Conversion Story Part 11: Friends

Sometime in early October I reached a certainty that the Catholic Church was the one true church, that I must become a Catholic, that I was in a state of mortal sin, and that I needed that sacrament of Confession.  Because I was painfully shy, I could go no further on my own.  I simply didn't have it in me to approach a priest, explain my situation, and ask where to go from here.  So I started dropping oblique hints to people I knew were Catholic.  One person saw me at Mass and asked later if I was Catholic.  I expressed uncertainty, and he let it slide.  Another person was in a couple of classes with me, including choir, and we had a concert at the protestant church which I had attended off and on.  The building was labyrinthine, and I had never really learned my way around it, and as we were winding from one part of the building to another, I made a comment to that effect.  My friend asked if I belong to that particular denomination, and I replied "I don't know what I am anymore."

This friend made a point to come back and ask me about that comment after the concert was over, and we talked for hours.  He introduced me to a friend of his who was a transitional deacon at the time, who then instructed me in the Faith.  He also took me to a little chapel where the Extraordinary Form was celebrated (before the current Pope coined the term), which was an apostolate of the Fraternity of St. Peter.  Three months later, I was received into the Catholic Church (the Rite was that in use in 1962) and I went to Mass at that same church for the next several years, met my husband there, and was married in the same church.

That's the end of the story.  Based on a few comments from friends, I suspect that I have told it badly.  Some people seem to think this story shows my intelligence, that I was clever to figure out the truth.  Not so.  It is the story of grace, and it humbles me exceedingly that I took nine whole years to respond to the grace which is so abundantly present in every chapter of my story.