In the early winter of 2013, When Ken flew back from England to Florida so that we who had only met briefly 2 or 3 times, could get to know each other a little better, I asked him if he would like to come to Sunday mass at San Antonio Catholic Church, near Maple Leaf Golf and Country Club in Port Charlotte, the place where I had rented a house for a few months over the winter of 2013. Ken and I met at Maple Leaf. He said yes, he would like to come to mass that first Sunday of his return to Florida.
On the Sunday that we went to mass that first time, I told him that he was not able to receive the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, as he was not Catholic, but to fold his hands over his chest and the priest, Father Jacek, would give him a blessing if he went up as if for communion. He did that, and when we returned to our places in the pew, I looked briefly at him and realized that something had happened with him.
After mass, he told me. When he went up for the blessing he said he felt as if a “warm blanket” had been completely wrapped around him. That was a lovely feeling and thought, however, it had much more significance to Ken. He told me that when he was a young teen he and several classmates had been invited to attend a local Christian camp experience in England. The teacher who had invited these boys was a supply teacher. Ken’s parents agreed that he could go. At the start of the camp, the leader told the boy that if anything unusual happened, anything at all, to please let him know. Somewhere in that week, Ken had that experience of being wrapped in a warm blanket. He felt that he was supposed to tell the leader, who then asked him to speak about it to the rest of the camp, the other boys. Ken told me he was rather shy as a boy and would not normally seek that sort of attention, but he felt that he was supposed to do this, so he told his warm blanket experience as requested to the rest of the boys. Boys being boys, he took a ribbing for that story. But he continued to attend a local church for a while after that camp.
Not for all the years – perhaps 50 or so, had he ever had that experience again or even thought much about it. But that day at San Antonio, the experience revisited him.
When I arrived at San Antonio church, before meeting Ken, I signed up for a weekly lady’s group so that I could meet other women who were involved with the church in some way. It was a sort of reflection group, meeting for an hour or so, made up of about 10 women, many of them snowbirds like me.
About a week or two after Ken’s warm blanket experience, and after he had already decided to ask me if it would be OK if he came to daily mass with me and started doing so, I was at the weekly lady’s gathering. For some reason, one of the women came over to sit down beside me at the coffee break. Through the sessions previously, I had made it known that I was a late life convert to the Catholic Church, having only been baptized in 1994 myself. So this lady did not know Ken or know that Ken was back visiting Florida or anything about him. She sat down, and told me that she too was a later in life convert to the Catholic Church. The thing that had happened to her, she said, was that she had walked into a Catholic church in California, I think it was, invited by a friend to attend a mass, and she immediately felt that she had been wrapped in a warm blanket. I couldn’t believe my ears.
I went home to Ken and said, "Ken, this has nothing to do with me. This is between you and Jesus, but it sure seems to me that He is calling you into the Catholic Church. " And so Ken entered the RCIA and was confirmed into the Catholic Church at San Antonio, in Port Charlotte, at the Easter Vigil 2014.
Ken went on to tell about his experience from time to time, and embraced the church and the faith that he had entered into.
