It was the year 1998, staying at a friend’s place in North Vancouver, I was in bed, waking up to the breaking of dawn. I closed my eyes, said my morning prayer, and suddenly a violent wind surrounds me. Thinking that I left the window open, the mighty wind will disturb everything in the room. I wanted to get up to close it but my body cannot move, and I fell into deep peace.
This is the detail of what happened to me written in this post.
In 2010, I found this article taken from the journal of Jacques Fesch, a young Frenchman who was sentenced to death in 1957 murdering a police officer. He had a profound experience in his prison cells that lead to his conversion to faith.
Jacques Fesch Journal
When Fesch had his conversion, I wasn’t born yet, but to see that our experience is similar is uncanny. What is it that we were both given this sanctifying grace that is available to anyone, believer or not, saint or sinners, young or old.
From a Catholic perspective, I can only relate to this experience from this verse:
“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak. [Acts 2:2-4]”
It is a moving experience.
The unbelievable thing about conversion is that the new person that we are become transformed that we joyfully forget the way we were before.
Look at it at this point of view of Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. Oliver, the would-be murderer that conspires to kill his brother Orlando, undergoes a powerful conversion. He confessed, “I do not shame to tell you what I was, since my conversion so sweetly tastes, being the thing that I am.”
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