When I was 17, I stopped going to Mass....at the time, I was hanging with my close high school brothers, and everything revolved around beer and herbs, beer and herbs---everything was a good reason for beer and herbs. I functioned well enough, have never been out of work, but I was just too cool to go to Mass, even though I never stop believing in God, even for a second.....I was just too cool, too busy, too worried about what my friends might think if I went to Mass....and certainly didnt fit in with my everythings a reason to party lifestyle at the time. I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff---the type of stuff thats fine in the beginning if youre footloose and fancy free---what if youre on a downer the type of stuff that artificially magnifies the downer, making it seem 10 or a hundred times worse. In a very short period of time, my second dad, who I had grown quite close to and visited every night during his battle with lung cancer, died. Around that same time, lost a position as office manager, and when that haopened, my girlfriend broke up with me....and because of the harder stuff, it all seemed a hundred times worse than it was all hitting me at once. I got depressed and paranoid----turned into a bit of an a-hole avparanoid a-hole, couldnt have been fun to be around, so when I had a falling out with my group of high school friends I had been hanging out with for more than a decade, that plunged me into a deep cclinical depression. For months I could not remember what it felt like to be happy, .indeed I had forgotten what it felt like to be PAUL.....extremely painful extremely distressing and worrisome, to say the least....talk about down in the hole. I could not sleep more than 3 hours or 4 hours without adrenaline kicking in at 3 in the morning, returning me to my state of high anxiety. I decided to go talk to a couple of counselors, which I did every week for about 6 months and then again for another 6 months about a year later. I was alone--alone in so far as my close band of brothers from the high school days, but something told me---reminded me how much I used to enjoy the Mass at my familys parish, particularly the 6:30 p.m. Mass served by a tremendous folk music apostolate. I decided to go to midnight Mass in 1990. It was there I had my encounter with The Holy Spirit----durin the Our Father, sung uniquely and beautifully by Joy Incorporated, I felt The Holy Spirit in a physically palpable way.....to this day 24 years later they are accurately described as goosebumps of the Holy Spirit. I felt warm, filled. Went to say hello to Pat and the choir to tell them just how much I enjoyed The Mass and their musicin particular. Went home, had a nice Christmas the next day. Did not attend Mass again until a month later attending a regular 6:30 p.m. Mass the first weekend in February.....sure enough during joy Incorporateds beautiful rendition of the Lords Prayer, I again experience the goosebumps of the Holy Spirit......went to talk to pack the choir director to thank him and tell him of my experience at midnight Mass and then again at the just completed Mass. Of course he said that it was a sign that I needed to come sing with him and his choir...lol. As I had not sung in a choir since 9th grade, I was resistant, nervous, trepidatious. Next Sunday, I went to talk to Pat before Mass, he was short handed--said he only had a few singers up in the choir loft and it was less than 5 minutes to go time----if I was ever going to come sing with him that was the time----I remember nervously climbing the steps in the choir loft, the processional starting, it thankfully it was a song I knew by heart......and Pat and Joy Incorporated, my familys parish and The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have not been able to get rid of me in the 24 years since. By the way----as a kid and as a teenager- -I had faith and never lost that faith----but none of the why the who what when where why and how never interested me and escaped me. When I return to Mass after the palpable experience with the Holy Spirit, I returned within on fire vengeance. A lady in the choir gave me a book by a former anti Catholic protestant minister by the name of Dr Scott Hahn, who had in so anti Catholic that he had prided himself at the ease by which he was able to steal sheep from the Catholic Christian Church. The book I was given was titled Rome Sweet Home---and recounted Dr Scott horns incredible journey---his desperate attempt to remain protestant, but eventually surrender to intellectual honesty this Multi degreed notoriously anti-catholic presbyterian minister, gave up his paying teaching position at university, his paying position as a minister in a local Presbyterian Church, nearly lost his wife who was still holding on to her anti Catholic prejudice. I read the book in one sitting--not intending to I started at 10 oclock in the evening one night---it was so dramatic that at 4 oclock in the morning I finished the book with the tears of the Holy Spirit running down my face. Thanks to Dr Scott Hahn, might have a Christian faith not only made perfect sense in my heart, but it was reinforced by the fact that I was now able to say with certainty that it made perfect sense in a logical reasonable and critical thinking intellectual way as well The lday in Joy Inc heard and saw me bubbling, overflowing with the Holy Spirit and started reading more books on conversion stories and apologetics, and Here I am 20 years later, hundreds of conversion stories and apologetics books, and The Journey Home episodes later, the rest is history as they say. Here I am--Paul Lasecki, proud, certain, on fire evangelical inferno Catholic Christian. So on fire that I hope in about 40 or 50 years from now to spontaneously combust as I joined the intensely burning flames and fires of heaven where I will hear those wonderful words Well done my good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your masters house!
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 17:40:03 +0000
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