Hello friends in Christ! Thank you so very much for all of your kindness you’ve showed in welcoming me to the parish, I feel right at home and look forward to continuing our journey towards our heavenly homeland together…and bringing as many with us on the way as we can! One of my favorite descriptions of evangelization comes from Mother Teresa, who once said, “to evangelize means that you have Jesus in your heart, and then you carry him to the heart of others.” Not only does that sound good, it’s a joyful life too! Please Lord…please…let somebody call us out this week for being joyful in you, let them ask why we are joyful, or, “in a good mood”, and let us be quick to respond: “Jesus!” Well gang, I’d better turn quick towards delivering on what I’d said I would: my conversion story. The tricky part is, I’ve got to do it in 380 words!
By the age of 25 years old, I had been in Nashville just under 2 years and had done the hard living thing far too much. I was a drunk, I was tired of life, I was tired of everything, I had no relationship with God. I moved back to Michigan by God’s grace. First, my brother asked me to be a godfather. I said yes but thought he was crazy for asking, for I knew the kind of man I was. Another brother called and was looking for a roommate to live off-campus with him at Michigan State. By that time I was flat out tired and willing to try anything, so I said yes to the opportunity and came back to Michigan intent on trying to go back to school to become a teacher. There was just one problem…I came back to Michigan a drunk who had no relationship with God. And so, my life simply continued to unravel. Family could tell I was not well. People tried to help me, I resisted, stubborn and ignorant in my sin and addiction. There were moments when God broke through for a brief second it seemed, but the evil one would just offer me the things that I freely chose to enter back into the darkness. I became thoroughly disillusioned with life, felt utterly lost and was truly unsure of the existence of a God anymore. I sadly began to consider early exit options from this life…which are never thoughts that come from God. One day, I stared at a green love sofa in my apartment in the midst of self-imposed misery and flat out said “God, if you’re real, where are you?”
Though I was blind to His presence, He kept working on me. My Mom’s prayers continued to storm heaven, bringing crushing blows of God’s grace upon the enemy. My sister gave me a bible, another sister and I started going to church (on a whim on my part, she was faithful on hers), a Christian invited me to a prayer group…shoot, out of words…to be continued…
GOD BLESS YOU,
FR. PATRICK