conversion

From the pierced Heart of Christ, symbol of the love which immolated Him on the Cross for us, came forth the Sacraments, represented by the water and the Blood flowing from the wound, and it is through these Sacraments that we receive the life of grace. Yes, it is eminently true to say that the Heart of Jesus was opened to bring us into life. Jesus once said, “Narrow is the gate… that leadeth to life” (Mt 7,14); but if we understand this gate to be the wound in His Heart, we can say that no gate could open to us with greater welcome. (Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., “Divine Intimacy”)

I like this metaphor of following the narrow way into Jesus’ heart. An image that shifts the focus from the narrowness and implied difficulty of the path to what we are created for. Teleology has fallen out of fashion, in part, to let us define for ourselves the meaning of all aspects of our life. In seeking to shed limits, we impose heavier limits on who we are and our call to holiness.

I know my concupiscent heart desires both to be drawn to Jesus’s heart and to the stone heart of the world in materialistic pleasures. In avoiding the narrowness of the path, I become more narrow by not expanding my trust. Jesus speaks of a narrowness that implies a focus, and not the narrowness of pride collapsed in on itself.

If you make “Temporary Promise” as a Secular Discalced Carmelite, you are supposed to take on a religious name used occasionally within the community. When I did so, my motive was initially to pick something super pious and impressive. Maybe something long to make it even more pious. Obviously, I have a long way to go regarding my motives. I finally settled on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a personal focus of his love for us. I am not drawn too much of the imagery of the Sacred Heart in Catholic art, as it is does not fully conform to the beauty I sense in this image. More kitsch as in sentimental, than my mental tenuous grasp of the deeper meaning of this.

The name I ended up with was “St Thomas of the Sacred Heart.” The St. Thomas is two-fold. The Apostle St. Thomas who demanded empirical knowledge as I did in my days as an atheist. Along with the St. Thomas as in Aquinas who replied _Domine, non nisi Te_—that is, “Lord, nothing except you.” in answer to Jesus’ question to him for what reward he desires for his labour.

Getting back to Father Gabriel’s point that “we can say that no gate could open to us with greater welcome.”

²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:29–30)

I often struggle with this and think of it as counterintuitive. Knowing that this is true, while once again trying to do something apart from him. Avoiding commitment and inconvenience in dumb hope to coast towards Christ, I find more difficulty and pain. My avoidance of suffering has only led to more suffering.

Grace constantly gives us the opportunity to accept it. To reduce the discrepancy between knowing a truth and living conformed to that truth.

Joe Heschmeyer recently wrote about the establishment of The Feast of the Sacred Heart.

… we find devotion to the Sacred Heart throughout the Middle Ages, but it goes from being a personal devotion to a liturgical feast in no small part in response to the heresy of Jansenism. In the words of Pope Pius XI, “the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was instituted at a time when men were oppressed by the sad and gloomy severity of Jansenism, which had made their hearts grow cold, and shut them out from the love of God and the hope of salvation.”

There is so much that I find important and consoling in what Joe Heschmeyer wrote, that I want to quote extensively from it, but please read it yourselves.

“even now, in a wondrous yet true manner, we can and ought to console that most Sacred Heart which is continually wounded by the sins of thankless men.” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas)

The cure for my thanklessness is to be thankful.

Our grounds for gratitude are really far greater than our powers of being grateful. (G. K. Chesterton, “Negative and Positive Morality”)

I have been thinking about Divine Hiddenness and how I have become thankful for it.

There is this idea that if we presented with enough evidence, acceptance of the purported truth would follow. It is all about evidence and almost always empirical evidence. Add enough straw to the camel’s back and wham! acceptance follows. We like to think of ourselves as truth-seekers willing to accept uncomfortable truths. I like to think that about myself, but in reality, my accepting of uncomfortable truths has mostly been grudging and painful in shedding false premises or just not wanting to accept life-changing truths. Conforming to reality often requires self-reflection when I would rather just skip ahead to acceptance. I think of most learning as unlearning what you previously thought.

