And Break Fresh Ground

Never Too Much

Keep the Faith!

Painting: Henri Lebasque

A Mark of Heresy

Some False Form

Though I Do Not Comprehend

You Were Chosen for This Time

Always a Walk of Faith

If I Only Have This

Neither Waves Nor Novelties

'An adult faith 
does not follow 
the waves of fashion 
and the latest novelties.'

Pope Benedict XVI















Painting: Macke, 'Reflection in the Shop Window'

The Call

Having just prepared this for re-posting elsewhere, I've realized this story of my long ago "re-conversion" has apparently never been shared on this blog. 

I think it's about time it were.... 

It was as insistent, sometimes, as a telephone ringing.  A persistent "come… come… come" that I couldn’t quite ignore.  Walking by the stairs leading up to the chapel of my high school, I almost always sensed that pull.  I imagined I felt the way steel might in the presence of a strong magnet.  Only, steel would not try to pull away as I often did.  

I was eighteen.  The year before, rather quietly, God had begun to make Himself real to me, and I found I wanted to grow closer to Him.  So I had left public high school for a Catholic girls’ academy taught by semi-cloistered nuns.  In this place of peace and stillness a path was cleared for the Lord’s gentle voice to get through to me.  At first I stopped long enough to listen.  But as the school year progressed, I became more and more afraid of what the Lord was actually calling me to do. 

This concern was particularly striking one day when my Speech teacher stopped me after class.

"I had a little dream about you last night," Sister said with a gentle smile.  "I dreamed you joined our Order here…"  

I was suddenly aware of a hammering in my chest and ears, and of heat rising in my cheeks.  I think I managed to murmur something halfway coherent as I hurried away, wondering "what is God trying to tell me?  Was that merely an idle dream that Sister thought I’d find amusing?"  Or was it something else.  Everyone I’d known who appeared to really love the Lord seemed to be in a convent or serving as a priest.  Surely God didn’t call anyone as I’d felt Him calling me unless it was to be a Religious.

I had something different in mind for my life.  A husband, children, and perhaps a career in the Arts - these were my goals.  Becoming a nun wasn’t exactly on my itinerary.  I wanted to serve God, but what if He asked for what I then considered the ultimate sacrifice?

I dealt with this the only way I thought possible.  I began to ignore the "nudges."  This was not hard to do, for there were so many things to interest an active eighteen year old girl.  It didn’t take long at all before it seemed any sense of a "call" was gone.

Perhaps I felt relief when seeds of unbelief were planted during my college years.  After all, if God wasn't there, I wouldn't have to concern myself with what He did or did not ask of me.  I didn’t believe or dis-believe at that point; I merely developed a rather convenient "God doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother Him" philosophy.  The only trouble was that God did bother me, more than I dared admit to myself.  My attendance at Sunday Mass drifted from "regular" to "occasional," and I stopped praying altogether.  Yet God still had a way of popping into my mind at unexpected times.

At twenty one, I began to feel a renewed interest in faith and went back to attending Mass on a weekly basis.  I even made attempts at prayer.  I became involved in the activities of the Catholic student center at my University, and it was there that I met the young man I married.  For years after our wedding I considered myself a good Catholic.  I never missed Mass on Sunday, I was free of mortal sin, so I figured I was pretty well off.

God was totally unreal to me, however.  I prayed only rarely, and spent much of my spare time reading books on secular philosophy and pop psychology and "the meaning of life" (those basically making a case for life having no meaning whatsoever).  Seeds of unbelief sown years earlier thus found a medium for growth. 

I don’t know when it first dawned on me that I no longer believed in God at all, but in order to keep from shaking my husband, I kept quiet about it.  My family had no idea that I sat at Mass Sunday after Sunday wondering "how educated people could believe all this." 

And then something happened.  Now, many years later, I can only look upon this sudden occurrence as a breakthrough of the grace of God.

To my surprise, I prayed my first prayer in years.  I was somehow nudged to say, aloud, "God, I don’t believe in you, but if you’re real, and if you can hear me, I’m asking you to show me once and for all who or what you are."  And I told him that if he did this, I would follow him - whatever he was. 

I felt utterly absurd, as if I'd just spoken to the air.  But I did have a sense that something had begun.

It was a sporadic beginning.  I started reading everything I could find about great religious of the world.  Christianity?  Yes, that too - but only in an encyclopedia.  After all, I’d been raised in Catholic schools - I figured I knew all there was to know about that one.  As far as what I was finding in my many other books... it seemed I just kept hitting brick walls.  

   A few weeks after that first prayer, however, I happened to spot a Bible on my bookshelf.  It occurred to me that this particular title had been a bestseller for quite a few years, and I had never even read it.  A major literary lapse!  I should at least pick it up and have a look.  After all, what could it hurt…?

I opened to the gospel of Matthew and began to read.

Several days later, I had read through to the gospel of John.  I don’t know if my mind grasped a thing, but some part of me seemed to somehow be "absorbing."

I read in stolen moments.  And then the most surprising thing happened.  I found that rather than merely reading a nice historical account, I was in fact meeting someone.  It was as though He stepped right out of the pages, out through the thees and thous of the translation, and in some un-voiced way spoke to me.

The sense was of a voice I knew from sometime long ago, saying "come…  come… come…"

This time I said yes.

I told Him I didn’t really understand what was happening to me.  I had no idea how I could have come to believe it.  I only knew that Jesus Christ was right there, in the room with me.  I knew I believed in Him, I knew I loved Him.  I was willing to follow Him anywhere.  

Things changed after that, certainly.  I wanted to pray, I wanted to read the Bible, I wanted to love God and everyone around me.  I wanted to meet others who loved Jesus as I did, so I prayed to be led to them.... and I was.

