We continue this month of missionary discipleship stories, focusing on the twin conversion to God and conversion to God’s people. A member of The Mark 5:19 Project board of directors, Dcn. Scott Schwalbe, found God’s hand in his life over time…but both conversions met in yearly volunteering for the Steubenville Rochester (MN) conference. Dcn. Scott is a great gift to our diocese as well as The Mark 5:19 Project! We thank him for sharing his story, below.
As I reflect on my journey from being a rebellious teenager to a young Navy sailor to husband, father, and then a permanent deacon in the Church, I must admit that I abandoned Jesus: but now I see that he never abandoned me. I was confirmed when I was 12 and did not go to Church again until I was 17–and that was because the girl I dated was Catholic. My journey back to the Church and back in active relationship with Jesus has been gradual with no epiphany, no moment in time that I can point to that drove a conversion. Now that I am 64 years old, a permanent deacon, and I can look back over the last 40 years and see how God was always there even when I did not acknowledge him.
First, God put my wife Mary into my life to open the path back. Her faith has been strong since the beginning, and she has been a great witness and model that God put in my life to come back to him. We were blessed with children; Mary took the lead raising them Catholic and dragged me along. I was not the father that God wanted me to be, but he did not give up on me.
But second, God blessed me with a type A personality, and as a do-er I was asked to help at the parish. I saw a need and started working, started doing, started volunteering. At this point I was not doing this work for God, I was doing this work with a secular mindset, a mindset that these things needed to get done to run an organization. But this was the door Jesus opened to lead me more fully into his Church.
The Steubenville Rochester conference has been a touchstone in this “doing” for the Church. These conferences are for 13–18-year-old young men and young women. The conferences started locally in 2007, and I have had the privilege of being a volunteer at each one. This year there were over 2,000 young men and women in attendance. I had a person ask me: why do I keep coming back and volunteering for this event?
The short answer is that these conferences were the start of my conversion from doing to being. As I experienced the hope I saw in the young men and women and finally let the Holy Spirit in, I started to move from doing work for the sake of doing work to doing work for the greater good, for the glory of God. Once I allowed the Holy Spirit in, I started to want to learn more. I started going to adoration, and was baptized in the Holy Spirit through a Life in the Spirit conference. I was finally saying yes to God who was with me along the journey, never abandoning me.
When I said yes to the Diaconate formation in 2013, I was still in the doing mode. My first response was, “I could do that work.” The formation team did a great job helping me understand that a deacon is first who I will become, and not what I do. This is true for all of us: we are Christians, we are formed in the likeness of God and called to live as Christ. We are asked to perform the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the world. Not for our sake, not as social work, but to help the world know and believe in Jesus.
I now know that God was always with me; and I wish I would have been open sooner to let the Holy Spirit in. God created me–he knew the best way to bring me back home and he will do the same for everyone.
A good practice is to find time each day to reflect on the day and discover the times God was talking to you each day. We can see the times we were too busy to stop and listen, and the times that we did listen and give thanks and praise to the Lord.
God does not abandon us, but he will not force himself on us: he is standing right outside your door. And if you crack it open, he will come in–and if you are willing to open the door wide and invite him in, you will never regret that decision.
If you would like to read more of our conversion to God and conversion to God’s people stories, we are posting them all of July here: https://mark519project.org/category/missionary-discipleship-stories/ .