There are various stories of Betrand Russell being asked if, after dying and facing God, how would he justify his failing to believe? “I’d say, ‘Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!’”

This is an example of blaming the evidence without looking at our own motives. The stories told in the Pentateuch give us plenty of examples where divine hiddenness was not to blame for their lack of trust and effective unbelief. They sent Moses as their representative and were not willing to meet God face-to-face. Moses unnerved them, coming back glowing and thus having to wear a veil before them. The number of prophets who experience God working through them miraculously and then trying to rely on their own effort or falling into despair.

I think of the Nobel winning medical doctor, Alexis Carrel, who witnessed two miracles at Lourdes. He could not believe them as miraculous, and it would be a long road for his conversion to the Catholic Church. It was a friendship with a Seminary Rector, that led him to a dialogue with a Trappist monk. There are plenty of other stories where the seeming miraculous has entered people’s lives, but did not change them in the long term, as far as we know.

I think of the Transfiguration when Jesus more fully reveals himself to Peter, John, and James. Peter’s reaction was not edifying and it would not be long before he would deny he even knew Jesus. Yet, surely Jesus was revealing himself to strengthen them. We often forget that Jesus is strengthening us with grace, but the effects are not as immediate as we would want.

What if Jesus had not returned to the Father on the day of Ascension and remained with us in his glorified body to the present time and beyond? That we had a constant reminder of the incarnation that would be hard to deny. That Jesus could have gone to the Jesus Seminar and say, “No, I actually said that bit.” His existence would be hard to deny, but likely many of us would be up to such a denial. Empirical evidence is not the same as belief and faith. Our free will leaves room for doubt. Love is not forcibly created with evidence, but requires a relationship that deepens.

I am tempted to complain about my dry prayer life. That while being faithful to prayer and meditation, I only feel Ezekiel’s dry bones. As if the portal to the dark night of the soul is an even darker path. I should instead be thankful for my reified intellectual faith, which has not wavered since my conversion. When I was young, I aspired to be stoic, so I can only blame myself. Yet I know God is working in me despite my brokenness. I know I would be as insensible as Peter if I saw what he saw. So in that I am thankful for divine hiddenness.

Mostly, I am thankful for divine hiddenness, because this was his will for us.

Resources

Why Doesn’t God Show His Face?: Making Sense of Divine Hiddenness – Karlo Broussard I bought this audio a couple of years ago and have listened to it twice. Very good from the philosophical level.

The Problem of Divine Hiddenness | Is There Non-Resistant Non-Belief Belief? w/ Dr. Stephen Napier I found this episode of Pat Flynn’s “Philosophy for the People” especially good on an aspect of this.

Since today is my 24th anniversary of my entering the Catholic Church.

“You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.” – Evelyn Waugh

People wonder why bad things happen to good people. I wonder why good things happen to bad people. So I am wondrously happy at the gift of grace and wished I showed a commensurate gratitude for it.

As I have been forgiven much, my love should be such as the woman who wet Jesus’ feet with her tears.

I was thinking about today’s Gospel where Jesus was deeply troubled by the person who would betray him. Peter would say that he would lay down his life for him, even though he would shortly betray him.

I also read this:

“The loving glance of the Master had saved him. Because Peter no longer relied on himself, Jesus could rely upon him and would entrust His flock to him. The lesson is clear. As long as a soul depends solely upon itself, it is not ready to be sanctified, nor to cooperate efficaciously in the sanctification of others.”

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D “Divine Intimacy”

I also noticed this paraphrased headline:

“there is a danger of triumphalism by receiving baptized Christians” into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil.”

This article is ridiculous, even for America Mag. It reads like a pet peeve held before he entered the Church trying to make is sound like a big deal. True, there are nuances and distinctions to be made here. Still, I can’t ever remember hearing this complaint among those already baptized entering the Church on the Easter Vigil.

