Time is Short, Eternity is Long
John Henry Cardinal Newman’s canonization concentrates the mind on his continuing impact on the hearts, minds, bodies and souls of people all over the world. And especially in America.
We see his intercession in two miracles found by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to be supportive of canonization. The first miracle concerned the healing from a crippling spinal disorder as a result of Deacon Jack Sullivan’s prayers for Newman’s intercession. The second miracle involved Melissa Villalobos. She suffered from an untreatable placenta detachment which caused blood meant to nourish her unborn child to bleed out. Helplessly sitting in a pool of her own blood and still bleeding profusely, she prayed for Newman’s intercession. The bleeding stopped. A blood clot in the fetal membrane, three times the size of the developing child, vanished. Melissa’s unborn child, Gemma, turns six later this year. There is no medical explanation for either event
Deacon Sullivan and Melissa Villalobos have two things in common. They are both American Catholics who were drawn to Newman, in part, through a series presented by Father C.J. McCloskey on EWTN.
Newman’s continuing influence is not confined to the medically miraculous. He is known as the patron saint of converts. His sanctity and brilliant prose have led many to Rome in his own lifetime and ours. One little known Newman-associated conversion, involving the same Father C.J. McCloskey, is the conversion of pundit Robert Novak.
Novak was a well-known Beltway political commentator for fifty years in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He co-authored the Evans & Novak newspaper column. He was a readily recognizable television personality appearing on programs such as Capital Gang and Crossfire. At the zenith of his career, he was considered one of the five most read columnists of his day.
Known for his conservative and sometimes acerbic commentary, Novak was given the name “The Prince of Darkness.” He embraced the nickname, even using it as the title of his autobiography, published in 2007. A year later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died in August 2009.
Near the end of his autobiography, Novak tells the story of his conversion to the Catholic faith.
Novak credits the spiritual direction of Fr. C.J. McCloskey and Monsignor Peter Vaghi as being instrumental in his conversion. In addition to their assistance, Novak describes a pivotal incident in 1996 at Syracuse University that led him from curiosity to conversion. There to give a speech, he found himself at dinner sitting across from an attractive woman wearing a gold cross. He inquired if the woman was Catholic. She was not. But the inquiry led to a discussion of Novak’s interest in the Catholic Church. In response to her questioning, Novak said he had no present intention of joining the Church. Then the young woman looked at him “and said evenly: ‘Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever.’” The impact of these words on Novak was immediate and permanent:
I was so shaken by what she said that I could barely get through the rest of the dinner and my speech that night. Sometime during the short night before rising to catch a seven a.m. flight back to Washington, I became convinced that the Holy Spirit was speaking through this Syracuse student.
Novak was haunted by the words, and came to believe they were part of God’s plan for his conversion:
Monsignor Vaghi and Father McCloskey surely helped, but now as a Catholic I feel that they were part of a divine plan which led me to embrace this church. Could [my wife] Geraldine’s quest for a church, Peter Vaghi’s presence, and C. John McCloskey proselytizing all be coincidental? Or did they reflect the hand of the Holy Spirit? My realization that the latter was the case was brought home by [this]…spiritual event at highly secular Syracuse University.
There is a Newman connection to this marvelous conversion story. For the words heard by Novak were Newman’s words on the eve of his conversion to Catholicism more than a century before. Newman wrestled mightily with the question of conversion. Upon completion of his work An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine on October 8, 1845, he had at last decided. His writing done, his doubts removed, he was about to be received into the Church the next day. But one final post-script was yet to be penned:
… And now, dear Reader, time is short, eternity is long. Put not from you what you have here found; regard it not as mere matter of present controversy; set not out resolved to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so; seduce not yourself with the imagination that it comes of disappointment, or disgust, or restlessness, or wounded feeling, or undue sensibility, or other weakness. Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past; nor determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long.
Newman’s conviction had the same imperative impact on Novak. In researching for his autobiography in 2005, Novak located the woman wearing the gold cross. Her name is Barbara Plonisch. He learned that she was not Catholic, and did not recall the conversation; he would later learn she did not even know who Newman was. Novak was convinced this unwitting quotation of Newman’s postscript was the work of the Holy Spirit.
Fr. C.J. McCloskey had a gift for apologetics, and a love for Newman that compelled him to make Newman known to a modern audience. Melissa Villalobos and Deacon Jack Sullivan would listen and would pray and eventually would be healed. Robert Novak would become a Catholic. And we who learn of this holy man, and the Savior he so ardently sought, what about us? Time is short, eternity is long. Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us.
