This is the noted Trappist monk and best-selling spiritual writer Thomas Merton talking of his days as a student at Columbia University before he joined the Church.

He said that after nights of this he usually missed the subway home and had to sleep on a stray couch in some fraternity house.

The boredom of these evenings--drinking in rooms full of booming noise, smoking so many cigarettes it seemed the very lining of his throat was gone--the emptiness of such a life in time made him think: Was this all there was?

He had taken some classes in medieval literature describing a time when everyone was a Catholic and everyone had a goal in life, whether he pursue it or not.

Then one day in the window of a New York bookstore he saw a book called The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, written by Etienne Gilson. He read it. He had not liked Catholic ideas. He had been given all sorts of bigoted notions about Catholics. He was afraid of the Church, having built up a repugnance to it and not really knowing exactly why. Yet he could not but help admire Catholic culture, so rich and full.

The one big concept he got out of this book was of God's greatness, His infinity. The writing in the volume concerning God was reasonable, profound, and precise, not the vague, unscientific, superstitious things that he thought Catholics believed.

Deep in his soul he was groping, and this book made Merton at least have some respect for the Church. But he was far from believing. Still he wanted to go to church, so he chose one that was not Catholic, hoping it would do something to satisfy his desire for faith.

The church was pleasant and pretty. But the minister talked about literature and politics instead of religions. Merton had prayed for grace, but this left him cold. He talked to the minister, who did not believe in the Trinity or the Incarnation. Merton did not go back.

Merton wrote, "God has willed that we should all depend on one another for salvation." And at Columbia University some professors and friends rescued him from the folly of modern society. He went into the wrong class one day and decided to stay. Professor Mark Van Doren was a man of sanity and wisdom, and Merton learned a good deal from him. In the class was Bob Lax, who became a close friend. Lax shed light on Merton's confusion and misery. And there were others who helped.

Merton began to pray and read The Imitation of Christ. He wrote his thesis on William Blake, the English poet-artist and somewhat of a mystic. This influenced Merton. Blake was eccentric but very spiritual. He despised puritanism, as did Merton, but Blake was happily in love with God.

Merton was moving toward God. "How sweetly and easily it had all been done," he said, "with all the external graces that had been arranged, along my path, by the kind Providence of God!" God had brought him gently from atheism to faith, and Merton, whose life had been restless, dark, and stormy, now found peace. He said he was ready for whatever God wanted. But he still did not know.

Vaguely, he thought of becoming a Quaker, but a stronger drive within made him want to be a Catholic. The urge finally became so strong he could not resist it. He went to Mass for the first time in his life. Before this he had visited Catholic cathedrals in Europe, but if anything was going on, he had fled in wild panic, so well had be been brainwashed in anti-Catholic feelings.

He was still a little afraid to go to a Catholic church, but the desire was strong, gentle and clear. He could not refuse.

"God made it a very beautiful Sunday," he said. It was the first time he had really spent a sober Sunday in New York. He went to a little brick Corpus Christi Church near the Columbia campus. He went into the cool darkness, out of the sunshine, looking at the simple sanctuary. It was pleasant, but what impressed him most was that it was full of people. He noticed their prayeful attitude. Most of all he noticed near him a young girl, a teenager, kneeling and praying seriously.

Merton relates that in the beginning the priest was busy at the altar doing something he did not understand. The people seemed prayerful and sincere. Then he was in the pulpit. Merton was still fearful; he thought they might even come and throw him out, so little did he know of Catholic practices.

The sermon was so simple, not long. The priest was young, and he talked from his heart. Merton marveled that he took for granted, unlike the first clergyman, that everyone believed in the divinity of Christ.

The priest said that faith was a gift. In his heart Merton felt he had that gift. He thought if only he had received it earlier, how many self-murdering sins he might have avoided. He knew now that he had long been scourging Christ by his selfishness and pleasure seeking.

After Mass Merton walked in the beautiful sunshine. He looked at the world in a whole new way.

He was coming closer to Christ. He read more Catholic books, and the more he read the more impressed he was. He said a Hail Mary every night. He adily pondered and wondered.

