This Is How To Do It

I'm always eager to share the little seeds or little works of the Holy Spirit wherever I find them.  Whether they are unexpected conversions, grace-filled stories or fledgling institutes and apostolates.  I was recently edified by reading about the St. Thomas Aquinas House in inner-city Detroit.  It's a community of young men who live together, chant parts of the office, share catechesis and training in the old mass, and engage in door-to-door evangelization.  They are religious brothers (called "canons") who take vows, and there is the opportunity to study for the priesthood for those who are called.  I know the area they serve, as I returned to the faith in 2007 through a church they serve at, St. Josaphat's.

Now that's what I call a church!

If the Canons of St. Thomas Aquinas had been at St. Josaphat's back in 2007/2008 I might have tried to join them, or at least I would have followed them around like a lost puppy.  You see, in the first years after my conversion I was basically on my own.  I felt God's closeness, but I never found a priest who could take me under his wing, nor did I find any peers to share the labors in the walk with Christ.  Perhaps I was meant to be alone so as to cling ever closer to Jesus, but that's not God's usual plan.  Since heaven itself is fellowship and union, God intends for us to walk in faith together here and now.  But this is especially difficult for young men, who often have an independent spirit and don't see their place in graying parishes with few of their peers.

Yet there are few things more considerable than a band of young men joined together in a common purpose.  I learned this lesson in a maximum security prison where I witnessed dangerous convicts brought together in peace (more or less) under the "convict code": a shared worldview of discipline, justice and brotherhood.  The convict code made prison bearable and safe (at least for those who adhered to the code), and it laid the groundwork for deep friendships.

God desires to bring young men together, and for a higher calling than mere convict justice!  I've noticed that a hallmark of many saints is that they served as a magnet for other young men.  There are the obvious examples: Sts. Francis and Dominic, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri in devastated Rome, and then lesser known examples like St. Paul of the Cross or St. Clement Hofbauer at St. Benno's in Warsaw.  Even as the founders became elderly (like Philip Neri and John Henry Newman) they continued to attract dedicated young men.  These fellowships produced many other saints since "iron sharpens iron", and the effects of their friendships even resound to our own day.

The Canons Regular of Thomas Aquinas on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land

I'm grateful that the archbishop of Detroit and other good bishops have welcomed new communities and new approaches to evangelization.  So long as they are deeply rooted in the Church and her wisdom throughout the centuries, they will bear fruit.  Some are unconventional like Fr. Jacques Philippe's Community of the Beatitudes or the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles (which I wrote about here) or even this little apostolate.  The Church has many great needs today, and in many places she is looking out upon a "Devastated Vineyard" (to borrow the title from a Dietrich Von Hildebrand book).  Now is not the time to get in the way of the Holy Spirit!

The Canons of Thomas Aquinas have the right approach to re-seed the vineyard.  They offer the wisdom of a deep understanding of our faith, the courage to evangelize, the charity and solidarity of brotherhood, and the heavenly beauty of our ancient liturgy and arts.  May the face of Christ shine upon them!

Fix Your Gaze on the Supernatural, Part II

If I wrote with conviction in the first part of this post, it's because I was leaning heavily on a remarkable dream from six years ago.  It has always struck me as more than just a dream--or else I wouldn't bother to write about it.  Though I was asleep, it was an experience of great clarity and vividness of color and image.  It also progressed at a patient pace, as though I was supposed to savor and remember every little detail.  Simply put, the whole experience felt as though God was showing me something.

The day of the dream had been a grueling one.  I had no children at the time, and so I was able to spend six hours outside of the Beaverton Planned Parenthood with the 40 Days for Life apostolate.  During those hours, we prayed, shared faith stories, talked to the curious, and absorbed the blows of the angry.  For whatever reason, those who resented us displayed even greater anger and confrontation than normal.  Even more sorrowful, several of the post-abortive women were visibly traumatized by their abortion.  One Indian woman pushed away from her husband and children and vomited in the bushes.  Another woman could barely walk, and her boyfriend, a successful-looking urban professional, looked simultaneously helpless and guilty.  I thought they looked like Adam and Eve, newly wounded, limping away from the Garden of Life.  I guess I felt helpless too, overwhelmed with the sin and suffering, and so the dream mercifully followed.

