Over and Over

The Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle

Acts 9:1-22

The first thing that comes to my mind every year when this feast rolls around is the quip from my friend and teacher Fr. Tom Richstatter, OFM.  My paraphrasing:  Pentecostals leap into faith...Catholics tend to crawl!

For St. Paul it wasn't so much a leap but a crash.  And the same for John Newton, former slave trader, and composer of Amazing Grace.   Perhaps the conviction that it took to persecute as Paul did or to justify one's livelihood as John did, took drama to reorient.  The result is not a deadening but a new and life-giving mission into which one's heated convictions might be poured.

But crawling isn't so bad.  My bet is that most of us crawl.  Here's where Marriage helps me understand my own Baptism.   Marriage is certainly a crawling enterprise.  My husband and I were married on October 12, 1985.  But my "I do" is pretty much a daily thing.  There have been periods of one step forward and two steps back.  And times of two steps forward and one step back.  But on average there is progression in the right direction!  Don't Baptism and Marriage and Eucharist unfold in us?  Eucharist as food...a great visual.  It is taken in and broken down and made into nourishment that can spread to do its healing work.  It is the fuel for my unfolding Baptism.  

What I know is that I am more deeply married today than in 1985.  

And what I hope is that my Baptism is becoming ever more deeply rooted in my person.

And what I believe is that celebrating Eucharist with a community of faith is part of "the crawl."

Conversion.  Over and over again!  Bring it on...but not all at once. Please.


See Fr. Tom's page here for thoughtful prodding on faith and conversion.

Like this quote from Matt Emerson:
Faith takes time. Conversion is a multidimensional, life-altering evolution in worldview that implicates knowledge, experience, other people, self-reflection, humility, mystery and grace. And that is just the start. For most, conversion occurs in stages and depends upon the presence of certain conditions, certain habits of mind and heart, which enable a person to accept, and to live out, a transformed, divinized life. 
-"Preambles for Faith" America, May 13, 2013, p. 15.