“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.”
Acts 9:3
We usually think of God’s graces as coming when we ask for them. We often treat God like a cosmic slot machine where if we stay long enough on our knees, say the right prayers, and pour out enough tears, He will grant what we ask of Him. Though God does sometimes grant requests when we ask Him, since he says “ask, and it will be given you” (Matt. 7:7), He seems to grant us grace more often when we aren’t asking for it. Let me explain.
I’m a convert to Catholicism from Evangelical Protestantism. I grew up in a devout family with God-fearing parents who made sure to instill faith in me from my earliest years. I went to a private Evangelical school from K-8, went to church every Sunday, and even went to church camps during the school breaks. I never seriously doubted my faith beyond what is expected in the angsty years of junior high and early high school. I was completely comfortable with my beliefs, and the faith that I had seemed enough for me. God desired something more. So then, what does God do when we are complacent and He wants to get us moving? He shakes up our lives to get our attention.
In my junior year of high school, my family took a trip to São Paulo, Brazil to see my sister and our recently made in-laws. While there we took a day to see Rio de Janeiro and, most important to this story, the Cristo Redentor statue. While there I saw that inside the base of the statue there was a chapel and, looking inside, saw that there was some sort of service going on. I had never seen a Mass before so I had no idea what was going on. Even though I thought nothing of it at the time, this moment left a lasting impression on me.
When I arrived back home, a nagging thought seemed to pervade my mind: “Why do I believe what I believe?” To be entirely honest, the thought had never really occurred to me before. Sure, I abstractly knew that there were different denominations that believed in different things, but I just assumed that what I believed was real Christianity and other groups just had their own odd beliefs, but nothing too different. Still, that nagging feeling wouldn’t go away no matter how much I told myself that what I believed was perfectly fine. This is when the intervention of God changed from subtle to explicit.
Without looking for it, I ran across a series of videos by an Eastern Orthodox priest explaining various tenets of the faith. In the videos, he explained in very simple terms, and with simple pieces of evidence, beliefs like the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Intercession of the Saints, the authority of the Church, and so forth. With my theological background and the comfort I had in my beliefs, there was no reason why I should have believed anything he had said at face value, but I did. After each of the videos, I felt almost entirely certain that what he said was true. If I was asked at that moment why I believed it, I could not have told you, but I knew it was true. I was so interiorly convinced that for the next few months the entirety of my free time was consumed with watching online debates, reading theological articles, and eventually watching Catholic Answers.
The more I researched Catholicism, the more it confirmed, rather than diminished, the initial faith I had. The reasons for the faith were given to me, in an unexplainable way, after the belief in the faith itself. I found myself secretly crossing myself during the prayers at my youth group, I had a chaplet to Padre Pio (a saint whom I knew nothing about) in my pocket wherever I went, and I eventually even began to ask Our Lady for help.
Grace, as St. Paul says, is the free gift of God. We can do nothing to earn it, nor anything to deserve it. Though we ought to always pray that God will grant us enough grace to make it through the struggles of today, we must realize that we can’t force God’s hand in anything. So then, let us pray that God may grant us the grace for those things which we do not yet know we need.
James Pritchett is a Sophomore studying History and Classics with a deep affinity for his native land, the Golden State. Despite being the most recent lover of Catholicism on the Torch staff, he is the C101 editor and his main interests consist of reading Dostoyevsky, playing devil’s advocate, and correcting people on niche theological heresies.
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