Journey Home - Convert from Judaism - Marcus Grodi with Brian Robbins - 04-11-2011

Evangelization 2010 - Natchez, Mississippi

ANNOUNCEMENT

Evangelization 2010

August 27-28, 2010

Natchez, MS Convention Center

Testimonies of Conversions, Love and Mercy

REGISTRATION FORM AND OTHER INFORMATION
(click)

I Am A Convert

by Ouida Tomlinson, SFO

(Written April 1998)

I am a convert to the Roman Catholic Church. When I think about it, thanksgiving for my conversion fills my heart. I take a deep breath and whisper, “Thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you.” I want to play two sticks like Francis. I want to sing of “la joie parfaite” and dance. I want to tell everyone how good the Lord is and how he has blessed me by bringing me home. The gratitude never ceases. The joy never stops. I am overwhelmed with it. Come! Celebrate with me the joy of our faith!

I converted at the Easter Vigil Mass in April, 1994. It was not easy to leave my Protestant church, husband, family and friends. I was the only one in my RCIA class who cried while sharing my story. For most of them, it was an occasion of spouses and families uniting, but for me, I was experiencing the broken body of Christ in leaving others behind. The Lord opened the door, and I knew without a doubt that he was telling me to no longer delay making the decision. (I was a 1991 RCIA dropout.)

Initially, I felt like a child in a room with many doors and cabinets. The Church was the room, and every time I opened a new door, there were blessings and gifts and surprises. How rich we are! What spiritual wealth! Beginning with the Easter Vigil Mass, grace upon grace upon grace poured down from heaven and has never stopped.

I am no longer frustrated or searching for a home. Before, there was always a hunger and desire for more than was being offered and a desire to surrender and commit more than was being asked. I have a certain peace for the first time since I was eleven years old. I was baptized that year but never felt content in any church I joined (Baptist, Presbyterian and Episcopal). Although each has blessed and taught me and helped me along my journey, it was never enough. There was always an emptiness. I felt that I was walking through the valley of the dry bones of Ezekiel. My heart cried out, “I thirst.” The Reformation threw away too much. Protestant churches have been stripped to the bone.

During the months prior to my conversion, the local Protestant church I belonged to was experiencing one of its periods of great division and vicious anger among its people. I wrote that church’s bishop, a friend of many years, and referred to a book that I had read on desert spirituality, Soul Making, by Alan Jones. I quoted my favorite passages from the introduction to Soul Making to the bishop. Some of the passages were: “I find it increasingly difficult to feel at home with my fellow believers. . . . I want a kind of Christianity that can be embraced with both passion and intelligence. . . . I want a gutsy, old-fashioned, demanding religion with no compromise and no nonsense. I want a great deal. Often, I feel that as yet, I have nowhere to lay my head.” Well, as a Roman Catholic and Secular Franciscan, I have what I wanted, and although the road is hard at times, I am at home. Now I have a place to lay my head.

My soul is at rest. I experience a sense of great serenity knowing that as a Roman Catholic, I am in the splendor of truth. I have the fullness of the faith. I have the seven sacraments. I have the Eucharist and the Real Presence. I can stand on the authority of the Church and willingly submit to its authority. It is not built on shifting sand but on solid rock, on Sacred Tradition and Scripture. It needs no defense but stands on its on. If it falls into error, the Holy Spirit corrects, and someone like Saint Francis is sent to lead us back and to rebuild.

Then there is the comfort. In all my trials and suffering, in deaths and losses, I experience comfort at a more profound level now within the Church. There is also a great sense of safety in all things, both physical and spiritual. Our mother, the Church, carries us in her womb, ultimately to be surrendered to the Father.

Catholics, never cease giving thanks for the Church and do not compromise your faith. Stand firm with your head high. Never cease praising God for the gift. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Recall the words of St. Francis as he was dying of the necessity of holding to the faith of the holy Roman Church.

Today, as I walk with Jesus, living my Christian life as a Roman Catholic and Secular Franciscan, life is flooded through and through with joy and gladness. My husband converted a couple of years after I did. We owe much to our Catholic friends. They helped us on our way by patiently loving us and accepting us where we were and by showing us, through their example, that they had something we wanted and that something was their Catholic faith. I owe much to my friend, Mary . . ., then Episcopalian, now a parishioner of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, who said to me in 1987, “Come with me to the Catholic Charismatic Conference. They have nice music.” When she saw the look of terror on my face, she added reassuringly, “We can sit in the back.”

My cup overflows. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” (Psalm 23:6.)

Late Have I Loved You

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

from The Confessions of Saint Augustine

Song of the Mystic

I walk down the Valley of Silence --
Down the dim, voiceless valley -- alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!


Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human -- and sin.


I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said: "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real.
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."


And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True.
I sought 'mid the Human for Heaven,
But caught a mere glimpse of its Blue:
And I wept when the clouds of the Mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.


And I toiled on, heart-tired, of the Human,
And I moaned 'mid the mazes of men,
Till I knelt, long ago, at an altar
And I heard a voice call me. Since then
I walk down the Valley of Silence
That lies far beyond mortal ken.


Do you ask what I found in the Valley?
'Tis my Trysting Place with the Divine.
And I fell at the feet of the Holy,
And above me a voice said: "Be mine."
And there arose from the depths of my spirit.
An echo -- "My heart shall be Thine."


Do you ask how I live in the Valley?
I weep -- and I dream -- and I pray.
But my tears are as sweet as the dewdrops
That fall on the roses in May;
And my prayer, like a perfume from censers,
Ascendeth to God night and day.


In the hush of the Valley of Silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley,
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge,
A message of Peace they may bring.


But far on the deep there are billows
That never shall break on the beach;
And I have heard songs in the Silence
That never shall float into speech;
And I have had dreams in the Valley
Too lofty for language to reach.


And I have seen Thoughts in the Valley --
Ah! me, how my spirit was stirred!
And they wear holy veils on their faces,
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard;
They pass through the Valley like virgins,
Too pure for the touch of a word!


Do you ask me the place of the Valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed by Care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and His angels are there:
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of Prayer.


(Father Abram Ryan, "Priest-Poet of the South,
born 15 August, 1839; died 22 April, 1886)