But the subject of making converts and saving souls is a very difficult one, for it is easy to believe that we are the agents who cause the results, when actually all we are at best are instruments of God. As it has been said - He can write straight with a crooked lines. Pope Pius XII once asked me: "How many converts have you made in your life?" I answered: "Your Holiness, I have never counted them. I am afraid if I did count them. I might think I made them, instead of the Lord Jesus Christ."
"Conversion" in Greek is metanoia, or a complete turning around from the direction which we are facing. Talking once to a group of drug addicts in Harlem, I gave this example: Suppose I took a ball and rolled it down the center of this hall; it would evidently go in a straight line, unless it was diverted by some outside force. When we are living our lives in the direction of selfishness and lust and pride, there will be a continuity in that way of life unless some superior force intervenes from the outside, and that is grace - to know things which we did not know before.
It is possible for a human being to live on anyone of three levels - the first level is the senate, in which one cares for the flesh and its pleasures. Peoples can live also on a second or higher floor, and that is the rational, Here he will pursue the good pagan life and practice natural virtues with enthusiasm. Under the inspiration of reason he may be tolerant, contribute to the needy and to community enterprises, but he refuses to believe that there is a Knowledge above that which he possesses and a Power above that which he experiences.
To invite a person who lives on the second floor of reason to the third floor above is often to invite ridicule of what is called supernatural order. These critics are willing to admit an evolutionary process on a horizontal plane until man is produced but they refuse to mount to the third floor, sometimes denying its possibility. Two tadpoles were discussing the possibility of any kingdom above their own. One little tadpole said to the other" "I think I will stick my head above the water to see what the rest of the world looks like." The other tadpole answered: "Don't be stupid; don't try to tell me that there is anything in the world besides water!"
Conversion is an experience in no way related to the upsurge of the subconscious into consciousness; it is a gift of God, an invasion of a new Power, the inner penetration of our spirit by the Spirit and the turning over of a whole personality to Christ. If I begin to recall some instances of conversion during the course of my life, it will not be to shed any glory upon myself, for I could no more make someone else a Christian by my own influence than I could turn a sawdust doll into a pretty little child of six. I am, nonetheless, grateful that God used me to bring others to Himself. I have always had a deep passion for helping others to find faith.
When I was stationed in Washington I would go to New York almost every weekend to instruct converts on Saturday and preach on Sunday, in either the Paulist Church or St. Patrick's Cathedral. Because I was on national radio at this particular time, many wrote asking for instructions. These classes were first held in the rectory if the cathedral, in Saint Patrick's Cathedral and later on a small auditorium. I was constantly warned by my fellow professors at the university that I was shortening my life. It was universally agreed that I would never live to reach the age of forty-five. During holidays I would accept engagements throughout the country. I once spent seven consecutive nights on "sleepers" and I can testify that those were the only moments I ever doubted that a man was made to the image and likeness of God-for that resemblance is forfeited as he tries to take off his trousers in an upper berth!
During this period When I would hold two convert classes annually (one in New York City, and the other in Washington) there would be an average attendance of between fifty and one hundred who would eventually become members of the Mystical Body of Christ. The period of instruction either for an individual or for a group would be at least twenty to twenty-five hours. A very noticeable change would come over a group as the instructions developed. At the first meetings, each would seek out the best seat and was reluctant to allow another to take his place. But once an instruction was given on Christ, the group immediately changed - offering a place to one another, helping each other with coats and accepting everyone in the group as all bent on a common purpose: an encounter with Christ.
Though I give here a few examples of metanoia, I must remind you that there were hundreds of others besides these whom I recall: housekeepers, flight attendants, ministers, beggars at the door, businessmen, housewives, alcoholics and college students. Some few cases, however, will illustrate the following three points:
First, many are seeking God without being aware of it. As Newman said: "I knew the Church was the true Church, but I did not know that I knew." Pascal noted: "Console thyself, thou wouldst not seek Me if thou had not found Me."
