Anecdote instead of the usual cold open:
A teenage girl was sitting at home, telling her mother how hard her life was. Her mother listened for a while, then without speaking, brought the girl into the kitchen, where she filled 3 pots full of water and set them on the stove. When the water began to boil, she put carrots in one pot, eggs in another, and coffee beans in the third. After a while, she turned off the stove, extracted the carrots and eggs onto a plate, and poured the third pot into a large mug.
"What do you see?" asked the mother.
The daughter looked strangely at her mother and said, "I see carrots, eggs, and coffee."
"I want you to REALLY look at it," replied her mother. "What has happened here?"
"The carrots are cooked," said the daughter, "the eggs are boiled, and there's coffee in this cup."
Her mother told her, "Everyone responds to life's adversities differently. Some are like carrots - they're tough and strong, but when they're dropped in the boiling water, they become soft. Some are like the eggs, soft and fluid of soul, but adversity makes them tough. And then some are like the coffee beans. Instead of changing their substance, the beans release their essence into the water and make the water delicious."
This story was told by the visiting archbishop at Mass this past week. He was the homilist on the occasion of the parish's First Communion and Confirmation rites on Corpus Christi. The nature of the rites, particularly Confimation, is such that they are transformative - we are given special graces and gifts that prepare us for our lives.
It hit me in the middle of this homily that my conversion to Catholicism happened when it did because there was a Plan - the Big Guy knew what I'd be going through in a few short years, and I needed to find my footing before I'd be ready to handle it all. I didn't become Catholic to handle my adversities, I was called to the Church because of what I didn't know I would face. That kind of providence is startling and incredible.
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