Category Archives: Conversion

Restless Hearts

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Today, August 28, is the Feast of St. Augustine. You can read all about him in this article from CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Augustine of Hippo .

Many times in 12 Step meetings or when listening to someone in recovery speak about their journey, they mention a “hole in the soul” that was filled by their addiction. Eventually they were no longer able to fill that hole with their addiction, at which point they hit bottom or otherwise reached their “jumping off place”, from which they slowly turned away from alcohol or drugs and towards a “higher power”. Hopefully that “higher power” is God and not some secular idol, but nevertheless they discover something better.

St. Augustine discovered something better after his life of debauchery and other various sins. A well-known quote of his is:

CHURCH FATHERS: Confessions, Book I (St. Augustine): “Thou movest us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.”

(Via New Advent.)

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Year of St. Paul

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Pope Benedict XVI has declared that the following year, from today June 28th through June 29th, 2009 to be the Year of St. Paul .

St. Paul is important, not the least of which being that he was the Apostle to the Gentiles. It was as a result of his efforts that Christianity spread around the Mediterranean and therefore to the rest of the world. Secondly, I was named after him. :-). But also to anyone who has undergone a conversion process, whether of a religious kind, or just the conversion of one’s interior life such as stopping drinking and drugging, St. Paul is the model. Not that he was an alcoholic or addict (he wasn’t), but his life underwent a radical conversion and as a result of that conversion lived his life to the fullest in pursuit of souls for Jesus. No compromiser, he. Whatever his interests and loves were prior to his conversion, they were set aside for the love of Christ.

There are a number of sites that you can visit to learn more about the Year of St. Paul. The Catholic News Agency has a nice introductory page, as does the Catholic Educator’s Resource Center. Catholic Culture has another guide to the whole year.

He took the message of Christ and proclaimed it to the world. We are called to do that as well, at least in our own way in the manner best suited to us.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Matt Talbot for Alcoholics: Day 3

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Today we pray the third day of our Novena to Matt Talbot for Alcoholics. Like yesterday we begin with:

PRAYER FOR THE ADDICTED

God of mercy, we bless You in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who ministered to all who come to Him. Give Your strength to N., Your servant, bound by the chains of addiction. Enfold him/her in Your love and restore him/her to the freedom of God’s children. Lord, look with compassion on all those who have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of Your unfailing mercy, and strengthen them in the work of recovery. To those who care for them, grant patient understanding and a love that perseveres. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Yesterday I wrote about that the person you are praying for may be at the “jumping off place”, that point where the person decides between continuing to drink and die, or not drinking and maybe live.

As I write this post, it is a Sunday, the day dedicated to worshipping God. Perhaps the struggling alcoholic feels abandoned by God and completely alone. Nothing much can feel worse. If God has abandoned you, why would anyone else bother with you? Or maybe if God doesn’t exist, and then how would life have any meaning? A life without meaning is a life not worth living.

At this point you pray harder for the individual. You also might want to reach out and touch the person. One little kindness, one small act of interest can have a major impact and go a long way towards enabling the person to reconnect with God and other people. It may make the difference in the decision he or she makes while in their “jumping off place”.

We conclude the daily novena with:

Official Prayer for the Canonization of Blessed Matt Talbot

“Lord, in your servant, Matt Talbot you have given us a wonderful example of triumph over addiction, of devotion to duty, and of lifelong reverence of the Holy Sacrament. May his life of prayer and penance give us courage to take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Father, if it be your will that your beloved servant should be glorified by your Church, make known by your heavenly favours the power he enjoys in your sight. We ask this through the same Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

The source of these prayers is Circle of Prayer – Matt Talbot Intercedes for Alcoholics .

