Review: Conversion

      

     Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.              
        -- Blessed John Henry Newman

    Never look down on a person unless you are picking him up.
                                   --- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

    What does it profit you if Christ comes in the flesh,  unless he also comes to your soul?
                                    --- Origen

 Fr. Haggerty is a man of deep prayer and thoughts.  This book’s subtitle “Spiritual Insights Into an Essential Encounter with God” says this well.  But even before his words, the start of each chapter has a few quotes, like those above, which are in themselves great insights.

I found the adoration chapel to be an absolutely wonderful place to read and reflect on Fr. Haggerty’s words of this book, --- and talk to Jesus about them.  Although the book has topic-focused chapters, every point he makes is done in only a paragraph or two, then there is a space in the book, indicating that this might be a point at which the reader might pause and reflect.  I had many underlines in the text, often done during my reflections.  They are things I want to come back to, and spend more time thinking about, like this one:

The poor … leave a mark on our soul, often for a reason we understand only later or perhaps only at final judgment.  Every turning aside from a poor person remains with us even if the contact is momentary.

In the final chapter Fr. Haggerty writes about conversion --- or perhaps re-conversion would better describe his point.  He gives many examples to strengthen our understanding of how this might come about.  I know I am an example of the following words he wrote:

“God meets a soul at a crossroad of life, and in some unexpected way makes his real presence known.  A personal encounter with the real mystery of a personal God is at the heart of every great conversion.

As He dragged me to Medjugorje in 1987, THE major crossroad of my life.