It's a small small Catholic world...

So after Pere Andre made a rather negative comment about a certain reggae concert held last Halloween, I have been wondering whether despite both their evident Christian charity he and Christophe and Anne were secret nemeses all this time or something. Wow I'm suspicious and cynical. Turns out not only do they know eachother and are on good terms, but Pere Andre was one of three carefully chosen concelebrants at Anne and Christophe's wedding.

Which is how Christophe came to be at the Aumonerie tonight telling his conversion story.

Sometimes in my cynicism I wonder, do people make this stuff up? Are there some people that say to themselves, yes I have faith in God, I know He's good, and so should everyone else, so I'm going to make up these really incredible stories about the miracles He's done in my life so everyone else will know He's good too. As long as they think He's great, who cares if I stretch or outright invent the truth now and then? (what is truth?)

But I can't imagine Christophe making something like this up...maybe precisely because it's too unbelievable. Just looking at him gives you this overwhelming impression of rock solidness, steadiness, maybe even stoicism. The idea of him with dreadlocks, much less as drug dealer, army deserter, and squatter, is absolutely absurd. But that was his past.

(ok, the fact that he's mostly bald now contributes to the dreads disbelief... but still)

Everything changed during a pilgrammage (to a certain Marian shrine where they have masses in Latin and Croatian...hmm...( that is, Medjugore, controversial site with reported Marian apparitions daily, where they seem to get a lot of miraculous conversions)) during which he told God He had 15 minutes to prove his existance and decided that getting blocked into the chapel with thousands and thousands of Pilgrams and listening to the story of the Prodigal son...the only part of the mass in French...sufficed. It didn't hurt that he next went to confession, was "released from attachment to drugs and all they entail" by the priest and woke up the next morning not feeling like doing any of the stuff he was on at the time, and was miraculously able to bend and run on a knee that had been broken and had healed badly so he hadn't been able to really bend it for two years previously.

It's mostly just good to know that two of my favorite Catholic men in France, even though they have such different ways of expressing their Catholicism and don't always agree with those of the other, can be brothers and friends. Things don't always work out like this because, well, humans are human, but they can...

God is good, after all.

(Side note- the pseudonym Christophe seems strangely appropriate...he spent time in Medjugore carrying people with seriously reduced mobility around the mountainous outdoor stations of the cross...like St. Christopher of legend carried the child Jesus on his shoulders across a river...)

(side note two- the title is in no way meant to exclude people who are not "Catholic" from the "world." More like, among Catholics comitted to their faith, there seems to be a much lower degree of seperation. Talk to J. about this if you have any questions. We keep running into peopel who know other people we know.)

(side note three...I've been accepted to Maryland!)