Then one night he was reading about the English poet, later a Jesuit, Gerald Manley Hopkins, who was thinking of becoming a catholic.

"All of a sudden," Merton said, "something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me."

A voice seemed to say, "What are you waiting for?" Merton got up, lit a cigarette, and looked out the window at the rain. The question kept coming back. He said, "This is crazy," and he walked around the room. He recalled that Hopkins had written Cardinal Newman, an earlier convert, and that Newman had asked him to come and talk.

Merton knew he must talk to a priest. He put on his raincoat and went out into the rain. Suddenly his heart began to sing.

He went to the rectory and rang the bell. The housekeeper said the priest was out. She closed the door. Merton went back down the steps to the street--and there was the priest coming back.

"Father, may I speak to you."

"Yes. Yes, come into the house."

Merton wrote, "We sat in the little parlour by the door. And I said, 'Father, I want to be a Catholic.' "

Clare said that she gave "complete intellectual assent to Catholic truth," for she knew this gave her the answers to the problems of life and death. She was most grateful for her baptism, "being called from darkness and being absorbed in the miracle of Christ's love." She praised God for "giving me the desire, the eager thirst, the burning fire for Him." Mrs. Luce felt her soul turn from love of self to love of God. She eagerly ran to the Father, knowing, of course, that in reality God had come down to her.

A conversion, Clare wrote, is the climax of a thousand secret graces. The convert is one who knows well that God is truly at work in the world. The love of God is in every soul, but too often covered over with worldly concerns. All things serve as an instrument of God to uncover His love: books, chance encounters, tours of cathedrals. "God does not let a day go by without sending someone or something to seek entry for Him." She said, "All the past, sweet or bitter, harsh or gentle, brilliant or shabby, is sowing the seed for conversion. All things are preparations in the soul for blossoming of faith."

Clare said that most converts are Good Friday converts, like herself. "They enter God's kingdom through the gates of pain," she wrote. Some individuals look on their sufferings as blind fate, and it is unbearable, so they search for some kind of meaning for pain--and they find God.

The doctor tries to heal the body, but who heals the soul? Jesus. People discover that if they pray, their suffering is really God plowing up their hard hearts. Clair said, "Grief is God's messenger. The bitterness, the anger, the tumultuous passion with which one greets this dark guest hide its blessed nature." Despair, for the searcher, gives way to light. "Gold and silver are tried in the fire." For wayward hearts, suffering is an encounter with the Divine. And then, when at last the light comes, the convert wonders why he was picked as the special oject of God's love.

"The covert travels from darkness to light," Clare wrote. His futile past is transformed because "of the tireless solicitations of love." He can not but marvel at the strange ways in which God works. Daily he is overcome with gratitude "for God's infinite persistence and ingenuity in pursuit."

Sadly, most people these days can not comprehend the gifts of God, and conversion is all grace, so it is hard to explain to those without religion. Modern minds are too earthbound, swimming in the sea of materialism. Because of this they do not pray, and "imitations of the Infinite elude them." Their lives are full of distractions and noise; God must be experienced in silence.

Because he takes time to pray, the convert is discovered by grace. Grace apprehends him. In the gloom, the caressing hand of God reaches out.

But moderns are blinded by the bright lights of life. So a covert finds that most often, when trying to tell his story, it is like attempting to explain a symphony to a deaf man.

The covert suffers a good deal of misunderstanding in the world. People who think having fun is the purpose of life do not like hearing about religion, because serving God involves self-denial. A few will listen to the convert. Clare states that this is the first grace for them. It is a beginning. One has a long journey to go and beating down pride is not easy, but it is a start.

"So wondrous a thing is grace," she wrote that even people who have no faith expect to hear about this in a convert story. Yet it is most difficult to talk about the "labyrinthine ways" by which God pursues a person. And each story is different.

Clare wrote that the convert needs a poet to express what is in his heart. And he needs a philosopher to sort out all the events that led to conversion.

