The Best of ‘The Journey Home’ — EWTN Publishing Releases Book of Conversion Stories| National Catholic Register

GUIDEPOSTS FOR THE JOURNEY HOME 

Conversion Stories with Marcus Grodi 

Edited by Laura Yanikoski

EWTN Publishing, 2024

244 pages, $18.95

To order: EWTNRC.com

For many Catholics — and Christians as well — The Journey Home program on EWTN has been a truly spiritual journey to God. Its original host, Marcus Grodi, put together the new book, Guideposts for the Journey Home, that features interviews with various renowned and devout Catholics who discuss their journeys home to God. After 25 years as host, Grodi passed the role on to his son JonMarc.

The list of remarkable interviewees over the years includes EWTN foundress Mother Angelica (2000 and 2001); Bible scholar Scott Hahn (1998, 1999, 2004 and 2008); Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute (2005), and philosopher Alice von Hildebrand (2000). Each person’s compelling narrative provides a clear view into what becoming Catholic and how following along Christ’s footsteps can enhance one’s life and lead one spiritually to God. 

Mother Angelica started off discussing her struggles with the spiritual life that began as an only child when her parents divorced. She struggled with loneliness — but as she explained to Grodi, “God was working on me where ‘I was a loner’; I was forced by society to be a loner. And to me, if I had people around, that just made more trouble. … You just spoke about the three ways of spirituality — purgative, illuminative and unitive. God was working on the purgative right off the bat. But I didn’t know that.”

The interview then included discussion of the meanings of purgative — one’s purification — and the other spiritual steps, illuminative and unitive. During the discourse, Mother Angelica explained how, step-by-step, God led her to be conformed to God’s will, inspiring her to become a nun and to eventually answer God’s request, “when the Child Jesus said to me, ‘Build Me a temple’ — I didn’t even know what a temple was — ‘and I will help you.’”

Mother Angelica’s “temple” was the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama — but her radical trust in God began with the launching of a small television show, Mother Angelica Live, which evolved into the world’s largest Catholic network, EWTN, now broadcast in hundreds of countries and territories in many different languages to bring more people to God.

“You know, the Lord uses ordinary things to do great things,” Mother Angelica shared, in her signature way.

She also spoke of Marian devotion: “The Rosary is the life of Jesus, how Mary looked at it, how Mary absorbed it, how Mary lived it. She lived the cross.”

Mosher, a graduate of Stanford University with a secular, humanist background, visited China in 1979 when it first reopened to foreigners. As he explained to Grodi, he went there under the assumption that China was overpopulated and should become a one-child-per-family country. 

When he was visiting a small village, he saw authorities coming into the village and rounding up all of the pregnant women. The authorities determined whether it was a first pregnancy and, if not, the women with additional pregnancies were rounded up and forced to get abortions. The women who refused were brutalized. 

Mosher accompanied those women to the abortion centers and watched babies being butchered — “and at that moment, I became pro-life. Because at that moment, I knew for certain what an abortion was, and I couldn’t countenance it. … It may have been legal in China, but it was certainly morally wrong,” he recounted.

Not only did witnessing abortions and infanticide inspire him to become Catholic, he was also introduced to a Benedictine monk, Father Paul Marx. “He taught me the Catholic Faith. He gave me my very first catechism — the catechism by Father John Hardon, a wonderful catechism. He founded the Population Research Institute in 1989. He invited me in 1995 to come and run it. So, I’m indebted to him for my vocation.”

Mosher believes that it was the hand of God that led him to the PRI, based in Front Royal, Virginia. As its president, Mosher has made it into a worldwide, pro-life organization — including projects in China. As he has come to realize, contraception and abortion over the long term can lead to the death of society. 

At the time of the interview nearly 20 years ago, Mosher noted that Catholicism and the respect for life had grown in mainland China. It’s hard to say today how pro-life China is, but all people should give thanks to Mosher for his work to defend life worldwide.

Over the years, teachings on the pope, Our Lady, the Holy Eucharist, the sacraments were expounded — as was the reality of the Real Presence drawing hearts closer to Christ.

At one point, theologian Hahn focused on Jesus’ exact explanation of the Eucharist: 

“… Jesus says, not once, not twice, not even three, but four times, ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. … For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him’” (John 6:53-56).

Hahn also referenced St. Augustine: “He says it’s not a sin to bow and kneel before the Eucharist, but it is a sin not to.”

Hahn, in discussing how he came to believe in the Real Presence, also explained, “If we’re lucky enough to be alive at the end of time and we see Christ coming on the clouds of glory, He will not have one drop of more glory then than He possesses right now in the Eucharist in our tabernacle.”

And the wisdom of the Church is always underscored, including by von Hildebrand: “What’s so marvelous about the Catholic Church is that there is an authority. There is the official teaching of the Church that hasn’t changed for two thousand years. So don’t pay attention to the chattering of people who are going to say this and that. These are their opinions. Turn to what the Church has taught: unchanged teaching for the last two thousand years.”

As Grodi states in the book’s conclusion, while ending his interview with von Hildebrand, “Jesus said the two great commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s faith. Not just mind, but heart, mind, soul, and strength.” 

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