My training has taught me to look for what is most important in any situation. If I were reading scripture I would give my attention to what Christ said or did, but hardly notice the circumstances in which it all happened. I have begun to think this might not be the way God works. An old school friend, who joined the Jesuits with me and has been in Japan since then, once told me most converts in Japan come through attending weddings in a Catholic Churches.
He worked in Sophia University, and many of the graduates wished to be married in the university’s Catholic church, even though not Catholic. The Fathers instructed them in what Catholics believe a marriage is, and they made their vows to each other, even if it was not a sacrament. For most of their guests it would be their only contact with the Catholic Church, and often a guest decided that they wanted to know more about this religion, and so came to know Jesus.
I immediately thought of another set of circumstances that led to exactly the same finding of God. It happened in Sweden in the early ’70s. While attending a conference there, I visited some friends, German Jesuits with whom I had studied. I soon realised that they struggled with a climate where they are snowed-in for two thirds of the year, and where interest in religion seemed to be minimal. Those were the circumstances in which I asked them about converts. Converts were few. Suddenly one of them smiled and said there was one who would interest me.
A young man had come to their door one night recently asking for instruction. He had no religious affiliation. He had studied medicine at a university in England, and made friends. One friend was Irish, and he spent the summer holidays with his family in the west of Ireland. He was integrated into the family and worked on the farm saving hay and turf, went to dances and played football. They invited him back for Christmas. On returning home to Stockholm, he made the journey across the city to knock on the Jesuits’ door to learn more about the Catholic faith. Is it too much to think that in the welcome he received from his Irish friend’s family, and the life he shared with them, he noticed what St. Paul called the ‘signs of the Spirit’: patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness, joy, peace, love? God works in what seems like strange ways to us.