The dream began with a distant view of a knoll set in a fertile valley.  On the knoll was a glorified Christ, bloodlessly reigning from his cross.  I understood that the valley was lush and fertile only because His cross was planted there.  Then the image zoomed forward and I saw myself behind the cross, half sitting, half-reclining in his crucified shadow.  I hoped I would always remain there, in his refuge.  Then the view shifted, and I was looking out from my seat behind the cross.  I looked at the wood of the cross, smooth and strong, a tree like steel.  Then our Lord's powerful thigh was before my eyes.  It was tan and muscular like an ancient Roman sculptor's ideal, though Christ's body was not like marble but was coursing with life.

I desired to lift my gaze upward along Jesus' body, but couldn't do so.  All I was allowed to see was a leg.  Then my view was directed to the sky and great clouds assembled, covering every inch of skyline.  It began to rain, a torrent of drops drenching every thing in sight.  It continued to rain and rain and rain.  The drops dripped in steady beads from my brow and cascaded down the cross, forming streams down our Lord's leg.  I followed the stream down Christ's leg and saw something remarkable take place in the earth.

A myriad of rivulets were formed from the rain water, and moved with tiny purpose.  It was evident that this wasn't ordinary rain water.  All of my attention was now focused on the innumerable paths of the water. The water was patient, and able to work its way along every crack and crevice in the ground.  It wound its way past tiny pebbles, over gleaming minerals, and along hard or soft soil.  I thought of the Vidi Aquam: "I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple [Christ's body], and all those to whom the water came were saved."  Then I recalled St. Faustina's diary, and the Divine Mercy image of blood and water.

After watching the waters for some time, I looked up towards the clouds.  I knew the clouds would never stop pouring.  They would never empty or move on.  The rain drops glistened and fell like tiny parachutes.  They were uncountable, a superabundance of grace from heaven.  The world was saturated with grace, and nothing was untouched by Christ.

When I awoke, I regained my hope for the poor men and women I had seen leaving Planned Parenthood.  Their very misery was itself a grace trying to crack their hardened hearts.  Even vomiting in the bushes can be a grace!  I knew God would pursue them through every twist and turn of their lives, calling them back to Him.

I was sure that our Christian witness outside of Planned Parenthood was a little trickle of grace through many lives.  We might seem like failures at the purely natural level, and we won't know the fruits of our charity this side of heaven.  I was also grateful that the Lord was with the 40 Days for Life crew, placing his faithful witnesses in the shadow of his cross, where we reclined. We've taken blows from every side, but God is with us.  We know that to many of our fellow catholics and even clergy, we are an embarrassment, an expression of "zealotry" or an "imbalanced faith".  But that's okay.  One person's 'zealot' is another man's 'fool for Christ'.  Perhaps it's time for the critics to put on their supernatural glasses.

Fix Your Gaze on the Supernatural, Part I

During the nine years since my conversion (how time flies!), I have always returned to One Big Idea: the pre-eminence of the supernatural over the natural; or the notion that the real action, the real narrative of our lives takes place at the supernatural level.  This idea flies in the face of contemporary wisdom.  Whereas the Catholic Faith was once at the center of how people understood their world (with concepts like grace, sin, providence, intercession, atonement), it has been surrendered to the margins.  We now go about our lives in our ordinary way, feeding the demands of the body and skimming the surface of life.  Meanwhile God seems to play the good Deist, rarely intervening from his hidden heaven, though he might show up when there's a crisis or at death.

It's very easy to slide into the naturalist trap, reducing life to the things of the senses, riding the great carnival of modern life.  I was once a doggedly naturalist doctoral student whose guiding light was the materialist and skeptic, David Hume. My dissertation was an attempt to vindicate David Hume's "evolutionary" account of the purely natural origins of justice by examining how norms of convict justice (the "convict code") developed in prison.  That's a complicated way of saying that I didn't think we needed God for anything, not even a grounding in ethics!  Yet only God's grace could turn a die-hard naturalist into a zealot for the unseen kingdom of God, and this is a lovely joke to God and a soar-spot to demons.

