"It's Been God All Along"

 I have always told the Lord, "If I have brought but one person to you, I will die happy." All glory to God, I think I can say that has happened, though I was only about one percent of the equation.. 

A few years ago a friend from high school--I will call her Kay--reached out to me via Messenger. Though I couldn't find the original message, I remember that this friend was being drawn back to the Church and had reached out, I think, because she knew so few Catholics. 

I always knew her as an extremely perceptive and intuitive person, but I hadn't seen her since high school. She was living in a metropolitan area on the West Coast now, married with two children. She had been taking her kids to a Protestant church, but kept being drawn to Catholic churches, especially those with Latin Masses, and adoration chapels. In an email exchange we had a few years ago, she tenderly noted that she could not bring herself to go in, but lingered outside the doorway. "No words really to describe the experience."

For me, there is honestly nothing more moving than to see a soul being stirred by grace, but especially when it's someone you know. I have had people and friends I've tried to share the Gospel with who I thought were open to it; not in an aggressive way, but just by planting seeds, and it can be deflating when they never seem to sprout. But Kay was different. I didn't really do anything or play much of a part, besides maybe offering some material to read by way of my blog. Rather, I just had the good grace to witness the Holy Spirit nudging and moving her to come home. A true privilege worth living for. 

Her last Confession was also her first, some 30+ years ago. She shared in that email from a few years ago that, 

"My Confession is scheduled for Thursday morning. I feel like I’m standing in two worlds. Just recently I found Flannery O’Connor’s quote “Grace changes us and the change is painful.” I had no idea. My whole life I’ve walked through the world seeing “meaning” and “beauty” everywhere I looked, and now I know it’s been God all along."

I hope she will forgive me for sharing that, but it gives me hope; we are being ransomed, all of us, in dribs and drabs. The days of the mass conversions of St. Francis Xavier are not so common in our culture today. Maybe souls escaping the Titanic of our culture and finding their way to shore on life rafts, or pulled upon rescue boats, is as much as we can hope for. I take to heart St. Paul's words to "become all things to all people...so that I may save some." (1 Cor 9:22)

But again, it has little to do with me or you except that we are foot soldiers, pencils, instruments in God's hands to sow the seed. We have little capability to make it rain, shine the sun, pollinate the buds. The best we can do is labor, scatter, till, and fertilize. The rest is grace. But isn't it a wonderful thing to see a flower bud, a tree bear fruit, in its due season? It is a miracle of nature. 

We can never force or manipulate grace, however. God is loving but wholly sovereign, and the Holy Spirit is like the wind that blows where it wishes (Jn 3:8). The featherweight pods of grace are carried across the fields, floating until they rest on a tender heart. But a heart cannot be rushed or hurried along. It reminds me of a passage from Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba the Greek, 

"I recalled one dawn when I had chanced upon a butterfly’s cocoon in a pine tree at the very moment when the husk was breaking and the inner soul was preparing to emerge. I kept waiting and waiting; it was slow and I was in a hurry. Leaning over it, I began to warm it with my breath. I kept warming it impatiently until the miracle commenced to unfold before my eyes at an unnatural speed. The husk opened completely; the butterfly came out. But never shall I forget my horror: its wings remained curled inward, not unfolded. The whole of its minuscule body shook as it struggled to spread the wings outward. But it could not. As for me, I struggled to aid it with my breath. In vain. What it needed was to ripen and unfold patiently in sunlight. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to emerge ahead of time, crumpled and premature. It came out undeveloped, shook desperately, and soon died in my palm.

This butterfly’s fluffy corpse is, I believe, the greatest weight I carry on my conscience. What I understood deeply on that day was this: to hasten eternal rules is a mortal sin. One’s duty is confidently to follow nature’s everlasting rhythm."

When I think of my friend Kay, I think of the mercy and goodness of God first and foremost, and then the privilege of witnessing grace working to flower faith in its due season in my friend's heart. Her marriage and her relationship, in her words, has completely transformed. Meaning and beauty is everywhere, but now with the eyes of Christ the Divine Artist, my friend's heart has been able to fully bloom and recognize the threads in the tapestry of her life. A contrite heart, O Lord, you will not spurn.

When I think of my friend, I breathe a sigh, because I can go to my eternal rest a sated man, can enjoy a happy death. Because the Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad (Ps 126:3). As she noted, it's been God all along. I was just glad I was able to be gifted a ticket to the show.