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This Promise is for You
A testimony by Barry O’Halpin who lives in Belgium
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| I had returned to
the Church some years earlier and the previous year, had done the ALPHA
course. Now, I was doing “This Promise Is for You” in our parish
of St Anthony’s just outside Brussels. This went to a deeper level
of exploration than ALPHA and so it was a logical follow on for a returning
Catholic.
Being Irish and a cradle Catholic, my return to the Church had been prompted by a sense of obligation to our children. Once they started on the Catechetics Programme my wife and I were at a loose end on Sunday mornings, and at her instigation we joined the CaFE programme which was hosted by a wonderful couple, Peter and Francoise, who were and continued to be shining lights in the parish until their departure for Switzerland. At CaFE I was exposed to the closeness, gentleness and community of the Church for the first time. “This Promise” started well for me. I was immediately struck and attracted by God’s unconditional love for me personally. That was the message that I took from the first session. The format of “meal and talk” was ideal for fostering a level of ease that helped me to be open to what was on offer. As the course went on, I was drawn more and more into the central message that the promise of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Christ is for everyone and even for ME! That had always been a stumbling block for me. Previously I had felt so unworthy as to be beyond hope. On our weekend away, when asked to choose a particular passage of Scripture that I liked, I chose the woman with the bleed. This spoke to me of my own hesitancy and my desire in equal measure. By this stage I was conscious of no more than a vague unease. It was only later that I realised I desperately wanted to let go of the past, of the wrong thinking and wrong direction that my life had been taking. Then, the next day, I felt that I was in no shape to receive anything. I woke with a splitting headache and a feeling of anger that was a throbbing undercurrent to everything I did. During the morning session, I was sunk in a black cloud. We broke at around 10.30 and I went to reconciliation. If anything, I felt worse, stripped bare, defenceless, and more frightened than at almost any time of my life. When we came together again for a time of prayer my feelings grew more profound and then suddenly - He put the words in my path. “Breathe” was the song we sang, and the chorus summed me up: “I’m desperate for you/I’m lost without you”. In that two or three minutes I was ripped open and laid bare, just as I was, frightened and desperate and alone. But even as it was happening, I was being filled up. I underwent the Full Monty: tingling arms, laughing and crying, weakness in the legs, joy and the experience of a love such as I could never have imagined. Then, we sang another song: “Jesus Christ Once Again”. That was the answer. That was where I was being brought, to Christ, My Friend. I was prayed with and nothing has been the same since. The gift that I received that day was the gift of faith, and the removal of fear as the guiding force of my life. I was assured of the living reality of God’s love for me and for each and every person in this strange, wounded and sometimes confusing world. I was shown the foundation of all that I am - God, the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since that time, my entire life has changed. We have had real work to do, my wife and I and we have been brought, through this work, into a far fuller openness and love for one another. I have been led to study at Maryvale in Birmingham. In my much less competent way, I try to carry on the work in the parish formerly done by Peter and Francoise and their girls. I speak when asked and have been invited to preach in the Anglican Church where I work as administrator. I now have just one mission – to testify to
the wonder and fullness of God’s love and to the miraculous fact
of Him as my Lord, father, brother, friend, counsellor, pal, love of
my life, guide, confidante… and I could go on. In the light of
my conversion experience I now have a whole life that is a challenge
and a joy. I am never alone, but I know that while God is with me, He
wants me to be with others. He wants me to share and pass on to others
who He is - our Master and our God. I love Him and through Him I am
free to love others. “This Promise Is For You” opened up all
of this for me. Thank You.
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