HOLLYWOOD WRITER ESZTERHAS FINDS JESUS AND THE EUCHARIST FULFILL MAN'S BASIC INSTINCTS
28/08/08 15:24 Filed in: CatholicismChristianity
It is always fascinating when conversions seemingly come out of nowhere...
Excerpts from the Toledo Blade: "Mr. Eszterhas was diagnosed with throat cancer. Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic removed 80 percent of his larynx, put a tracheotomy tube in his throat, and told him he must quit drinking and smoking immediately.
At age 56, after a lifetime of wild living, Mr. Eszterhas knew it would be a struggle to change his ways.
One hot summer day after his surgery, walking through his tree-lined neighborhood in Bainbridge Township, Mr. Eszterhas reached a breaking point.
"I was going crazy. I was jittery. I twitched. I trembled. I had no patience for anything. … Every single nerve ending was demanding a drink and a cigarette," he wrote.
He plopped down on a curb and cried. Sobbed, even. And for the first time since he was a child, he prayed: "Please God, help me."
Mr. Eszterhas was shocked by his own prayer.
"I couldn't believe I'd said it. I didn't know why I'd said it. I'd never said it before," he wrote.
But he felt an overwhelming peace. His heart stopped pounding. His hands stopped twitching. He saw a "shimmering, dazzling, nearly blinding brightness that made me cover my eyes with my hands."
Like Saul on the road to Damascus, Mr. Eszterhas had been blinded by God. He stood up, wiped his eyes, and walked back home a new man."
Eszterhas' new found faith brought him to the Catholic Church, but my husband suspects Eszterhas would appreciate the extraordinary rite--the Latin mass...
"[H]e complains about priests' homilies being boring and pointless.
"When Mr. Eszterhas visited a nondenominational megachurch, he heard a sensational sermon. But he felt empty afterward, missing Holy Communion and the Catholic liturgy.
"It may have been a church full of pedophiles and criminals covering up other criminals' sins … it may have been a church riddled with hypocrisy, deceit, and corruption … but our megachurch experience taught us that we were captive Catholics," he wrote.
Mr. Eszterhas told The Blade that despite his mixed feelings over the church and the abuse scandal, the power of the Mass trumps his doubts and misgivings.
"The Eucharist and the presence of the body and blood of Christ is, in my mind, an overwhelming experience for me. I find that Communion for me is empowering. It's almost a feeling of a kind of high."
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