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Trudging Paulcoholic's Road

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I’ve added a new blog to my repertoire, a new endeavor by myself to explore a more personal path of my sober journey. While Sober Catholic is about how to use the Catholic Faith and spirituality to maintain you sobriety, Trudging Paulcoholic’s Road will be of a more personal nature. Based on the focus and development of Sober Catholic, I was uncomfortable with exploring how my conversion and sobriety affected me. The blog was about Catholicism, not me. “Trudging Paulcoholic’s Road” will be the other way around, it will be about my relationship with the Faith and how I use it in reacting to things in a sober way.

The first post is up.

I hope you enjoy it. It shouldn’t affect my writing for this blog.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

A Couple of Nice Blogs to Read

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There are two blogs that I think readers of Sober Catholic will enjoy reading, as they write about personal conversion and spiritual growth.

Conversion for Life has been on my links list for a while, while A Path of Penitence I just discovered yesterday on Conversion for Life’s own links list.

I highly recommend these, as they provide additional inspiration or perspective on growing closer to God by way of Catholicism.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Day 9 of the Novena to the Holy Spirit for Alcoholism and Recovery

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All 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit have been prayed for: Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, Counsel, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord.

To round out the last day of the Pentecost novena for alcoholism I decided to petition for sobriety. It isn’t a gift of the Holy Spirit, but if you live according to the Spirit, it is a natural result.

Like in the previous days, we start with the prayer:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and rekindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the Earth.

Sobriety means much more than not drinking. Just like “peace” doesn’t mean “no war”. Sobriety means clear-headedness, a cool and balanced view of things. Faith going hand-in-hand with reason.

It is an emotional balance. As alcoholics we had a warped emotional interpretation of events and situations and our response was therefore as warped and imbalanced as our perceptions. Sobriety means that we have taught ourselves how to handle these situations. We retrained ourselves how to properly respond to stuff. A goodly dose of sincere humility, that there is a God and we’re not Him mixed with an ability to choose those things that we can change from those we can’t, and we have the beginnings of sobriety.

We maintain this sobriety through prayer, religious devotion, and spiritual growth; a balanced and respectful attitude towards people and things; and service to others. Twelve Step or alternative recovery programs may supplement these.

From 1 Peter 5: 8-9;

Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for (someone) to devour.
Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings.

Resist the alluring call of the drink, know that others are going through the same sufferings as you, regardless of the length of sobriety.

Oh, Holy Spirit, grant me sobriety. I ask you this in the name of Jesus, the Lord.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Day 4 of Novena to the Holy Spirit for Alcoholism and Recovery

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Today we pray for knowledge.

As before, we start with the prayer:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and rekindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the Earth.

Knowledge of what? Knowledge of God’s will and knowledge of ourselves. The better we know ourselves the better we can discern God’s will for us.

One way to know ourselves is to sit still and listen. We listen to what’s going on inside of us. We pray and meditate and listen while we do that. Most of the time we can hardly hear ourselves above the cacophony of the world about us, and the world prefers it that way. Many people are uncomfortable with being alone, as if being alone is bad or scary and being contemplative and introspective is difficult and frightening. Most may not come out and admit it, but how many people are comfortable with being alone by themselves?

The world prefers our attention to its noise than to our inner life because it serves to distract us from knowledge. We do not know ourselves and therefore never get the connection between our life and the supernatural. We fail to think of God much, if at all.

When we focus on getting to know ourselves in this perspective, we see our shortcomings and work to remove them. We develop our spiritual lives and seek to grow closer to the only real Higher Power, God. We pray and meditate and seek His will above all things.

Oh, Holy Spirit, I long to do God’s will. Give me knowledge of that will and guide me along its path so that I may please Him and help build up His Kingdom on Earth. I ask this in the name of Jesus, the Lord.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Learning more about Catholicism (To Julie, a/k/a "authorette")

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In a previous post this week a Sober Catholic Reader named Julie, aka “Authorette” asked this question in the comments section:

A beautiful entry. I could relate to it so much.

I am a recovering alcoholic/addict with 3-1/2 in sobriety. I, too, have been through the 12-Steps. I find, though, that I am looking for something more. I am seriously considering converting to Catholicism. All my life I have wanted to, but I couldn’t because I was married to an evangelical protestant. We are now divorced and I have remarried.

