(Source: New Pentecost, August 1987)
When I was at High School I went through a difficult period in my life, hating school, as I was not a good student, and fearful of what career I would pursue when and IF I finished school. Life in ugly Belfast with its drab grey streets and violent hates seemed a useless, meaningless existence, a tedious cycle of rising, working, eating, sleeping. I was often sick and felt this was a terrible world full of sick and suffering people. For me life was miserable and since I was not a convinced Christian l was really terrified of death. Though we had to learn big chunks of the bible by heart, I found it a boring book. I went to church because I had to. Jesus meant nothing to me. I thought He was like the plastic kitsch statues - impotent, meek and mild!
I looked into other religions but only Islam attracted me perhaps because, like my mother, I loved Arab and Persian literature and romantic Moorish music. I looked at philosophy which left me cold. However, one philosopher stuck in my mind. He said that the good moral life was its own reward and even if there is no heavenly recompense, we will have been fulfilled in this life by a good moral life as opposed to an undisciplined life of debauchery. I Agreed. But how does one get the power to live a good moral life and overcome temptation?
I decided to give Christianity another chance. After all, the nuns who taught me as child were good sincere people who seemed happily fulfilled and really loved Jesus. At the beginning of the new academic year we all had to go on a Sixth Formers’ Retreat. I decided to try and read St. Augustine’s “Confessions”. But it only bored me stiff after a few pages and like my companions I wasted the time smoking till I was green in the face!
I got more depressed and used to go for long walks at night wondering what to do and what life is all about. At High School we were studying Hamlet and I shared many of his sentiments though Hamlet himself struck me as a ruthless, self-righteous character. He complained: ''How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.'' Hamlet felt death was not the answer as what lies beyond may be worse!
I took to reading gloomy writers like Sartre and Ibsen and listening to the gloomiest jazz and the atonal music of Berg and Webern. I hated life and feared death which I saw as being merged into a cold impersonal universe. St. Augustine in his ''Confessions'' summed it up well: ''For I was sick and tired of living yet afraid to die ... my soul found no peace in song and laughter, none in the company of friends, at table, nor even in books or poetry.''
One wintry Sunday afternoon I was sitting by the fireside at home reading the Sunday papers. I came across a book review about a famous French scientist who had a great love for the Jesus I had dismissed, and who wrote a critique of Mohammed. The latter I admired till I discovered he liquidated hundreds of Jews at Medina because the disagreed with his plans! I bought a copy of the book reviewed in the paper – the Pensees by Pascal. I hid it carefully as I did not want anyone to think I was “getting religious”. Someone discovered me reading it and cynically gave me a New Testament which I indignantly threw away!
My depression deepened but I kept searching and reading. Finally I remembered what Pascal said about hunting: ''there is more joy in the excitement of the chase than in bagging the quarry, and when the journey is interesting, it is better to travel than to arrive. So with cards and with the search for truth. During a debate we enjoy following the collision of opinions; we are not so pleased with the truth that emerges from the debate”.
I believed in God but I did not want to make a commitment or submit to Him ''lest having Him, I must have nought besides''. I wanted my autonomy more than I wanted God. In all of us there lies a spirit of rebellion preventing us from humility before God, holding us back from bending the knee before the mystery of God and the church He established. Pascal said that if it turns out that Christianity is true, we have everything to gain, but if it turns out to be false, we have nothing to lose. We should accept the inevitable risk of faith and gamble on the truth of Christianity.
Pascal referred constantly to the bible, especially the Psalms. So I decided there might be something in the old book after all. I began reading the famity bible beginning with the Psalms of David. Here was a real soul brother as was the Preacher in Ecclesiastes -- ''Vanity of vanities -- all is vanity.'' Pascal said, ''the heart has its reasons'' that the intellect can not understand. I found philosophy and other religions cold by comparison with the very human story of a God born in a poor stable and who could weep over the world's plight. Here was a religion of the heart not a warlike religion like Islam. Yes! Christians had killed too but then, as Ghandi observed, it was against everything that Christ had preached and stood for. Muslims could justify their violence by appealing to Mohammed's precedent in killing the Jews at Medina.
One cold winter's night I decided the search was over and to ''gamble on the truth of Christianity''. I knelt down at my bedside and by an act of the will committed my life completely to Christ using a formula I had come across some time before in reading Dostoyevsky the Russian writer: “I believe that there is nothing on earth more beautiful, more profound, more appealing, more virile, or more perfect than Christ; and I say to myself with jealous love, that greater than He does not and cannot exist. More than this: should anyone prove to me that Christ is beyond the range of truth, and that all this is not to be found in Him, I would prefer to retain Christ than to retain the truth.''
I decided to gamble everything on Christ no matter what came along, to put all my trust in Him for good or evil because without Him nothing made sense. In the words of Job: ''Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him'' (Job 13:1 5).
That was in the winter of 1966 at home in Belfast and was the turning point in my life. It was the beginning of a great adventure with Christ and the start of one of life's longest journeys - the one from the head to the heart!
I began to notice that my life was changing as did others. I began going to daily Mass and discovered the incredible power in the Sacraments, especially the Mass and Confession. I went to Confession to an old priest whom I'm sure never heard a word I said! But nevertheless afterwards I felt as if a great burden had been lifted off my shoulders like Bunyan's Pilgrim. Subsequent Confessions brought me great joy. One of the most immediate results of my giving my life to Christ and one that I clearly noticed, was that now I had power over temptation. The other results were less immediate, but just as life-changing. I discovered a great desire to know more about the Jesus that I had committed my life to and began avidly reading a paperback edition of the four gospels which I have to this day.
I read it on the bus or at school as I was no longer afraid of people s opinions. Hope became a very powerful thing in my life, which had been so bereft of it before, and the fear of death gradually disappeared with the realization that ''to live is Christ and to die is gain '' (Phil. 1:21).
Prayer was no longer a chore but a need to talk to the one I loved more than anybody else. I joined the intercessory ''Apostleship of Prayer '' and began meditating on the fifteen decades of the Rosary each day. I broke the habit of excessive television watching from test-card to the epilogue! Time was too precious for that. I began working with down-and-outs without being nauseated. I discovered also that I was a Pharisee in many ways but was constantly pommelled by the word of God as Jesus lambasted the
Pharisees! I also learnt that the ego is expendable and that saying sorry got easier with practice! This did not all happen overnight but it did so with the inevitability of live yeast rising in lifeless dough and it eventually led me on a great adventure that got me, in spite of many obstacles, to where I am today. Praise the Lord!
