The Tale of Two Conversions

I had pulled out all the stops, giving all of the carefully rehearsed (and utterly convincing) arguments that had been in play for almost 500 years, and yet she did not budge. She was a brick wall, seemingly immovable and immutable.

Born in West Michigan, and growing up in a hybrid of the Reformed and Wesleyan ecclesial communities, Emily was very strong in her faith.  In fact, her deep love of Christ and sincere kindness to everyone she encountered was one of the reasons why I had fallen for her. She was working five jobs to get herself through college, volunteered with a local charity for children with special needs, and went to church every Sunday. Meanwhile her older boyfriend (me) was busy either playing baseball or figuring out the next drinking activity.

While it was clear that both Emily and I loved Jesus, we both felt that our faith-life had become abstract. For me this abstraction took the form of living a contradictory life. I believed all that the Catholic Church taught, yet lived an idle, lukewarm life, medicating my lack of a vocation with alcohol, food, and fun. I knew that my sins were leading me away from Christ yet was content keeping Him at a distance…not too close to infringe upon my comfort, but not too far that I could not rationalize my actions.  For Emily, it was just the opposite. Personal sin and sanctification had been so deemphasized in her theological upbringing that she was told to love and accept Jesus as her savior, but did not know exactly what that looked like.

Things began to change when life inevitably forced our faith to become concrete. My four years as an undergraduate were over and I could no longer put off the question of what I was going to do with my life.  Still as self-centered as ever, I broke up with Emily and made up my mind that I was going to become a Dominican priest (though I had done none of the necessary background work to actually join the order).  I called up the vocation’s director and figuratively threw myself at their doorstep. Surely they would admit ME…it was just a matter of me finally making that decision.  Much to my surprise, the vocations director said that the Dominicans could not admit me that year and instead recommended that I continue to discern the religious life, move out of my house, get an engineering job, and apply next year should I still want to join. This response was devastating. The concrete choice that I had rashly made, yet made nonetheless, evaporated before me plunging me and my faith back into the abstract. 

I took the priest’s advice. I got an engineering job, moved into a house with a group of friends from college, and in time, got back together with Emily. From the outset, it was clear to me that engineering was not what God was calling me to do with my life.  Though I had started to see that the priesthood was not the life for me, I still wanted to do priestly things.  I wanted to offer sacrifice daily, I wanted to learn about and converse with God in prayer, I wanted to build up the Church by teaching and preaching to both my peers and the next generation, I wanted to receive the sacraments frequently. In short, I wanted the concrete Catholic life! Upon the recognition that I could do all of these things as a lay person and, in fact, was commanded to do all of these things as a lay person, I saw a path open for me and applied to Catholic graduate schools for Philosophy… and here I am.

For Emily, her faith started to become concrete upon our relationship becoming concrete.  Like being in a relationship with another person, she came to recognize that personal professions are not just once off things but concrete daily choices. In starting to go to Mass on Sundays together, instead of us going to our respective religious services, there was the realization that not just our individual selves, but our relationship itself was supposed to be ordered to Christ. In hearing frequent preaching on the nature of sin, she began to take seriously her own sin. In grappling with herself not as an abstract sinner, but as a person whom had committed concrete sins, she began to seek out ways to overcome them, eventually recognizing the need for concrete remedies: the sacraments. And last but not least, in learning about the Eucharist, so frequently been neglected in her own Church, and attending reverent Catholic liturgies, she developed a longing to receive the concrete Body and Blood of Christ veiled under the appearance of bread and wine.

In short, the beginning of our conversion to Christ began with our theoretical faith becoming realized in the Catholic Church. The excitement of the concrete Catholic life spurs us onward simultaneously towards an ever-deeper contrition for the sins we have committed and an ever-increasing relationship with our Lord, who became concrete to save us from our sins. Emily will be welcomed into the Catholic Church, God-willing, this year at the Easter Vigil.

Featured image courtesy of Ted via Flickr