Second, some may acknowledge the existence of God, but He is on the circumference of their lives. As Voltaire said of God: "We nod, but we do not speak." Though a convert may be described in the last stages as a rose that bloomed, it must ever be kept in mind that the one who explains the Creed and commandments is nothing more than the gardener with a hoe and a rake.
Third, the one who receives enlightenment always experiences in his soul a sense of repentance or a discovery that life as lived until now was not right in the sight of God. I recall with what Tertullian said: "Penitence is a certain passion of the mind which comes from disgust at some previous feeling." Christ becomes not just the agent of repentance to the convert, but also the agent of forgiveness. I have never known a convert who did not say two things: "I am a sinner" and "I am forgiven."
The following recollections about those who embraced Christ in His Church prove the truth of the above statements.
Bella Dodd was the lawyer of the Communist party, and had considerable influence in the labor unions of New York City. She was testifying one day before the Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, and Senator McGrath of Rhode Island asked her to pay me a visit. "What has he to give me?" Senator McGrath answered: "He teaches communism at the Catholic University, that is to say, he knows the philosophy of Marx and Lenin." The senator then asked her if she was afraid to visit me. She accepted the challenge and telephoned me that she was on the way. We met in a small outer room at my residence and exchanged generalities, after which I observed: "Dr. Dodd, you look unhappy." She said: "Why do you say that?" I said: "Oh, I suppose, in some way, we priests are like doctors who can diagnose a patient by looking at him." When the conversation came to a dead end, I suggested that she come into the chapel and say a prayer. While we knelt, silently, she began to cry. She was touched by grace. Later on, I instructed her and received her into the Church. With Marx behind her, she began teaching law first in Texas and later at Saint John's University in Brooklyn.
My first convert as a young priest was in Washington, D.C. and it illustrates how much Divine Light in the soul, rather than the efforts of the evangelist, produce the harvest. When I went to the Catholic University to begin graduate studies, an aunt of mine asked me to visit a relative of hers who was ill. She was a fairly young, married woman with two children. I had been warned, however, that she was not well disposed to Catholics. When I introduced myself at the front door, she spit in my face and told me to leave. That was in the month of September. Every single morning in Holy Mass I begged God to give her the grace of conversion. In February I received a telephone call from her. I asked: "Why did you send for me?" She said: "I do not know. I went to the doctor yesterday and he told me that i would be dead in two weeks." She drew her two young children to herself and wondered who would care for them. I assured her that she was not going to die in two weeks and told her of the prayers I offered for her conversion. "The Lord, I believe, is frightening you into the Church." The next day I began explaining the teachings of the Church, baptized her in May and continued to keep in touch with her for many years.
I remember the first convert I made in France, after two years of graduate study in Europe. In preparation for the University of Louvain in the autumn, I spent the summer at the University of Paris to train my ear to French boardinghouse in the Latin Quarter: rue Jules Chaplain. There were about five or six other boarders in the pension, most of whom were American. After a week, Madame Citroen, who managed the boardinghouse, knocked at my door and said something in French which I could not understand. I called two schoolteachers from Boston who were residents in the pension, and asked them to interpret. Madame had said that she was baptized a Catholic, married in the Church, but after marriage and World War I, her husband left her. One daughter, who was born to them, became a woman of the streets. She added that the boardinghouse was a financial failure, and she felt no reason to live. Then, pulling a small bottle out of her pocket, she said: "This is poison; I intend to take it and do away with my life. Can you do anything for me?" I said, through the interpreter, "Madame, I cannot do anything for you if you intend to take that stuff." I asked her, however, to postpone her suicide for nine days.