In point of fact, there can never be a purely natural account of human affairs since our lives are drenched in the supernatural: we have eternal souls that are simultaneously distorted by original sin and yet hard-wired to seek God or at least shadowy idols.  Every day we experience both divine grace and demonic temptation.  Some of us are transformed by grace going from "strength to strength" while others fall into a labyrinth of the Devil's own making.  Since it's easier to see with the eyes of the body than the eyes of faith, we miss these truths because God has us work out our salvation amidst the noisy, humdrum world.  Yet it is God's genius that he bestows his grace in the contours of our material lives, along a subtle providence that is often missed.

Grace is everywhere, if you look for it.

Even after my conversion, I clung to some naturalist prejudices.  Naturalism dies hard.  Actually, it brings death with it. Many religious orders have now died or are dying because they took a naturalist turn some fifty years ago.  They came out of the cloister, became more "active", ignored their Divine Office and prayer (since the effects of prayer are usually unseen), they focused on socio-economic/structural causes of human misery instead of personal sin, etc.  They told classic naturalist stories like re-interpreting the feeding of the five thousand as a "miracle of sharing" rather than a miraculous multiplication of food by the Incarnate Word.  They stopped using supernatural words like "sin", and spoke of how "values" change (they usually meant sexual ethics) as conditions change and people come to a "greater understanding".  The Jesuit order has been typical of the "naturalist turn", and their order has been cut in half in the last fifty years.  Meanwhile, those Jesuits who remain average somewhere between 65-70 years of age.  By contrast, read this sermon from a growing religious order full of remarkable young men.  It might be the best sermon I've ever read, and it's a clarion call for living the faith with "supernatural glasses".  It also captures how street evangelists feel while walking a post-Christian city: "We are the Lord's gentle spies!"

Grace is Everywhere

Those with faith know that without God we can do nothing.  Take the other day for example.  While walking the streets in my tunic, a street-wise young black man approached me and said, somewhat embarrassed, "Hey, I know you don't know me and all, but can you pray for me?  I really need help with some things right now."  He told me his name was 'Merlin'. Now I believe that it was grace that gave Merlin the courage to stop and talk to me.  Why?  Because there were all sorts of natural barriers to dissuade him from making such a request.  Men don't like to ask other men for help--especially strangers.  Moreover, there is still an uneasy racial divide in this country, and it often leads to social discomfort or even suspicion. Finally, his request was an acknowledgment of weakness, a confession that "I can't handle my life right now". Nobody likes to ask a stranger for that kind of help!  Bless young Merlin for responding to God's prompting, and may he go from grace to grace.

I witnessed another work of grace during the Mass of the Lord's Supper, on Holy Thursday.  I have a 13 month old baby boy, Gabriel, who loves to watch people, but he is shy and doesn't like to be held or touched by "strangers".  He even used to wail in fright whenever the poor priest would reach out his hand in a blessing.  After I received communion on Holy Thursday he wanted to see the Good Shepherd statue in the back of the church.  I lifted him up for a look, and he stretched out in delight, grasping the hand of Jesus.  Then he leaned in three times and kissed the hand.  My wife and I were stupefied.  But little Gabriel wasn't done yet.  Then he stretched further up and kissed the face of Jesus several more times.  Finally, he brought us back down to earth by moving over to the lamb on Jesus' shoulder and declaring, "Kitty cat."  He thinks all animals are kitty cats, and it's one of the few words he can say.  While not everything "out of the mouth of babes" is reliable, Gabriel gave us a lesson in child-like wisdom and tenderness.

He greeted Jesus with a kiss of love

Sometimes grace can be painful.  Take the example of my recently deceased grandmother.  Before her sudden death, God gave her two important graces to try to win a repentance of heart.  You see, Grandma (and Grandpa) was not a lovely person.  She was estranged from both of her children for decades.  She rarely had a generous word for others, and liked to say things like, "I LOVE money.  I simply love money."  She could be a bold sinner. A few months ago I mailed her a relic card of St. Charbel blessed in holy oil from a recent tour of his relics.  She gave back the card with a tart remark, "I don't like beards."  You get the idea.  Yet God pursued her to the end, as He always does.  First, he arranged that their wallet was stolen or lost when a furnace repairman visited the house.  This sent my grandparents into bizarre, paranoid fantasies that the repairman was going to return to the house to finish the job: stealing their car, jewelry, mink coats and more.  Things got worse when I reported the lost wallet to the furnace company.  Now they imagined the repairman would return and burn their house down out of vengeance, or "throw acid" in my grandmother's face. Somewhere in this terrible farce was a great grace: God was letting my grandparents stew in the effects of their grave sin.  He was asking them: "Do you really want to spend eternity like this?  In paroxysms of anxiety, alienation, recrimination, hatred and terror?  That is what Hell is like, and that's what you have chosen so far."  Grandma eventually got the idea and began to take stock of things.  Then she was given another grace: her sister (who also worshipped mammon) unexpectedly died.  This shook her again, leading to another round of soul-searching.  Finally, she also died unexpectedly, though we all assumed she would live another 15 years.  God had gone out of his way to win her back, even though she didn't deserve it.  Grace is like that.  Love is like that.

