Change My Heart

 

I was making the short drive to church, when on the radio I heard a man speak of how he had been Catholic, went to college, and then like all those around him thought his faith unimportant.  He was becoming an OBGYN, and began performing abortions --- a woman’s right.  After two years, he said, a friend asked him to go on a pilgrimage to a place called Medjugorje, in Yugoslavia.  He declined, but a couple of days later his mother asked him the same thing.  So he went, “and on cross hill I suddenly realized all I had ignored as unimportant in faith matters in my life was all true.  And nothing else mattered more.”  He went home and told his co-workers he could never again perform an abortion, and he grew in faith and pro-life advocacy.

When I heard his conversion at Medjugorje story, I cried.  It was my story.  Like him, I fell on my knees there, as in an instant I knew all I had ignored as unimportant was true, and from then on nothing was more important in my life as I, like him, grew in faith.  I am not a medical person; I have never performed an abortion (thank God), but my life impacted many others.  And because God changed my life, I helped Him change the lives of others.  Nothing is more important.  And the song echoed in my brain: “Change my heart, O God; make it ever true.  Change my heart, O God, I want to be like You.”

I know of many people who have studied their way into the Catholic faith.  I know of some who have prayed for God to enter their lives or the lives of a loved one, and He did. I didn’t study, nor did I pray or know anyone who prayed for me.  Yet, God in His love and mercy changed my heart, in a little village in Yugoslavia.

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And later this morning, I read from a letter to the Corinthians, by St. Clement, pope:

It is our duty then to be eager to do good, for everything is from God.  He urges us, who believe in him with all our heart, not to be idle or careless in any good work.  Our boasting and confidence must rest in him.  Let us be subject to his will…. Beloved, how blessed, how wonderful are God’s gifts!... What then are those gifts that are in store for those who wait for him?  Only the most holy Creator and Father of the ages knows their greatness and their splendor.

We should then strive with the greatest zeal to be found among the number of those who await him, so that we may share in the promised gifts.  How will this be, beloved?  If our mind is fixed on God through faith, if we are diligent in seeking what is pleasing and acceptable to him, if we fulfill what is according to his blameless will, and follow the way of truth, casting away from ourselves all that is unholy.

Change my heart, O God …