How did it start? She does not know, and yet she does remember one impressive experience in her youth. She was sixteen years old; it was a summer day at the beach. She stood there alone in early morning looking at the immensity of the ocean and feeling very tiny. It was cool, clean, fresh day. She does not know what or for how long, but all through her there was a higher power. Her soul seemed swept clean, sparkling like a shining sword. Joy abounded within her, "an immense joy, as a speck of dust is seen to dance in a great golden shaft of sunlight."

The memory possessed her for months. She marveled and reveled in it, that wondrous moment of beauty. Then gradually she forgot it. But many years later, after she became a Catholic, at Mass one morning she had the same experience: her heart was gently suffused with joy.

Clare's childhood had been unhappy, but that radiant day on the beach was joy beyond words. As a youth she was usually melancholy and resentful, until that great experience. It was the most real moment of her life, an instant when God in a mysterious movement lifted up her soul.

The backgrounds of converts differ greatly; dissimilar events bring them to God, but most have undergone suffering, and it is this that has brought them to the feet of Jesus. She said, "Convert stories are often blotted with tears."

Grief has a purgative value, since God can not fill the soul until it is emptied of trivial concerns. Grief is the bonfire in which the trash of life is consumed," she wrote. Suffering may turn a person from God or to Him. But it never leaves him unchanged. Pain and sorrow, anguish and woe throw the soul into a state of crisis. It is then that one must put all his trust in God or be crushed by despair.

Souls are won by sacrifice. When a person goes into Gethsemane against his will, there he finds Jesus praying for him.

Pain "is the keenest of all instruments of grace," Clare relates. But worldly individuals want pleasure; for them pain, not sin, is the prime evil in life: get rid of it or pretend it does not exist, or escape by drugs, drinking, and lust. The unresolved sorrows of moderns, their misery and frustration they try to forget by artificial means. No one can accuse the average irreligious person these days of deep thinking. Many are more like children.

Paul Claudel was a deep thinker, and he wrote a friend, "Whatever you may think, you will never approach happiness without approaching Christ." The grandson of historian Ernest Renan, Ernest Pischari, entered the Church which his grandfather left. The grandson was not as clever, but he was wiser. He said of his conversion, "I knew where I was going. I was going toward the abode of peace, I was going to joy. I wept with love, happiness, and gratitude."

Clare said that the convert suffers because his friends do not join in his happiness. Because of pride and prejudice, they continue to pretend they are happy--and stay out in the cold. In fact, they make fun of the convert. Among the so-called intellectuals the convert is forgiven for "being such an ass," but in their pride they do not want to hear about it. They refuse to look ahead in life, because their lives are so empty.

Mrs. Luce, however, points out, it was the dumb little ass in the Bible who finally saved Balaam, who thought he was so intelligent.

Chesterton believed that it was the Church which saves us from foolishly chasing every fad and fashion that comes along. In Jerusalem's Church of the Ecce Homo, GKC said, his thoughts had come together. The loss of his younger brother was a terrible blow. Cecil was light-hearted, a man of courage, energy, and buoyancy, and his spirit was still with Gilbert. The fight for justice, which GKC had always enjoyed in Cecil's company, was now immeasurably harder without him. The death of Cecil caused him daily grief. Gilbert could have had worlds of friends and been immensely popular as a clever literary figure, critic, author and poet, but he felt complelled to crusade for truth and thereby walk a lonely road. GKC was still read, but many of his ideas were thought to be eccentric by the English intelligentsia. His devotion to truth was an unpopular posture in polite society, for people did not want to be saved, they wanted to have fun. He received a good deal of verbal abuse and felt moods of discouragement. However, on his trip in the fields of Palestine and in the Holy City, Chesterton's faith in Christ was refreshed. His understanding of Christ fructified. It was in Jerusalem that Chesterton clearly realized that supernatural power was needed to overcome the problems of society. Humans need a leader who is more than man: Christ, the Saviour. People must take Him seriuosly.