Could you direct me to where I can learn more about the Catholic faith?

Thank you.

Julie

Her question was important enough that I decided to post it above, along with my answer, which was:
Hey Julie!

Just a quick response for now as it’s late at night, but for starters, you can try Catholic Answers. Another is Catholic Digital Studio. Scripture Catholic might be good to help counter anything you picked up from your ex-husband, as well as Bible Christian Society
. I’ll see what a priest friend (he married my wife and I 3 weeks ago), can suggest. The “For all things Catholic…” group of links in the sidebar is great, but some of the info can be overwhelming at first. I included them all just to satisfy varying levels of curiosity and interest. But the above ones are great for starters.

I had originally neglected an EXCELLENT resource:

Catholic Converts blogs

Anyway I hope this helps Julie and anyone else interested in converting.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Lent

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Today Lent begins with Ash Wednesday.

Lent is one of my favorite times of the year, what with the opportunity to direct the interior conversion and cleansing that are a part of the customs. This is an attitude that I only adopted after I sobered up in 2002 and returned to the Church.

It isn’t necessary to “give up” something for Lent, but that’s the easiest way to focus on your interior conversion.

This conversion is namely the result of a successful struggle against your tendency to sin or partake of pleasurable things. Nothing inherently wrong with pleasurable things unless one is inordinately attached to them and places them above God and family. By giving them up you are allowing yourself to direct your struggle against a particular want or need and therefore can make the best effort to grow spiritually and closer to God. To give something up and then be enormously happy when Lent is over so you can take up again whatever was abstained from misses the point. The lesson of abstaining from something might not have been learned if the objective was just to make it through Lent.

I wrote some neat stuff last year on Lent in this post . In addition to all that, one thing I heard on my local Catholic radio station was that you could prayerfully read the daily Mass readings during Lent. They are excellent guides to conversion. You can get them at this blog, at the top of the sidebar. Read them slowly, with a eye and ear towards applying their lessons.

Have a fruitful Lent!

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

The Devout Life

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There is a Saint that should become familiar to Sober Catholic readers. This is St. Francis DeSales. He wrote a classic text on spiritual development entitled “The Introduction to the Devout Life”. I admit to not having read it (yet) and therefore only know it by its eminent reputation.

An excerpt on this text and St. Francis from “The Catholic Encyclopedia” in the New Advent website:

We may give here a brief résumé of the spiritual teaching contained in these works, of which the Church has said: “The writings of Francis de Sales, filled with celestial doctrine are a bright light in the Church, pointing out to souls an easy and safe way to arrive at the perfection of a Christian life.” (Breviarium Romanum, 29 January, lect. VI.)

There are two elements in the spiritual life: first, a struggle against our lower nature; secondly, union of our wills with God, in other words, penance and love. St. Francis de Sales looks chiefly to love. Not that he neglects penance, which is absolutely necessary, but he wishes it to be practised from a motive of love. He requires mortification of the senses, but he relies first on mortification of the mind, the will, and the heart. This interior mortification he requires to be unceasing and always accompanied by love. The end to be realized is a life of loving, simple, generous, and constant fidelity to the will of God, which is nothing else than our present duty. The model proposed is Christ, whom we must ever keep before our eyes. “You will study His countenance, and perform your actions as He did” (Introd., 2nd part, ch. i). The practical means of arriving at this perfection are: remembrance of the presence of God, filial prayer, a right intention in all our actions, and frequent recourse to God by pious and confiding ejaculations and interior aspirations.

St. Francis DeSales‘ feast day is celebrated on January 24th (I know, I’m 2 days late in writing about it, so what else is new).

Additional material can be found here and here

The classic text can be read for free, online here . More modern translations can be found in bookstores.

I’ve included “Daily With DeSales“ a daily meditation using excerpts from his writings and the “Devout Life” sites in the Catholic Resources for Alcoholics links section in the sidebar.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)