By John Bruce
My conversion story starts in my childhood. Growing up, I was the son of a father who left the Church after Confirmation and a mother who had no interest in organized religion, or any religion of the sort. The environment at home was unsupportive and toxic. What I did have, however, was a paternal grandmother who was an old-school Catholic.
I can remember spending large swaths of time with my grandparents over school breaks as a child; it was an opportunity to get out of the unfortunate situations at home. The only caveat to me staying with them was that I had to go to Mass on Sunday, which seemed like a small price to pay for time in a peaceful home to a then ten-year-old.
It was only then, I realize now, I only ever felt “at home” in my childhood, and I genuinely enjoyed going to mass with my grandparents and spending time with them. It should come as no surprise that in the wake of my Grandmother’s death, my problems with embracing sin and living in opposition to most elements of Catholic Social Teaching began: I had lost the person who kept me engaged in a relationship with Christ.
The next 17 years were filled with questionable morals and even more questionable decisions. A reckless lifestyle which frequently included nights that ended when most people were waking up for work and no commitments beyond the next 12 hours. I tamed it down when I went to college, but still never found something to fill the hole in my life that was left by turning away from Christ. I moved to a different state, but never really found peace.
In November of 2014 I went on a Match.com date with a woman who was a Catholic school teacher. By all traditional measures this date was a disaster; I spent the entire time telling her all of the reasons why I wasn’t Catholic despite having frequented Mass as a child.
In an attempt to change the subject, she recommended a parish around the corner with a vibrant young adult community. I blathered on about this or that reason why I never went back to the Church. It should come as no surprise when she ghosted me following that date. Unbeknownst to her, however, she had planted a seed.
The next weekend I went to Mass at that parish, the Thursday after that I started RCIA, the week after that I got involved with the young adult group she had recommended to me. As I renewed my relationship with Christ, and prepared to receive my sacraments, I started to discover peace again, I felt like a new person.
While at a diocesan event in February of 2015, only a few months later, I bumped into this same woman who had planted the seed; the Spirit does work in mysterious, albeit very deliberate ways. I entered the Church Easter Sunday 2015, and have never looked back.
In 2016, I married that woman who planted the seed, we welcomed our first child into the Church in 2017, and our second child to the Church in 2019. My late-grandmother’s prayers and my guardian angel certainly had their work to do with me, but God has given me more blessings than I could even begin to count.
Roses for Mary 