To be continued...

Private Revelations & Patience

Over the past year, some of the best Catholics I know started to wonder at the apocalyptic prophecies of a Colorado man named Charlie Johnston.  When he came to Portland on a speaking tour, they were in attendance, and my contact in the archdiocese (for the street apostolate) even wrote of his private support in a circulated e-mail.  I opted not to attend (even though I had peeked in on Charlie's blog over the years), and instead watched his archived talk from Birmingham, Alabama.  I came away skeptical, and his home Archdiocese of Denver has recently released a letter "strongly" advising their caution.

While most Catholics simply ignore contemporary private revelations, and others have an understandable aversion to them, there is something afoot when prayerful, servants of Christ are pulled in that direction.  Fr. Mitch Pacwa attended the Birmingham talk, and Patrick Madrid later hosted Charlie Johnston on his radio show.  Neither offered their support, but it is remarkable that each thought it was worthwhile to give him a hearing.  It is clear that many faithful Catholics have begun to fear that the esalating rebellion from God has finally gone too far.  Like the ancient Israelites, they mourn the eclipse of God among their own people.  They fear that national disaster will follow sin (as it inevitably does in our individual lives), and yet they also hope for divine rescue.  Charlie Johnston's prophecies have piqued both their fear and their hope.  He has prophesied global civil wars and economic collapse by 2017, and the disruption of the upcoming electoral cycle.  Then in late 2017, he claims that God will reach down in mercy and rescue his weary people through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  There will follow a re-unification among Christians, as well as a lengthy period of peace and prosperity.

Charlie's prophecies seem too incredible to be true.  But then again, events like the Russian Revolution, the rise of the obscure Nazi party to near world domination, the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge etc. also defy our good judgment. Just listen to those who lived through those times--such events were unthinkable even a decade before.  While Charlie's political and economic predictions are highly improbable, where he really loses me is in his understanding of the action of God. Our God is meek and humble of heart, and unlike demons, he is reticent in displaying his power.  He favors being born in a stable, dying abandoned on the cross, and most of all, he takes pleasure in working through us.  He delights in seeing his glory manifested through us, especially the most humble, wretched and unknown of his people.  When we need rescuing, he sends us a St. Francis with his army of beggar-saints, or he soothes his wounded heart through the hidden sufferings of young nuns: St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Therese of  Lisieux, Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, Blessed Marie-Celine of the Visitation, St. Faustina, St. Mariam Baouardy and more.  These holy women were near contemporaries of each other.  That's extraordinary!

Blessed Elizabeth will soon be canonized a saint.

In our own troubled days, God will send us our own saints.  In recent posts I have pointed to men that have been favored by the Holy Spirit, and some have even advanced along the road to sanctity.  Fr. Jacques Philippe has the wisdom and love of the Holy Spirit, and Cardinal Sarah will have a lengthy, consequential reign as our next pope.  He will bring clarity and unity of purpose even as the world prefers her false gods.  The Church will regain her spiritual strength and vision, birthing new saints and martyrs, amidst "The Long Defeat" (Tolkien's lovely phrase) leading to the Second Coming.  That's my prophecy anyway. It isn't sexy, it doesn't satisfy our outrage or our cry for God's stupendous intervention, but it is the way of the Lord.  Our task now is to simply follow Him in patience, and grow in faith, hope and love.