Back in England he wrote again to his Catholic friend about the Church: "I want to consider my position about the biggest thing of all, whether I am inside or outside it." He said he did not want to stand on the porch of the Church any longer. "I know of your sympathy; and please God, I shall get things straight." Later still, after a visit to him, he wrote, "I have pretty well made up my mind about the things we talked about." They had talked about Chesterton's becoming a Catholic.

The journey in his mind, a long one, was coming to an end. He arrived in Rome via Jerusalem. At first, like most educated Englishmen, he looked down on Catholics. But in time he got to know the Church. He tried to run away from it. But at last, he said, he was coming home. He admitted now that his British prejudices had hidden the greatness of the Church. In running away, however, he was actually running into the arms of the Church. For in trying not to be converted, he read more and more about the Church, and it kept appealing to him. He had forgotten, he said, that truth is a magnet. His fear of becoming a Catholic made him to try to form new reasons for staying outside, but, being honest, he saw each new defense crumble before the truth. Now he was alarmed. He was at the last step, and he still delayed. He had no more doubts or difficulties about the faith; he knew, but his deep-seated prejudices, which he realized were prejudices, made him hesitate. He was being unfair to himself but most of all to God. He wrote, "I shall never again have such absolute assurance that the faith is true as I had when I made my last effort to deny it."

GKC wrote that the popular notion was that the Church is opposed to reason. But nothing could be further from the truth, as the great philosopher Thomas Aquinas show us. GKC said, "To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think." Some catholics, with all good intentions, tried to push Chesterton inside, but that always held him back. This was one thing he must do on his own. His parish priest was wise enough not to try.

His dislike of the Church actually attracted him to it. He was in a state of crisis: he could not accept his past religion; he could not yet accept the Church. He could only say, "I can not stay where I am." His past religion left him feeling insecure. He was distressed. He said that when he acted, "I will act as I believe." He alone could solve "the great problem."

At long last he moved. He had to be honest. He must no longer let prejudice guide him.

He felt the Church stood firm against fatalism and pessimism, the gloom behind the facade of happiness, which prevailed in upper society. He knew pessimism is a poison that could wreck the world. Chesterton did not want to tear down, he wanted to buid up.

As he learned more of the Church, he found it alive, saying things about life; the Church is united: it teaches with authority, not following the popular fashions of the moment, not depending on the guesses of human beings.

At this time he wrote to the brilliant Monsignor Ronald Knox, himself a convert, saying, "So far as my own feelings go, I think I might rightly make application to be instructed as soon as possible."

But then his father became ill, seriously so; the shadow of death was upon him. This deepened Chesterton's faith. At length his father died. It seemed to make the way clear. Chesterton was baptized. It was a day of joy. He described his experience as "this wonderful business." He said, "Worry does not worry so much as it did before." He was at peace.

He wrote that he was determined now more than ever to fight with his pen for the family and everything decent.

In his newspaper, he said, "The Church can not move with the times because the times are not moving." At least, not moving in the right direction. The world is moving toward decay. The Church must hold high the light for the dark ages ahead. It must present human ideals in contrast to the inhuman trends of the day. It must inspire men. "We do not want a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world."

Gilbert's conversion took a long time. He wanted to be sure. It took place after the slow ruminations of his mind and a painful period of upset. He said, "I am a man afraid of impulse." Impulse had told him long before he should join the Church, but he would not do so until he had reasoned out every point.

Chesterton wrote to the noted Hilaire Belloc, author and member of Parliament, telling him of his devotion to the Blessed Mother before he became a Catholic, "When I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I remembered her." He felt that she had helped him on his journey home. He gave thanks with all his heart.

When she was twelve her father died. Her mother took the children to France for a time. A local priest was contacted to teach them Latin. He not only taught them Latin but taught them St. Augustine.

Anne wanted to be a Catholic, but her mother was furious. She first attacked the priest for putting such ideas in the girl's head. "But," he explained, "you gave me permission." Before the first lesson the priest had asked her mother, "And what about religion?" The mother had replied, "Oh, make her a Catholic if you can." Now, however, the mother had said fretfully, "I only said that because I did not think you could."

Anne's mother absolutely would not let her become a Catholic. As a teenager, the girl loved being persecuted. She read Catholic books.

