A Convert Today – I
A colleague has just written to tell the Editor of these “Comments” that the situation of the Church is much worse then he thinks – “It is an illusion to think that we can restore things. We must be faithful, and save the few souls that God will make use of when the time comes.” This Editor agrees entirely, and he thinks of a line from Virgil’s Aeneid (II, 353): For the doomed, hope lies in giving up all hope. However, for a follower of Christ, to trust in man is only less foolish than to distrust in God. Here is a recent e-mail to the Editor which shows Almighty God clearly at work, converting a young soul previously far from Him. In this week’s “Comments” he asks for the advice which for the next two weeks they will offer.
Excellency, I am a young man in some despair because I do not know what to do. Maybe Your Excellency can give me some advice. Let me give you briefly my background.
Until I was about 18 I was a “normal” teenager, completely deluded, because I accepted everything that the new modern world gave me. I tried to fit in with it, but I always felt that it was against human nature, and deep down something was lacking. Although I was baptised, I had never lived like a Catholic, nor ever really thought of God, since I was just too caught up in the atheistic material world. However, I was a good student and my parents could afford to pay, so at 18 I went to University to study Management. But after a while by the grace of God I started seeing that things are not after all how the media and people portray them. Filled with anger and contempt for modern society because of the lies and corruption, I dropped out of university and then tried the Army Officers’ Academy since I was always physically fit and ready to stand up to the “mushy leftist society.”
But that was not God’s plan for me either. In boot camp God gave me the immense grace to start converting and to foster my faith. When after a short time I came out I was a different person, no longer filled with rage and contempt but disappointed and lost. I had realised how weak my generation is because of our liberal parenting and teaching and how hard it is to counteract it. We are so uprooted in comfort and in complete freedom to do as we like, that it makes us useless. But my liberal parents continued to press me against my will to go to University, so I had to go – this was not all that long ago. At that moment God gave me to find the SSPX and the “Resistance,” thanks to Archbishop Lefebvre. My faith started to grow rapidly, because I was getting the Truth. I started to read the Bible and to look into the problems of the Conciliar Church and the modern world, and I started praying the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, since there is no Tridentine Mass anywhere nearby.
So now I am thinking about what I should do. I feel a desire to renounce the material life, to get closer to God and to study the Faith in depth so as to learn everything about Catholicism and to convert others, but since I am young and I do not have any skills, I thought it might be better first to learn a practical skill – carpentry, for instance. At this point in time I would not even exclude a priestly vocation. My greatest struggle has been trying to reason with my parents and to convert them, but they thought I was nuts or had had a breakdown, and since then it has been big arguments at home about my not wanting to go to University. So I don’t know what to do. I am all alone, nobody in my family or among my friends is a Traditional Catholic. Since I am still unemployed, I have thought of moving not far away to where there is a Traditional Catholic community. What advice might you give me?
Kyrie eleison.
