June 17, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When I was a child growing up in Toronto, life was grand. While there was family discord, my dad, Henry Westen, was like a rock.
My late father was a devout and faithful Catholic who attended daily Mass and never let a day pass without saying his rosary. He was generous to a fault, loving and kind. He’d drive us – my brother Mark and me (and eventually my younger sister Miriam) – to school, help us with our homework, and he worked two jobs to be able to send us to private Catholic schools.
When I hit the teen years, however, my life took a turn for the worse. Friends both in the neighbourhood and at school introduced me to porn and bad language, to living a life apart from God and doubting His very existence. Soon I was on the other side, living a life far from Christ and His truth.
In the beginning I remember grabbing church bulletins from Mass on Sundays before heading out to the pool hall with my friends so I could ‘prove’ to dad that I was at Mass. For although this mild-mannered man was very giving and kind, he tried his best to insist on the essentials – which for him were the obligations of faith.
Even when I was a child he would tell me, “I’d rather see you die right now than fall into a life of sin.” He was a man ridiculed for his “extreme” faith both by his colleagues and friends and even his own family.
In my turn I too ridiculed him. I recall arriving home from dance clubs sometimes at 3 am. only to find my father still kneeling in prayer at his bedside – praying no doubt for his wayward son. At times he would be still kneeling but slumped over the bed, having fallen asleep still praying. “Silly old man,” I recall saying to myself.
For the seven years I left the practice of the faith I tried to ease my nagging conscience with the thought that God did not exist. But as inevitably happens, my life began to crumble. I found myself eventually at the lowest point in my life, in danger of losing my girlfriend, my education and even my freedom, as I was involved with shady characters at university.
I had nowhere to turn but God. I picked up a book that my father had given me when I first fell away – True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort. In that book I learned that following Christ meant giving my whole life to him without reserve – not just Sunday mornings. It meant a complete change.
And then my crisis of faith leapt upon me. I had convinced myself that God didn’t exist. How could I now give up my life for something imaginary?
I put the book under my arm and made up my mind to talk to my dad about the matter. At that point I was so confused in my life, I knew only one thing – that my dad loved me. He had put up with so much hardship from me and yet had remained steadfast in caring for and loving me, never failing to warn me that my eternal life was in danger, but doing so in love.
I was going to tell him, “Dad the only thing I know for sure in life was that you love me, and so I want you to tell me the truth. I read this book on True Devotion you gave me and it means giving up my whole life, and I don’t want to do that unless it’s true.”
I mentally prepared this whole little speech as I went to see my dad. When I got to him, I looked at him, and his life spoke to me. Here was a man who was ridiculed for most of his life for practicing this faith. Whose colleagues mocked him, whose friends teased and whose family was embarrassed by and at times cruel to him for his practice of faith.
It was mostly this – his endurance of all this persecution, even a joyful endurance – that overcame my self-induced disbelief in God, that broke through my doubt. Obviously God is real, His way is truth. And from that moment on I lived for Christ.
I never did actually ask my father the question. All that was communicated to me as I looked at him that day.
In fact, I did not even tell him of the incident till many years later – only a couple of years before his death three years ago. It was his life that spoke to me, particularly the persecution and ridicule he received for being faithful, for saying those socially awkward truths about the eternal consequences of sin. It was his loving me enough to tell me the truth even when I mocked him for it.
This endurance of his has left its mark on me. There are many who mock pro-life and pro-family activists for their speaking the truth in love on these difficult topics. Yet in our endurance of this mockery, in our continuing to love those who insult and ridicule us, is the very power of the Cross, the power of conversion to Truth. It is what saved my own life, and my soul.
Happy Fathers Day dad. I love you. I miss you. Pray for me.