In time, one of these new friends was asked to provide music for a meeting in a town not far away.  As it "happened," this was scheduled to take place at the convent/monastery where I’d gone to high school.  My friend asked me to go with her.   I considered this invitation for awhile before giving a response.  

I had never been one of those who went back to visit the Sisters after graduation.  By now, I felt nervous at the very thought of returning.  But with my chest and ears hammering, I told my friend yes.   

We walked in the door right beside the stairs leading up to the chapel.  I literally gasped at the still-familiar sight.  It was just as I’d remembered.  The banisters with their warm patina were just the same, as were the creaky wooden floors.  Even though the Sisters were not teaching school there anymore, I half expected a young girl in uniform blazer and regulation saddle shoes to tiptoe down the hall at any moment.  

We gathered in what had been the students’ refectory for the meeting.  Sisters filed in quietly, and I was busy searching their faces for one I could recognize.  Nope: not even one.  

Before long, the laypersons and nuns assembled into small groups.  In mine, there was one Sister who seemed too young to have been here when I was a student.  So why was I feeling a growing sense of recognition?  It was as though she reminded me of someone I’d once known.  

It was when this Sister came over to me after the meeting that I realized she had been one of my teachers;  a kind, encouraging soul who’d once told me I should consider a career in Speech.  My mind suddenly saw her standing before me, smiling, saying "I had a little dream about you last night.  I dreamed you joined our Order here..."

Had the Lord been calling me when I was eighteen?  Certainly.  And I am quite sure that if I’d stopped to listen, I would have been led to the exact vocation He had ready for me:  that of wife and mother.  The fruit of my marriage has been wonderful, and I do not doubt that it was my call.  I did err at eighteen, however, when I did not give God so much as a chance to "speak."

As it was, He kept trying to get through, year after year, while my line stayed busy.

Thank God I finally stopped to listen, and to realize that I could belong to Him even though I wasn't living in a convent.

I have answered the call. 

(This is an edited version of the article "The Call," originally published in a Catholic magazine no longer in existence. This edition is © 2012 Nancy Shuman, all rights reserved. Reposted in 2015 at thebreadboxletters.blogspot.com) 

In the Faith of the Living

'The death of the martyrs blossoms in the faith of the living.'

Pope St. Gregory I

Painting: John Marshall Gamble

Then We Need Not Worry

'Let us place our confidence in God and set ourselves in complete dependence upon His Providence. Then we need not worry about what others say of us or do to us, for it will all turn out to our advantage.'

St. Vincent de Paul

Painting: Anton Laupheimer Schreibender, Mönch

In Our Hour of Darkness

'The most beautiful Credo is the one we pronounce in our hour of darkness.'

St. Padre Pio

Painting: Arthur Hacker Seated Girl, in US  public domain due to age {{PD-1923}}

Try it and See

'Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure.'

St. Pope John Paul II

Painting: Hans Thoma Einsamer Ritt (1889)

But Not the Folly (or: how to face the world)

‘Faith, joy, optimism.  

 But not the folly of closing your eyes to reality.’

St. Josemaria Escriva

Painting:  Frederick Childe Hassam, Summer Evening 1886; in US public domain due to age

To Stir Our Soul

'People easily forget what they cannot see.... We do not see our God.  Faith tells us He is present.  But since we do not see Him with our own eyes, we're too apt to forget Him and act as though He were far away.

'As a mere matter of reasoning, we know that He is everywhere.  But if we do not keep that truth in mind, the result is the same as if we didn't know it.

'Before beginning to pray, then, we always need to stir our soul to an attentive recollection of the presence of God.'

St. Francis de Sales

Painting:  Winslow Homer, Morning Glories

This Mustard Seed

"I have a 
mustard seed, 
and I am 
not afraid 
to use it."

Pope Benedict XVI








"If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to say to this mountain. 'move from here to there,' and it would move. Nothing would be imposible for you." (Matthew 17:20)

Painting: Helen Allingham, Harvest Moon 

The Path to Unbelief

'This is the path which leads to death: 
Men first leave off private prayer;
then they neglect 
the due observance of the Lord's day;
then they gradually let slip 
from their minds the very idea 
of obedience to a fixed law;
then they actually allow 
themselves things which 
their conscience condemns; 
then they lose the direction 
of their conscience, which, 
being ill used, 
at length refuses to direct them.
And thus, being left by 
their true inward guide, 
they are obliged to take 
another guide, their reason, 
which by itself knows little 
or nothing about religion;
then their blind reason 
forms a system of right or wrong 
for them, as well as it can,
flattering to their own desires,
and presumptuous 
where it is not actually corrupt.
No wonder 
such a scheme contradicts Scripture, 
which it is soon found to do; 
not that they are certain to perceive this themselves;
they often do not know it, 
and think themselves still believers in the Gospel,
while they maintain doctrines which the Gospel condemns.
But sometimes they perceive that their system is contrary to Scripture; 
and then, instead of giving it up, they give up Scripture, and profess themselves unbelievers.  
Such is the course of disobedience, beginning in slight omissions, and ending in open unbelief.'

John Henry Cardinal Newman

Painting by Blonskaya, in US public domain due to age (PD-US)

What Will Faith Not Find?

You are good, Lord,
to the soul that seeks You.
Make me seek You with desire,
follow You with deeds,
find You through faith.
What is there that faith will not find?
It reaches inaccessible realities,
discovers the unknown,
embraces the immeasurable,
takes possession of the eternal,
and finally, in a certain manner,
contains eternity itself
with its vast expanse.'

St. Bernard





Painting: Szinyei Merse, Poppies in the Field, 1902;
in US public domain due to age