We should make accommodations for those already baptized and well-catechized regarding OCIA (Formerly RCIA) process and the timing of entering the Church. Each person being received into the Church needs to be treated as the individual they are and not just put into a bureaucratic process that everybody goes through.

I guess that is my pet peeve. When I entered RCIA I had been doing an intense study for a couple of years and totally convicted of the truth of the Church. I learned nothing new during RCIA. I was baptized as an infant in a Methodist church, but I would have laughed if somebody told me the Church was being triumphalistic by putting me in with the non-baptized non-catechized group and being received on the Easter Vigil.

There is much that we might reconsider in how effective the current process is and how or if it is forming disciples of Christ. It is easy to surmise that there is a lot of variance in effectiveness depending on the parish, those involved, along with societal factors. I recently read the book “Augustine and the Catechumenate” by the late Fr. William Harmless, S.J. It was a fascinating look into how St. Augustine and North Africa addressed the question of catechesis and training for those becoming Catholic. This information made me glad that I am not in charge of an OCIA program as this is such a serious responsibility and I ponder how I could take more academic knowledge and considerations in dealing with real people to help them love Jesus and the faith.

I love that actor who played a Catholic priest in a movie and, as a result, became a Catholic.

I am of course talking about Alec Guinness.

That priest he played was Chesterton’s Father Brown in the 1954 “The Detective.”

In his biography “Blessings in disguise” he writes:

“I hadn’t gone far when I heard scampering footsteps and a piping voice calling, ‘mon pere!’. My hand was seized by a boy of seven or eight, who clutched it tightly, swung it and kept up a non-stop prattle. He was full of excitement, hops, skips and jumps, but never let go of me. I didn’t dare speak in case my excruciating French should scare him. Although I was a total stranger he obviously took me for a priest and so to be trusted. Suddenly with a ‘Bonsoir, mon pere’, and a hurried sideways sort of bow, he disappeared through a hole in a hedge. Continuing my walk I reflected that a church which could inspire such confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudices.”

“If I have one regret (leaving aside a thousand failings as a person, husband, grandfather, great-grandfather and friend – and my lazy, slapdash, selfish attitude as an actor) it would be that I didn’t take the decision to become a Catholic in my early twenties. That would have sorted out a lot of my life and sweetened it.” ( p. 560)

Now if you were thinking of another actor playing a priest who just became Catholic and is currently in the news, well then I heard that Shia LeBeouf was influenced by Dietrich von Hildebrand’s “Transformers in Christ”🙂

The Detective (Father Brown) (1954) – Decent Films
Blessings in Disguise – Alec Guinness
On Religion – Sir Alec Guinness, convert – Columns

In a story about a 74-year-old man who has now been Catholic for 50 years.

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Though he wasn’t Catholic, he started attending Mass at St. Alice with Kay. The couple’s six children would be baptized at the church. 

In 1971, St. Alice got a young assistant priest, Father John Waldron. The gregarious Irishman assembled young couples, including Mike and Kay, for faith sharing. The priest told Whitney he’d always wanted to ride in a police car. The precinct sergeant, who was Catholic, approved the plan. And so Father Waldron joined young Officer Whitney on the graveyard shift on weekends. When things slowed down, the priest smoked cigarettes like a machine and Whitney slowly puffed cigars. This went on for a few weekends when Father Waldron had a question: “Why have you not joined the church?”

Whitney replied, “Because nobody’s ever asked.”

To which Father Waldron said, “Well, I’m asking.”

That started a period of Catholic education interrupted only by stops to arrest suspects, take reports and transport inebriated college students to the drunk tank. 

Whitney became Catholic the following Easter. 

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He is still in the same parish with his wife.

I have read/heard stories like this from time to time and it always rather surprises me. That just the simple personal element of being asked can make the difference. Sure, in many cases it is not going to seem to make a difference—yet the personal invitation is the reminder that evangelization starts at that personal level. Jesus started at that level with “Come and see.”

This story is worth reading in full.

YouTube Link