To Be Home . . .

It's great to be home after a summer of intense traveling . . . but unfortunately, it won’t be home for long. We had success in Urbana-Champaign (or Champaign-Urbana) in finding a house. That job accomplished, we now set to work on the million and one things one has to do when moving from one state to another. However, the trip also was the opportunity to experience God’s Providence at work. Tricia and I met a very interesting man in Champaign. He is originally from Champaign and has a varied background. He started out as a rock singer and songwriter and traveled with his band; he even ended up with a recording contract and a stint on MTV. When he had children, he decided that he needed to get something more substantial and went back to school and ended up with an M.A. in English. He had applied this in various ways until he went to Rome for the bestowal of the pallium by JP the Great on a very close family friend. This experience led him to discern a call to get a law degree and work directly for the Church. He had a scholarship in a weekend program but soon also discerned that he was being called to go to Ave Maria law school. He told me that he began to have doubts when at the last moment everything seemed to be falling apart. He had rented a house in Michigan and moved his family up there when his funding seemed to unravel and he could not rent his house. Then he got a call out of the blue from someone who had been given his phone number by a property manager who had been too busy to manage his property; she actually had to fish it out of the trash basket. The call was from me. I wondered why he had become so emotional when I told him where I was working and what I would be doing. He recognized God’s hand at work much sooner than did I. Short story long, we will be renting his house while he and his family are in MI. This event reminds me of a talk I had with my wife’s nephew when we visited him in Charleston, SC earlier this summer. He mentioned that his formerly agnostic roommate shared with him a recent experience in which he recognized that God was working through him. The details are not important but the point that his roommate made was that he came to recognize that for anyone who is not open to it, experiences of transcendence can be dismissed as coincidence, emotions, etc. However, when one is open, even if not yet a believer, God can make His presence known in an unmistakable manner. These supra-rationale experiences may not always be obvious but it seems to me that they are simply extraordinary manifestations of the gift of faith. The precursor to faith, however, is an open and trusting heart.