sunday church services), for the most part, we went to church every week. I was baptized on my eighth birthday, which I remember being a very special honor. My parents were “sealed” to each other and to my younger brother and me during my junior year of high school in the Dallas, TX, Temple. I participated in many of the milestones of Mormon youth and adolescence, such as Scripture-chasing during my early-morning seminary classes and singing in roadshows (although I was never lucky enough to perform in “My Turn on Earth” or “Saturday’s Warrior”).
Whether your faith started in the Catholic Church or eventually led you there, God has brought you to the Church to make you not just a Christian, but a Catholic Christian. This Divine action runs through your life like a living river that bears testimony to God’s transformative activity in your life. He did not make you a Catholic by chance. If this part of your story is written only on your heart at this point, the Holy Spirit has the power to reveal it, to give you spiritual gifts to understand and express it, and to prompt you to evangelize others by declaring it.
Each of us has an exclusive story that no one except God fully knows. Our experiences of conversion, renewal, and healing make up our faith story. God writes our faith story day by day, event by event, and decision by decision as we respond to that divine spark of his life that he created within us.
God used people who reflect his presence as well as people who don’t. He used both agonizing circumstances with unpredictable outcomes and jubilant celebrations. The Sacraments. More crises than I want to remember. Heartaches from losses, physical healings, as well as emotional healings from childhood scars and bad decisions as an adult. Through all these events flows the river of my story of how God has worked in my life to bring me the joy of a love relationship with him and with the Catholic Church, and how he has equipped me to glorify him as an evangelist.
A river runs through my life. It flows over pebbles and around jagged boulders. It twists and turns, disappearing into the dark underground, and then rises abruptly until it breaks forth into a glistening waterfall. This river always was a part of my life but, except for a few rare glimpses of it, I was unaware it was the faithful stream of God’s presence.
I will never forget the year 1996. It was the year that God visited me personally, and I was not the same afterward. In the ’50s and ’60s, Archbishop Fulton Sheen had an Emmy award-winning TV show on which he evangelized Americans to spread Jesus’ Good News. In one show, he talked about the Magi’s visit to the Holy Family that first Christmas. He said, “Of course, the Magi took another route home. When one encounters Jesus, one can never go back the same way one came.”