Theresa Martin will be speaking at the Chesterton Conference this year! It's always an exciting conference with AMAZING people in attendance. Theresa will speak Saturday at 2:30pm. the Session title: "Spirituality: Chesterton and St. John Paul II on Marriage and the Family." On the Extraordinary Holiness Hidden in the Muck of Ordinary: how St. John Paul II’s rediscovered works prove Gilbert & Frances hold the key to sanctity.
This is a talk about conversion, or more exactly, the call to conversion that never ends. The conversion that is just around the next corner and waiting for us every moment like the fresh air all around us, just waiting to be gasped in. Each moment of our lives we are moving towards God or we are moving away; we are finding a fresh conversion or we are losing interest in the ideal we feel can never be reached. Perhaps, we lose interest because we don’t see that which should be admired – the blade of grass, the gentle leaf, the curl of hair that always seems out of place on our beloved’s head. We hear visions of holiness, described for us as polished, alabaster halls and pristine movements of grace towards the perfection, which is He who is all. We feel distant from such glory, striving, stretching, but always falling short of the splendor we imagine we should be, as we fold laundry, clean playdoh from the grooves of the wooden table and wipe mud from our boots. The answer to conversion, St. John Paul II tells us, is not found in the sophisticated realm of imagined glory, but in the realness of everyday life. It is exactly this that we find throughout Gilbert’s thoughts and in his married life with his beloved Frances. The earthy tones and realness, which he dives into – the exhilaration he shares in the ordinariness of chalk and cheese, give us a glimpse into where we must look to find the true conversion we seek...
To register, Go NOW to the Chesteron Society's site: The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton