Is shock therapy the only means to waken us from our sleepwalk, induced since childhood by the world’s mesmerizing spell of glam and glitter?
Is the lifelong practice of traditional Church ritual by a ‘Cradle Catholic,’ enough to achieve the vivefying experience of a personal Living God?
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. John 3:3
A genuine spiritual rebirth required much more of Jews attending daily services at Temple in 30 A.D and doing good works. Ditto in 2024 A.D.
St Romuald’s Conversion
St Romuald is an example of the emotional shock therapy conducive to, but not a guarantee of, spiritual conversion … that mystifying and elusive rebirth described in Jesus’s warning, which the learned theologians and teachers in his day like Nicodemus, failed to acknowledge.
Jesus replied, “You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don’t understand these things? John 3:10
A study of Butler’s Lives of the Saints has many similar examples that reveal the importance of shock therapy for a sanctifying conversion and rebirth: from a previous life of prodigal behavior to a brand new person.
The Rebirth of Blaise Pascal
“Blaise Pascal, who had also experienced some temporary relief from his sickness, immersed himself in the Essays of Montaigne which deeply influenced his life and probably caused him to steer away from his Christian faith, into scepticism and doubt. Very soon after, he was involved in an accident whilst riding in a carriage with some of his rich friends. The horses bolted and the carriage was left hanging over a bridge above the frozen surface of the river Seine. Pascal passed out due to the shock of the whole event.
“In 1654 Pascal underwent his ‘night of fire’, (a two hour mystical vision) and surrendered his life to the Lord Jesus Christ:This profound experience gave him a fresh realization of the wonders of his grace. The God that Pascal had encountered in this vision was not the God of the theologians and scholars but the personal God of the Bible.“
The Converson of St John of the Cross
Many Church theologians, scholars, and priests, even today, have no real life experience of this phenomenon called “the dark night of the soul,” although they might give lipservice to the writings of St John of Cross.
“…it is most fitting and necessary, if the soul is to pass to these great things, that this dark night of contemplation should first of all annihilate and undo it in its meannesses, bringing it into darkness, aridity, affliction and emptiness; for the light which is to be given to it is a Divine light of the highest kind, which transcends all natural light, and which by nature can find no place in the understanding.” St John of the Cross
Hopefully, lifetime tragedies will lead to spiritual conversion and rebirth, to a foretaste of heavenly joys while living daily in the real presence of God.
Modern day dogmatics lean on traditional institutional rituals that are only ‘training wheels’ for when real life challenges come to rough up and shock the apathetic soul. In my case, a nervous breakdown at Yale Graduate School converted me from an agnostic Cradle Catholic.
Other examples are: death of a dearly beloved child, a traumatic accident-caused paralysis, total backruptcy, long imprisonment for embezzlement or sodomy, or imminent execution for a capital crime.
OSCAR WILDE’s deathbed converson
DEAD MAN WALKING
The tale of a mankiller who converts in his last hour before execution.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112818/
The Caterpillar’s Rebirth
The natural phenomenon that best portrays this sacred mystery is when those ugly horned caterpillars, after being reduced to chrysalis mush, get reborn as beautiful butterflies, and no longer must crawl but now can fly.
Our own anguish and grief gives opportunity to do likewise.
THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness 
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