For all those who thought they would be making the journey alone. . .
The letter didn’t come on Valentine’s Day. I didn’t receive it on an anniversary. The best love letter I ever received came from my husband on Christmas Eve 2007.
While John was raised Baptist, much of his extended family was Catholic. His parents’ siblings had married Catholics and raised their children in the Catholic Church. But John’s mom was Baptist, and John and his sister first discovered God’s love through their mother in a Baptist church.
When John was in middle school, his mother died of breast cancer. He tried to go to church regularly for awhile, but it just became too difficult without a mother’s prompting. John’s dad decided to send his son to a Catholic high school, hoping it would be a soft, safe place for the boy who had experienced a terrible loss at such a tender age.
Like most students in Catholic high schools, John gained a strong identity by being part of a private school. He wore the school’s name (St. John Vianney) with pride, even though he did not convert.
After high school, John headed off to college, but church wasn’t a big part of this phase of his life. One day, while commuting to graduate school, the radio station paused its regular programming to announce that the Federal Building in Oklahoma City had been bombed. The tragic news made John take stock of his life, and he decided that it was time to return to his faith, because he realized that for all of us, there are times when faith is all that's left to go on.
Like when a mom dies and a boy is only half-grown. Or when tragedy comes suddenly, and there is nothing anyone can do but pray.
John and I met about a year later. The timing was ideal. I needed some ballast in my life. John was rock solid, and that was an important thing to a single mother of three small children.
After a brief engagement, we married. We attended the Presbyterian church where my father preached. When Dad became ill and left pastoral ministry, we attended the Baptist church where John’s mother had taken him as a small boy. Then my father died, and I went searching for answers. I found a copy of Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross and eventually found my way to the Catholic Church.
“I think I’m supposed to become Catholic,” I told John one day. He nodded and told me that was fine, but he wasn’t interested in becoming Catholic. I agreed to keep my Catholic journey private and preserve our Baptist identity as a family. Back then, I thought that would be enough. I barely understood what was happening to me, and I didn’t think I was in any position to help anyone else become Catholic. In time, however, things changed. I wanted all of us to be Catholic and on the same page with our faith.
But that doesn’t always happen the moment you realize how much you want it.
Grace has its own timetable. Another’s free will can’t be forced. And while I prayed for this one conversion, I must admit, I didn’t think it would ever happen. “Remember St. Monica,” my parish priest said. “Would she have become a saint if she had not had a son who needed her prayers? And then we never would have had St. Augustine.” Okay, fair enough.
So I prayed in earnest. At Mass. During my hour of Adoration. But it is very difficult to hope for something you cannot imagine.
On Christmas Eve of 2007 everything changed. While waiting for Mass to begin, John passed me a card. I looked at it for a second, and while my heart filled with joy (because John’s love letters are always very special), I still did not know what was about to happen. I opened the letter and began to read. I love John’s handwriting; it’s so familiar to me, like all the other things about him after eleven years of marriage. I read the words, about how deeply he loves me, and how that had prompted him to consider the Catholic Church.
And so, I enter the Church this coming Easter. I read the final sentence.
He smiled as the tears gathered in my eyes. I tried to wrap my mind around this news. “When are you going to begin?” I whispered, unsure that the unfolding miracle could really be true. And he told me that he had been secretly studying with our parish RCIA leader for months.
The impossible had happened. And I realized that his life, like my own, has been dotted by one grace after another. Some moments had seemed very good, some very difficult, but all of it pointed to conversion, our “yes” to the great call of divine love.
God’s love letter to us.
The Love Letter
Today, we celebrate the feast day of St. John Vianney. While there is nothing unusual about feast days (which come up on a daily basis), this one is a biggie.
