Abbot Michael Brunner offered these remarks to the School at a church assembly that occurred on January 25, 2024 (Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul).

Abbot Michael addresses School at church assembly

Saint Paul was a religious man. He believed in the one true God. Yet he was converted to a higher truth by a personal encounter, then taken deeper by another personal encounter. I have had many conversions, not just one definitive turning in a new direction. One of these was becoming a monk. That was a conversion too. It’s interesting that the most comprehensive of the three vows Benedictines take is about conversion. But it’s ongoing conversion, conversion every day, an unending conversation with God that changes you.

But my big conversion story helps me relate to Saint Paul’s experience. When I was living in Washington D.C., three times a year I would drive to Rochester, New York. I would drive there, into Pennsylvania, through the Susquehanna Valley, then up into the Mountains into Southern New York State and the Finger Lakes district to Rochester. It is a beautiful drive and peaceful, especially at Christmas time. There was always snow and the small towns looked like something from a Christmas card. You know I like music, so I would listen to music on the way. One song I always connect with this drive, and always listened to, is by U2:

I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
carried the cross
of my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

One particular year that drive proved decisive. So, there I was driving through this landscape at Christmas time listening to Handel’s Messiah, which was a Christmas tradition at home with my family. Suddenly, there in the mountains, a voice spoke to me quite distinctly. Maybe it was just in my head…, maybe not. Those who were with Saint Paul on his journey didn’t hear the voice, but he did. The voice said: “What do YOU think about Jesus Christ?” I tried to ignore the voice, but it was insistent and persistent. This was a critical issue. I had grown up and studied theology assuming Jesus Christ was God. Then I came to doubt that, looking for explanation or proof. Finding none, I stopped believing. But I really didn’t disbelieve. My mind could accept that he wasn’t God. But my heart couldn’t. So, as I explained it to myself when I became a Muslim, I put Jesus on a shelf, and would come back and revisit the issue...sometime.

So, Jesus got tired of waiting on the shelf and demanded to know, that very moment, on the road to Rochester” “Who do you say I am?” So, at that moment I had to admit that I believed He was God. Once I admitted I was a Christian, I did not think I would return to the Catholic Church. But God had other plans. Man plans; God plans, and God is the best at planning. After I returned to Washington, at a New Year’s Eve Party that year, I met a former religious brother who had been in the Carmelite order with a high school classmate and good friend of mine. He was Youth Minister /DRE at a parish three blocks away from my new house. So, I figured I’d go to Church there, where I knew somebody. So, I went and sat in the back row, so I could make a quick escape if necessary. But they pulled me in, step by step. First it was: please help us take up the collection. Sure, I said. Easy. Then they needed help at Bingo, so I became the cook in the kitchen for refreshments. Then lector. Then the youth minister asked me to help. When he left, I became coordinator of religious education for the English language program. Then I became director of the whole program and youth minister. And, somehow, I became Deputy Grand Knight when they started a Knights of Columbus chapter. The rest is history.

You have heard stories here about tragedies or adversity that lead to deeper faith. It does not have to be tragedy or adversity that takes you deeper. Everyone’s life, your life, is a unique story with its own details. Some people are converted and taken deeper by love that is returned. Others by a profound encounter with God, in nature or science. Still others, by such an encounter in art and music. The great theologian Has Ur von Balthazar writes about beauty as a way to know and understand God. The most important thing: Be honest with yourselves, brutally honest. That’s not easy. But if you seek God, he will find you.

There’s a Robert Frost poem I love:

He is no fugitive -- escaped, escaping.
No one has seen him stumble looking back.
His fear is not behind him but beside him
On either hand to make his course perhaps
A crooked straightness yet no less a straightness.
He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.
He is a seeker who in his turn seeks
Another still, lost far into the distance.
Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.
His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.

Seek, look, keep at it, and you will find what you are looking for. And if it’s God, he will be looking for you harder than you look for him.