The Catholic Herald tweets his "unstoppable rise" :-)

Laughter & Fervor of Spirit

I heartily recommend a trip to the theater to see the movie Risen.  Many viewers have described it as the best Christian film since The Passion of the Christ.   It may not rise to the level of The Island or Ida but it's certainly the best English language faith film in a decade.  There are many moments in the film where I was impressed by the filmmakers dramatic timing, insights into character, faithfulness to historical detail, but it can't quite sustain this excellence throughout.   Yet it had enough artistic merit  to shake me out of the cold/flu season doldrums.

It's usually best to watch such films alone, and without any distraction.  Just as you go on a retreat to be alone with yourself and your God, so will worthy Christian art benefit from a quiet, open soul.  If you allow the Holy Spirit to work, a good Christian film or story will leave you in a raw heap.  While watching Risen, I was shaken by the pettiness of my own life in contrast to Christ's sacrifice and the dramatic first days of the Church.  I am easily absorbed by minor problems, distracted by sins and imperfections.  It's so easy to lose site of the big picture: namely, Jesus is risen, he has made us his brothers, and we are to "die" for others as he has died for us.

I think we always feel like lousy Christians when we watch Christ walk with his apostles amidst miracles and brotherly love.  We marvel at the revolutionary fervor of the kingdom of heaven made visibly present, and contrast it with our own dullness of spirit.  We often lack the wonder, boldness and great hope of the first disciples or even the early Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits.  Some critics of Risen have objected to the giddy joy of the character Barnabas.  But as I can attest, that is the normal response of an encounter with the Living God, of witnessing Christ's triumph over sin.  This ecstatic joy has it's time and place, but it needs to give way to a harder-won joy.

Christ doesn't want us to be strong in the Spirit through miracles or extraordinary graces.  That would be the Spirit on-the-cheap, or easy grace.  The path to the Kingdom of Heaven is an arduous ascent, as depicted in this famous 12th century icon.

St. Peter Chrysologus reminds us in a sermon from the Office of Readings, that holiness comes from the fruitful union of prayer, fasting and acts of mercy.  He writes, "Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives.  Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other."  That may not sound enticing, but it is the means to a joy that is even more irrepressible.

The other day I saw this joy in the person of Fr. Jacques Philippe.  He is a well-known author and retreat-master who has a hush-hush reputation as a mystic and walking saint.  Fr. Philippe would be horrified at the description, but that's the scuttlebutt.  Some of our local priests, fresh out of seminary, were giddy like Barnabas to host him for a Lenten retreat at a Portland parish, and the nearby Maronite monks knew a blessing when they saw it.  On the second day of the retreat, as I watched his small figure in a brown Carmelite habit, I was utterly convinced that he would be raised to the altars one day. As he spoke, my soul glided along the cadence of his words, but my focus was on his person and his irrepressible laughter.  It was as though St. Peter of Alcantara or St. John Joseph of the Cross stood before us, and in fact, he is united with them in Christ's mystical body.  Fr. Philippe couldn't speak of God without little laughs and smiles, letting us in on his secret even as he spoke in French.  After one of the talks I asked for his blessing for this apostolate, and afterwards he gave me one of those smiles.  A smile of Christ who loves his children, a smile between two Christians who know something the world will never understand.

Another Beautiful Conversion Story

"I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly."

                                                                                    Gospel of John 10:10

As I've grown deeper in the faith, I've marveled at how the Catholic faith completes the whole person: it quenches all of our deepest longings and provides a purpose for every moment and season of our lives.  That is the genius of the faith, and the surest proof that it has a divine origin.  This is sometimes obscure to those born into the faith, but it is easily noticed by converts from other faith traditions (with the exception of the Orthodox, who enjoy the same grace) .  The late Fr. Hugh Thwaites SJ noticed this when he was a prisoner of war in East Asia, and Philip Trower delightfully explores these divine "hints" in his conversion from a lapsed Anglican.

I warmly recommend Philip Trower's corpus of writings, but especially his charming conversion story.  It starts off a bit slow with a fussy introduction, but then he begins to drop juicy bits of insight as we step into his life in 1930s England.  He was blessed with a Catholic nanny and "Auntie" who both possessed "a holy light-heartedness".  He had a child's wisdom and recognized what most adults miss: that there is something different about devout Catholics, they "have something which gives them brighter more shining eyes than other people."  I noticed this myself when I first began to join the 40 Days for Life vigils outside of Planned Parenthood.  It's an often thankless ministry, a time of the cross, yet many of the regulars had a supernatural light in their eyes.  This should not be surprising, for as young Philip learned, "self-giving love is the very heart of Christianity." Just as the heart brims with love, so does it spill out into the eyes.