I the began a novena to the Sacred Heart at the Church of the Notre Dame des Champs. Kneeling before the statue of the Sacred Heart, I pleaded: "If you really love souls - and you do - then save this one." Every evening of the novena, I would take a dictionary on my left hand, thumb it with my right, and with a contemptuous disregard for tenses, would attempt to stammer out some simple, elementary Christian truth in French. However, knowing that she could not be brought back to the Faith by my poor instructions in French, I had recourse to the confessional. I reasoned that if she would humble herself, and go to Confession, the Good Lord Jesus would give her grace.
Two nights before the novena ended, I took her to the Saint Joseph Church near the Etoile and asked one of the Irish priests there who spoke French to hear her confession. But she did not receive the gift of Faith. In the meantime, I asked one of the servant girls in the house how long she had been away from the sacraments. I then begged her to go to Confession the final day of the novena with Madame. During the confession, the night before the novena ended, she received the gift of Faith, and the following day I gave her Communion; the French maid also received Communion.
In the fall, I went to the University of Louvain. Madame wrote to me, telling me that her daughter was seriously ill in Chartres. She was willing to give up anything, provided God would spare her daughter. I asked her to make an offering of her daughter; it might be a means of reconciling her and her husband. So it happened. Her husband, whom she had not heard from in years, came to visit the sick daughter. The husband and wife were reconciled at the sickbed. The daughter recovered. In the end, grace triumphed as the mother and daughter restored the husband to the Church. The following summer on my way to Lourdes, I stopped at Dax and was driven away to a beautiful chateau in the mountains where, for three days, I enjoyed the hospitality of Monsieur and Madame and Mademoiselle Citroen. When I visited the village priest I asked if the Citroens were practicing the Faith. He did not know the story but answered: "They are the most wonderful Catholics in the Pyrenees. Isn't it beautiful when people keep the Faith all during their lives!"
Then there is the beautiful story of the conversion of Fritz Kreisler and his wife. I received a letter from a stranger who asked me to call on her uncle. His wife had committed suicide a short time before by throwing herself out of the window. The writer asked that I try to bring some consolation to the uncle. The apartment house in Manhattan alongside the East River was the type that had only two apartments to a floor. I went to the apartment where I expected to visit the man in question, but he was not at home. I asked the elevator man who lived in the other apartment, and he told me - Fritz Kreisler.
I rang the bell, introduced myself to Fritz and Mrs. Kreisler, and after a short conversation, asked them if they would like to take instructions for the Church. Fritz Kreisler was one of the finest and noblest men I ever met in my entire life. When I would quote a text from the Old Testament, he would read it in Hebrew; when I would quote a text from the New Testament, Fritz would read it in Greek. One evening during an auto trip together, I observed: "Fritz, tomorrow you are playing your violin on 'The Telephone Hour.' "Yes." "Will you practice?" "No." "Will you practice before the concert?" "No." With that, Mrs. Kreisler said: "I always contended that if Fritz had practiced, he would have been a great violinist."
When I began mu television series, I asked Fritz to write me a theme song for my programs. He gave me about forty or fifty manuscripts that had never been copyrighted. He told me to choose from anyone of these, and he would give me the copyright. The one that I chose, as I remembered it, was the "Vienna March." I took it back to Fritz. "This is the one that I like, but I cannot march on stage. Can you change it to waltz time?" Fritz said: "It cannot be put in waltz time." I said: "Fritz, you can transpose anything; please sit down at the piano and try it." "No" he said, "It can't be done." I begged him and he sat down at the piano, played one measure and said: "See, I told you; it cannot be done." With that, Mrs. Kreisler said: "Fritz is in his 'no' mood tonight." She then took him by the hand, walked him down the corridor to another studio at the other end of the apartment. A short time later I heard the strains of my theme song coming from the piano in waltz time. It later became my theme song on television.
I was a very close friend of the Kreislers from the time of their reception into the Church, and it was tragic to see Fritz in his last days, blind and deaf from an automobile accident, but radiating a gentleness and refinement not unlike his music. I visited them every week for some years until the Lord called them from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, where I am sure the music of Fritz Kreisler is in repertoire of Heaven.
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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.
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Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
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Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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