[Matthew Winston]

Sharing my testimony on why I am a Catholic is kind of like asking St. Augustine to share his conversion story in a paragraph or two. There is a lot to it. Also, I’m not sure I want to practice sharing it. It is something personal that should come out naturally in conversation, not rehearsed. I have shared parts of my testimony many times, most recently before our St. Vincent de Paul Society meeting a couple weeks ago. When I am sharing my testimony, I say pretty much what my instincts tell me would be good to say. We were talking about our upbringing, and I shared my conversion story from the point of view of having seen the emptiness of the world, the flesh, and the devil. I was the son of a hedonist mother and father, brought up as a hedonist. The only Christianity I got was when my Episcopalian grandfather would take us to church on Christmas and Easter. In my teenage years, my parents divorced, I became a heavy drug user and was expelled from private school to public school. My mom got into following a Hindu swami, and I practiced Transcendental Meditation. The Episcopalian minister at the church down the street used to knock on our door periodically and invite us to church. I figured I would check it out. He got me reading the Bible daily. And that was my second conversion to Christ (my first being Baptism as a baby). Ten years later, following a convoluted path, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Although I didn’t share this with my SVDP pals, I have shared with other people an additional detail from this stage of my life. I was oppressed by a recurring nightmare in which a black figure, like a shadow in the night, would stand over me and push me to the ground, giving me an overwhelming feeling of suffocation and fear. After I was received into the Church, I had one final dream. The black figure came to me again, but this time I was kneeling in prayer and there was a being of light standing behind me, hands on my shoulders. An intense feeling filled me, the opposite of fear, something like simultaneous exhilaration and peace. I repeated the prayer, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Every time I said the prayer, it was like a lightning bolt went out from me and struck the dark figure, driving it away. Since then, I have never felt overwhelmed by evil.

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