After years as a Protestant and an atheist, the great saints (in whom he did not believe) brought him to the Church

For more than three decades, the life of adam seiler he oscillated between Protestantism, atheism and the “unrestricted” enjoyment of the dissipations that the world offered him. Educated at the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Wisconsin – a conservative Christian denomination – from the age of 12, he trained with Luther’s Smaller Catechism and studied at a university also lutheran.

There he received “an excellent training” in history, theology, philosophy, and literature, but as he grew older, unanswered questions began to plague him, especially around reading and interpreting the Scriptures, the precept of Sola Scriptura – the basic belief that the Bible is the only authority and inspiration for the Christian- or the almost total literalness of it, making it difficult in their situation one of his greatest interests, the conciliation between science and faith.

That is why a book that was recommended in his Philosophy classes caught his attention, The Great Conversationby Norman Melchert.

Over there he met St. Augustine, he was amazed for his interpretation of the Scriptures and began to observe how from the Catholic Church he obtained many more answers to questions always silenced in his Lutheran circle.

“Like me, Saint Augustine had an internal struggle with the interpretation of the Bible and reading about their doubts filled me with hope”, she confesses.

He was also shocked by the conversion that would provoke Saint Ambrose of Milan in the saint of Hippo, as well as the intellectual and spiritual gifts of the former. The fact that such saints in the Church performed “an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures” struck him deeply, making him understand that “one can be a devout Christian and disciple of Christ and still defend the faith with wisdom and intelligence.”

Saints were his “biggest obstacle”

Meanwhile, during all those years, although he never hated Catholics, a certain aversion and incomprehension arose in him in the face of a multitude of “myths” and lies that would be his “greatest obstacle” to open up to know the Church.

“I was instilled with the feeling that Catholics were adding unnecessary and dubious aspects to Christian spirituality. Instead of cultivating a relationship with Jesus, for example, Catholics they prayed too much to Mary and the saintsthey venerated the words of a man (the Pope) more than the words of Christ, and added things to faith that were not in the Bible (purgatory),” he lists.

But Adam couldn’t resist a college environment he refers to as “post-revolutionary.” He was plunged into a world that detested the mere mention of spiritual truths and was given over to vice and sensibleness until finally he turned away from Christianity and followed the crowd.

“I had abandoned God like the prodigal son abandoned his father”, he explains in catholic stand.

Adam Seiler with his family.

Today, Adam is a faithful Catholic and devotee of the saints, a writer and an English teacher in Texas. In the image, with his wife, Rebekah, and his children Nathaniel and Naomi, a family converses thanks to the intercession of the saints.

He enjoyed without limit… but Santo Tomás was there

During his youth, especially when he finished his studies, he realized that his acquaintances “did not act as if Christianity were real, many avoided talking about the faith, had sexual relations, drank too much alcohol and took drugs”.

And Adam himself soon fell. “enjoyed without restrictions of the recreations that our world offers. I’m not proud. Like the prodigal son, I led a life of dissipation that lasted for years,” he confesses.

But he also remembers some “lighthouses” that either kept him in the faith in that dark time or introduced him to it.

One of them was his own Lutheran university, where he was able to learn basics about St Thomas. Something that allowed him, even being far from Christianity, to come out in his defense against the argument that “believing in God is the same as believing in Santa Claus”.

“I jumped to the defense of Christianity, citing Thomas Aquinas and his doctrine that God is not another being in the universe, but the source of being itself. My friend was stunned,” he explains.

The prodigal son cooperating with Grace

And soon it was lit another lighthouse. It was about Rebeccaa non-practicing Baptist mother of a boy, Nathaniel.

with her adam shared his notions about faith and Christianity, as well as the growing doubts that grew within him and for which only Catholic authors had an answer.

After many years debating the faith and Catholicism, “we decided to ask about RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) and being able to convert to the faith together with their children.”

“Shortly after Nathaniel was baptized and confirmed, Naomi and Rebekah were baptized and I we confirmed and married“, he recalls.

When he explains the profound reasons why he has become a Catholic, he basically summarizes them in two, “grace and truth“.

“God offers His Grace to everyone, but we must cooperate with her and respond to God’s call. He offered me grace many times, but for years I avoided itI ignored her and became attached to the things of the world. But like the prodigal son who recognizes her humiliation, I began to cooperate with her. I responded to him through the wisdom I learned from the fathers of the Church and the saints, but also by listening to others,” she mentions.

“Tremendously grateful” to the intercession of the saints

However, Adam himself confesses that even after converting and becoming part of the Church, they still remained difficulties such as veneration of the Virgin or devotion to saintswhom he rejected for years.

He tells that it was the saints themselves who, once converted, came to his aid: “Reading the confessions of Saint Augustine and the story of a soul of Saint Therese of Lisieux deepened my own devotion to prayer, mass, and the sacraments, and soon I began to recognize saints as model Christiansthe people who best exemplified a life dedicated to imitating Christ”.

A conclusion that he also came to by a deep knowledge of the Scriptures.

“I began to recognize how they compare good imitation with bad imitation. Christ calls us to imitate him in charity and humility, to take up our cross and follow him. Instead, imitating each other in their hatred of Christ, a mob crucifies him “, Explain.

In this sense, he calls to “follow” Saint Maximilian of Kolbe when he traded his life for a condemned man, Mother Teresa devoting himself to “the poorest of the poor” or to Santa Monicawho gave himself in prayer to the hopeful conversion of his son, the future Saint Augustine”.

Finally, he highlights prayer as something critical in the search for one’s own holiness.

“When I was a Lutheran, they never told me that I will pray for that because I was already saved only by faith. Through my conversion and growth in faith, in the lives of the saints and in the study of Theology, I have learned to pray daily for the grace to live my faith with charity towards God and my neighbor. Today i am eternally grateful to pray for the intercession of those who pray for us in heaven“, he concludes.

After years as a Protestant and an atheist, the great saints (in whom he did not believe) brought him to the Church