January Drinking Companion
It was a busy month in December, but a blessed one. It is why I missed that blog, and will slow with my content due to balance of life and baby. However I needed to write about someone this month, and decided it would be St. Paul, who’s conversion day we celebrate January 25. I picked this day, because it was significant in affirming my girlfriend, now wife’s move to Northern Virginia was meant to be.
To begin, we celebrate this day of St. Paul reflecting on he zealous behavior, that eventually led to a radical awakening. Paul was a devout Jew, who out of passion and love for the Lord wanted to abolish what he thought was a heresy threatening his Jewish faith. This is something we can all relate to today with all the hostilities around us no matter what spectrum of life you are on. Everyone is saying something threatens our way of life. Many radically try to root out these these ideas they believe are evil in the zealous spirit from all our rioting, to the religious intolerance in communist countries, and even our own, to the terrorist attacks in the middle east, everyone is defending their ideology with aggression towards others.
This is who St. Paul and some of the Apostles were. They were religious and political radicals trying to institute the order, or religious ways they thought worked. 2000 years, nothings change with human behavior. However what is different now, from then is the Church, that St. Paul took part in growing. After an incredible hate towards these Christians, He had an encounter with the Risen Jesus Christ. Many witnessed and documented this man’s radical conversion from a murderer in the name of religion he hated, to a evangelist of the Good News that had such great mercy on him. This is what we celebrate January 25. The reality anyone can change with trust in Jesus Christ (God) in His time and plan.
This brings me back to my story. Back in 2018, shortly after I began dating my wife, she was offered a job in Northern Virginia, a place she previously lived for 15 years, with ok memories, but also a sad ending in divorce. Myself, I had my epiphany of faith and returned to the Church through Newport News, Virginia and a failed relationship. I didn’t think this place was in my future anytime soon. We both wrestled with what was happening. I figured this was the end of our relationship, and I was kind of hoping for that too, so I could return to roaming the country and the world by myself in poverty, I didn’t want the responsibility of a family. On January 25 God began to show He had other plans, and began to convert me towards marriage and a child.
During this time I was visiting churches on the day of their feast day. In this case, I needed to go to a church named solely for St. Paul. There happened to be one in south Philly not too far from my wife’s home at the time. She decided to attend with me that day as well since it was her transition week to move to Virginia. As mass began we felt the priest was just speeding through things and were quickly distracted by things. He had a good homily but we just felt things were very routine, until the end of mass when he came down from the altar and introduced himself, something that was not routine at all.
In the mix a woman came up to us, began talking about her brother in law, how he loved the church and were having their first grandchild baptized there, but lived in Virginia. Immediately my radar began going off and I began asking questions. Not only did her brother in law live in the same town Monica was going to work in, he attended a parish named after our favorite St. Therese, and come to find out he worked for the same company my wife was going to. The following week on her first day, in the first hour at work this man approached her, it was the brother in law, who happened to work on the other side of the cubicles from her, in a place of 1000+ employees and 5 buildings. Divine Providence was at work, and just as Paul’s life was radically changed along the road to Damascus, so too would mine be on the road back to Virginia as I went from thinking I’d be in seminary in Aug 2017, to married with a child, and a successful business I dreamed of for a long time between Oct 2019-Oct 2010
Seek God, and challenge Him in a healthy respect, He’ll answer as He does everyone, every time, just not in the way we expect or want sometimes. Most off all in these turbulent times, be patient with others around us. Saul, who later became Paul teaches us, his hostilities solved nothing until he found humility, it was only then he radically changed the world, like the Humble Savior, Jesus Christ that illuminated His life.
