Why I Give A Damn

Okay, so I’m not only a practicing Catholic, I’m a Catholic who cares about his faith and for good reason.

Many decades ago when I was too young to know any better, I arrived at the church to attend Sunday Mass, all in Latin back then, and sitting at the back I began to wonder how could the death of a man two thousand years ago free me from sins I commit today?  It was a bewildering question for a boy.  Then the thought occurred that sometime in the future, when I’m older and wiser, I may understand.  I decided there and then to simply accept a truth on face value with the hope of understanding when the time was right.

There were steps I had to go through, some of them difficult, to reach this understanding but here I don’t want to write a book.  So I’ll be as brief as I can.  Skip forward to my early twenties when I was working in Ireland as a Colour Separation Artist.  One Sunday I was on my way to Mass, walking toward the River Liffey that flows through Droichead Nua (Newbridge).  The church was on the other side of the river and as I neared the flowing unpolluted waters, I began to wonder about the existence of God.  It occurred to me that man, a being with limited knowledge and wisdom, was attempting to prove the existence of a ‘Perfect Being’ with unrestricted knowledge and wisdom.  I concluded that God’s existence could not be proven in a way that left no doubt, but God could be known through the way He reveals himself.  For me it simply made sense and once again I accepted it.  The following Sunday I left the church after Mass and was crossing the bridge spanning the River Liffey when I happened to glance at the far bank.  Everything seemed bathed in a light that came from within; there was a presence in everything that lived. In the plants, the trees, the land as far as I could see; it was everywhere, all about me.  It was an invisible presence, but present in the light and filling everything.  It suddenly occurred to me that everyone must think me odd gawking at all this, so I looked around and suddenly realised I was still crossing the bridge and hadn’t broken step.  What I had thought had taken minutes had happened in a microsecond – as if time stood still.

Scientists have tried to explain away such experiences by saying that particular parts of the brain can be stimulated to produce similar experiences.  Yeah sure!  A Cricket ball didn’t bang me on the head when this happened, and it was well after my mind had been focused on God’s existence – a question I had already settled.  There was no reason to even suppose some kind of influence inspired this experience that came out of the blue.  In any case, more was to come.

Following other inexplicable experiences, while studying for the priesthood some years later I was with the other students on retreat at the Redemptorist Retreat House, Esker, when I rose rather early one morning.  I decided to go for a walk in the grounds and in the peace of the early morning I began to reflect over my life wondering what it was that had brought me to that particular place at that time.  As I reflected I began to realise that I had been given choices and where I had chosen right, doors opened.  As I reflected a pattern emerged and in the pattern an intelligence way beyond my own.  I was stunned to realise that God was so close to a nobody like me!  I then realised that it’s the same for all of us.  To God there is no such thing as a nobody, we are all of equal value to him, we all matter to him and it’s for this reason he forgave us.

I left the Redemptorists, but not the path that God had set out for me to follow.  One more thing led to another and gradually my naivety gave way to growing wisdom.  Again, to keep the story short, I eventually realised and understood the nature of human redemption.  The question I had asked as a boy had been answered, not by human wisdom but by openness to the Holy Spirit and sincere trust in God.

My faith is rooted in nature, in creation itself and in the spirit that moves through the world; a creative spirit filled with love for all humanity.  So why is humanity beset with problems?  If humanity were to look in a mirror it would have its answer.  Problems are created by human beings acting against the natural order of things, by going against the way things should be.  I don’t personally care if you are a Catholic or a Protestant, what matters is your faith and trust in God.  Trust God.  That’s my final word.