When she attended Oxford she asked the Catholic chaplain many questions, and she greatly admired a Catholic professor, "as nearly a saint as anyone I ever met."

At a social gathering, one of many, she met her future husband. His family members were very anti-Catholic. In time they were married. She still wanted to be a Catholic and felt badly because she wasn't, but she put it off so as not to make trouble. However, inside, she felt "completely disconnected from God, unplugged, shorted."

She tried to go to the Church of England, but it was hopeless. It would not do. Then one evening at a party she met a learned Catholic priest from Egypt. Later, she talked to him, making excuses for not joining the Church. But even as she spoke she knew the arguments were false. And "with a devastating logic the priest punctured them." He gave her a series of sessions on the faith. He told her the Church was freedom from slavery. The Church is there "so we can grow in the image of God." God's universe is ordered, and man, to be happy, must take his place in that order. As long as he uses his free will to depart from God's order, to sin, he will be unhappy.

Anne became a Catholic and found contentment. Then she found that her husband's family accepted it. She was happy to worship God in the way Jesus gave us. She was happy to rejoice in the beauty of nature, which praised God by being.

In our artificial society, with others doing our thinking for us and passing on threir prejudices, religion is often distorted. "The life of faith is nothing but the pursuit of God through everything that disguises, disfigures, and destroys God," she wrote.

She said she found the brotherhood of man only on the spiritual level, not on the intellectual or political.

God is within reach of our reason. He is truth. The mind, as Aristotle said, goes out to Truth, the eternal verities.

God is "that beyond which we can imagine nothing higher." Since He is unlimited intelligence, it is certain that we can find Him if we try. He must make it so. We have a great need for mercy, and God welcome us, blesses us with open arms. He is our Father.

Even before Anne joined the Church, the "right-thinking" people were suspicious of her. She thought seriously, and they did not think at all; there must be something wrong with her.

She knew, she said, that she was a sinner. Her friends in their rounds of parties put the notion of sin out of their minds like a bad thought. Sin was not bad to them, thinking about it was. Anne, however, had a deep urge to draw closer to God, and to do this she had to acknowledge the truth and say, "Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before you and am no longer worthy to be called your child."

One must do more than discuss religion; one must strive to keep the Commandments.

Anne knew that the only possible Church must be holy. The Catholic Church appealed to her because, with its countless saints, it showed it had the map to Heaven for anyone who wished to follow it.

She realized people disliked the Catholic Church because it was holy and worldwide, as Christ said his Church must be; because it was the ancient Christian Church going back to the Apostles; because it taught as Jesus told us, we must do the hard things and be good to gain Heaven.

Reading widely in English history at Oxford, her intelligence told her that it was more than evident that St. Thomas Becket and St. Thomas More were right in upholding the Church and opposing greedy kings. And especially Thomas More was right not accepting the lustful Henry VIII as head of the Church of England, even though almost all the spineless bishops did.

Anne wrote of the Mass that "nothing else that ever happens or could happen is of comparable importance." She said it was the sublime act of worship. She marveled at "the horrifying humility of God" in giving Himself to us at Mass and in Holy Communion. It all but overwhelmed her. If people realized what truly took place, she said, they would be speechless. "Christ comes to us as nourishment and a pledge of our abiding life!" It is astounding. Yet, she wote, "we can not cry with St. Peter, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,' for we know we must go on somehow, 'clinging to Heaven by the hems,' and try each day to belong to Him a little more."

He was born in Scotland and studied to be a doctor. As a medical student examining human bodies, he, like some of the others , concluded that man was no more then a complex machine.

Then, as a physician, he went to a small mining village in Wales. He saw life firsthand, and it was different from college and textbooks. He saw people with faith struggling under great hardship. He assisted at the miracle of birth and sat in the still hours of the night with the dying, and his values were challenged. Existence was more than mere biology. He said he had previously felt superior in his agnosticism but "I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step toward finding God."

He wrote, "Never shall I forget that occasion when, in a coal mine, an explosion entombed fourteen miners. For five