Philip was also impressed that Catholics embrace the cross as well as great feasts.  There is no contradiction there, but only completeness.  Thus, "after mass the people were allowed to enjoy themselves...they could eat, drink, dance or play games together before going home."  There is something natural and effortless about this, it suits our very being.

The same can be said of expressing the faith through communal processions, material symbols and images or even dropping by a church any day of the week.  As a young man, Philip was impressed at seeing a lonely chapel on a hike on the Matterhorn.

One of the chapels at the base of the Matterhorn

It seemed such a natural thing to worship God on such a rugged site, and so fitting to enter and rest from his journey. Inside he saw two peasant women peacefully praying the rosary, just as their ancestors had done centuries before.

The Catholic faith seemed to have a fitting response for every situation--even amidst the madness of the Second World War.  Philip witnessed the Catholic soldiers kneeling for confession right before entering battle.  Why didn't the Protestant chaplains exercise such a ministry?  Protestants seemed to have a knack for the care of the body, but the Catholics knew how to care for the soul.  This was confirmed in a hospital ward after an officer died in the night.  The Italian cleaning ladies noticed his death and put off their duties.  With a "childlike naturalness and spontaneity", they knelt and prayed for his soul.  By contrast, the British staff draped a flag over the deceased and efficiently disposed of his body.

Philip was also taken by the different churches he found in Italy.  Many of them were simultaneously "pretty and homely". They captured a feeling that Jesus must have known in the "home of Martha and Mary at Bethany".  Then there was also the grand spectacle of cathedrals, a fitting worship for Christ as the King of Kings.  But Philip realized the cathedrals also served another purpose: the "great works of art, architecture, painting and sculpture are available to all, the poorest of the poor included.  There was a populist dimension to Catholicism..."

The most profound truth in the story comes from the lips of an Oxford don with deep Catholic sympathies.  It was a prophetic statement, and true for each of us in our own way:

"You will never find love until you find it in the tabernacle."

All of us are still trying to embrace that love, so enormous and so pure.

I've already revealed too much of the story, and so I encourage you to read the rest over there.  The author is an endearing man, and has a sparkling mind even into his 90s.  I especially liked the remark that he wanted to be a famous novelist but God spared him from that since he was "too naturally weak and vain to have survived such a test."  Amen! Me too!

Something Worth Watching

It's not often that I'm really "wowed" by something on the Catholic internet, and when it happens I'm compelled to share. Here is Jay Sardino's absorbing conversion story from a recent episode of The Journey Home.

In some ways it's a familiar tale, and it's even my own story: a young man is raised in a lukewarm Catholic milieu, and is never offered the clear truth and beauty of Christ and his Church.  He embraces the club scene with its exhilarating music, easy women, booze/drugs, while he fashions his career and fitness into an idol.  Then the Lord takes it all away and he faces the ugly emptiness of his own life.

Yet Jay's witness is more compelling than usual.  Why is that?  For one thing, Jay speaks with conviction.  Like St. Paul, this is a serious man, yet he's also a man of depth and warmth.  For another, he exposes the "naked emperor" of contemporary christianity: suffering is not our real enemy, but is often an opportunity of grace.  In fact, it is sin that is our real foe.  Mother Theresa and all of the saints testify that "pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus--a sign that you have come so close to him that he can kiss you."  It is in welcoming this kiss that we become "another Christ, a little Christ".

Jay is also a witness to the truth that we are called to offer ourselves for sinners, just as Christ did.  Jay recognizes that sacrifice is the very heart, the real purpose of the Christian life.  He is captivated by the Divine Mercy and the story of St. Faustina Kowalska.  He hears the call of the Crucified One to Sr. Faustina: "immerse yourself with all the sinners you can, and bring them to me".  This is the perennial call of Jesus, and it is also the call of this street apostolate.  While we walk the streets to be of service to everyone, we especially wait for the sinner who straddles the edge between the abyss and conversion.  We especially need men like Jay, men who have straddled that edge, to go out and be a beacon for lost sinners.  May the Lord do great things through Jay!