My story

Member of Fórum Života

My encounter with Jesus Christ was not a bombastic or particularly extraordinary event: holy mass, Holy Communion, confession... the usual and classical aspects of „Catholic Faith“. By the way, I don’t feel like I envied some of my American friends – „new-born“ Christians. There isn’t any extraordinary experience in my life, no exceptional breakthroughs that would cause a radical change. But on the other hand, I can say that I experience many little changes and conversions. My road with God, our Lord, did not start from a fixed point; it was rather endurance-running. Sometimes I run quite well, sometimes I am weaker; sometimes I probably take even short pauses. Thanks to God, I always find new strength, so that I can start running again.

If you really want me to reckon some concrete moments, I had two strong spiritual experiences. The first one was a confession when I was 18 and the second one was a holy mass when I was 28 (that is to say about two years ago). That confession was not like the previous ones. It was my first confession after some years. As a teenager I simply stopped going to confession and taking the Holy Communion. I used to go to church every Sunday because I thought that – during my intellectual crisis and search – it wouldn’t be wise to lose contact with the Church. During this period of my life I asked myself a lot of questions about the meaning of many things; I think I progressively passed from child faith to adult faith. Back then I decided not to go to confession. It was a decision I took on the basis of mature reflections. One day my father told me that they were going to confession; he added that it would be good if I joined them after so long a while. For some reasons I didn’t object. I don’t know why. I simply had no more need to speculate and I went to confession. After my confession I felt good, but I started to understand even through my intellect that my sins were forgiven. I suddenly realized that it was a silly decision to avoid confession. What blocked me simply disappeared...

The second strong moment was during a holy mass – just a common mass on a working day around noon. It wasn’t one of my best days. I was frustrated at work, notably because of a complicated relation with one of the superiors; I felt tired and disgusted. During the mass – maybe also because of such a sense of loneliness – I felt more intensely the incredible vicinity of Christ in the Eucharist: I was kneeling in the church – not in my best psychological mood – and just a few meters from me there were the real body and blood of Christ! I stared at the lifted hands of the priest as though it was an apparition. I saw that gesture a thousand times, but now I did not manage to stop my tears of emotion. Jesus gives himself to me here and now; I just have to take his offer. I suddenly realized that I am not alone, that I never was and never will be alone. How hard is to resist to such a fact.

I believe that God talks with me even in other manners than those I just mentioned. First of all He does it through my mind – which He gave me. I’ll try to be clearer. When we were students, some of my class-mates used to pray the Holy Spirit to get help and correctly answer during the exam. This kind of prayer didn’t really attract me. Through common sense God used to tell me not to rely too much on extraordinary interventions and to get well prepared for the exam. It is just like the famous story of that woman who entered the lion cage and thought that God was going to save her – just like He did with some early Christians in ancient Rome. Eventually the lion killed her. I think that in this case the real God’s voice was good “common” sense that warns us against dangerous beasts.

Why am I writing about common sense? Because I am convinced that it is the way God tells me what He wants from me and what is my vocation. That’s probably why I am engaged in protecting unborn children. If they give something, we will take it; if they beat us, we will flee. And if they kill innocent children, we will protect them. If we lived during the Communist or Nazi regime, I would probably fight these systems. Today, they are not such a great threat and the world has other priorities. If I try to rationally assess what is the worst injustice of today’s world, my answer is: abortion and other forms of destroying innocent human lives. Maybe one day my intellect will show me other priorities; for the moment, as long as I have the above described vision, I would be silly if I didn’t try to help protect life.

What could I advise to those people who long for an encounter with God? Well, I think that first of all you have to wait. Faith is a gift and it is not possible to get it on first request. Moments come in the life of every person when we will be led to reflect about the meaning of this world and of our life. It can be the death of a close person, serious illness, failure in some important matters. When such a situation happens, we have to seize it like a chance. It is a chance to reflect about the real sense of all things that are surrounding us. In these moments the decisions to be taken is “yes” or “not”. Prayer can help you with this: you have to ask God what decisions you should take. If you don’t believe in God, it doesn’t matter – by the way you have got to try it. After all, you aren’t charged anything for simply asking

Patrik Daniška
Member of Fórum Života