Today's job was writing the thank-you notes for those who helped us with the perpetual profession ceremony. Naturally, I was thinking about gratitude.
Later this month I'll be fourteen years baptized. Why me? There were many kids just like me back in college when I converted. Children of privilege we were, indulging in how smart and clever we were with our little bit of learning, enjoying the life of beer and drugs, rock and roll shows and mosh pits in the consequence-free world of college. I dont' know why I was priveleged to have Christianity happen to me but it did.
I don't know what would have become of me without this mysterious hand of God that slowly but surely entered my life. I don't know what use I would have made of the gifts of my early education and the influence of my parents without religious life and ministry. But in this life I have professed, these things can now be at the disposal of God and of the Church.
I am always amazed at how God knows when the time is right to reveal Himself to us.
ReplyDeleteIt was the day after Ash Wednesday, when I was 35 years old, the father of five children and alone in an apartment while away on business. I was in prayer and begged God to reveal Himself to me. He did.
Now I thank God every day for the SFO because there's obviously not much of a calling to the priesthood when you have a wife and five kids...