Jordi's Witness

Here's a witness (re)conversion story from my favorite Lay Dominican Postulant about St. John of the Cross. 

"Con la autoridad del Sumo Pontífice Gregorio XIII..."
With these words San Juan de la Cruz hears his prison sentence pronounced. Around him, Tostado, Maldonado and other unkind faces glare at him with no sign of Christ in their rotten hearts. The only loving face he sees when he closes his eyes is the image of Jesus and his last visit with Teresa de Cepeda, that wonderful woman who sang so beautifully, even when she was feeling ill, who understood him and could hold intelligent conversations with him better than any man, about real things, not material things.

Saint John of the Cross was the first saint I reached out to in my first dark night of the soul in Denver, Colorado. The elders at the Denver Church of Christ, a Fundamentalist Born-Again non-denominational church that I had served for months, deemed my views heretical and when they found me with my friend Leete, also a Born-Again Christian, but from a different Fundamentalist Church that allowed musical instruments in worship, they condemned me to house imprisonment and corrective instruction under the tutelage of a kind man who explained how worried he was for my soul.

It was the day I found Sanctuary at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and Erin, who was going through her own dark night herself. We felt like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and we found sanctuary at the Altar of Peace and answers from a Priest who never made an appearance in the news for all his good deeds, and never will. The news doesn't care for such priests, for the news and the false Christians all serve the same false god of nationalism, pharisaical rules devoid of spirit, and hate.

I returned to my Catholic faith that day, and gained a female friend who wanted nothing more from me than my friendship, and that can be just as beautiful as any other road.