Perseverance in prayer can ignite grace to overcome blindness of spirit
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[Part I of a three-part series on intercessory prayer, a key to conversion.]
These days, it's everyone's story.
A husband seeking escape through pornography. A wife drowning herself in alcohol. A son sinking his time and treasure – and soul – into narcissistic women. A daughter chasing phantom comfort in the arms of narcissistic men. A brother buying into the lies of the rainbow mafia. A sister purchasing a "solution" from Planned Parenthood. A grandson embracing atheism. A granddaughter taking up the occult.
Everywhere – everywhere – family and friends are succumbing to the spirit of the age.
Forsaking the Faith of their Fathers, they strain to capture elusive visions of happiness and false promises of hope, clutching at satanic substitutes for God – diabolical counterfeits specifically tailored to each individual soul, and designed to ensnare and damn.
Amid our civilization's accelerating demise, pews are emptying and churches are closing. Meanwhile, too many priests and pastors – malformed in the very Faith they're called to uphold – are at a loss of what to do, and simply bide their time by managing the decline.
Today the shadows are lengthening, and darkness covers each of us to some degree. Even those who remain personally steadfast are suffering its chill, as they watch loved ones – those whom they treasure most in this world – plummeting toward damnation, oblivious to the peril enveloping them.
So what are we to do?
We – YOU – must keep praying.
Keep praying – for yourself, for your family and for your friends.
Though its impact is often not immediately measurable – or even discernible – sustained prayer ultimately wins the war.
Regardless of whatever circumstances may present themselves; no matter how hopeless things may appear from the outside, the persistent prayer of a courageous, committed Christian is monumental in its impact. As Scripture tells us, it moves the very heart of God.
1 Thessalonians 5:17, for example, instructs us to "Pray without ceasing."
Likewise, Colossians 4:2 exhorts: "Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving."
James 5:16 reminds us that "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective."
The entirety of Luke 18 is devoted to illustrating the effectiveness of sustained prayer:
"Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, 'In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming."' And the Lord said, 'Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.'"
On Tuesday, Souls and Liberty marked the Feast of St. Monica by recounting the story of the intrepid heroine of Hippo.
Saint Monica's life is a chronicle of how a mother's love for her wayward son moved her to intercede unceasingly on his behalf.
It is the record of how she, through her maternal devotion to prayer, ultimately won not only St. Augustine's soul for God, but those of an untold army of others across the past 17 centuries, as well; souls who followed St. Monica's example, and those they touched.
It is the story of a simple Christian mother who chose hope over despair, who persisted in prayer against all odds, and who brought forth eternal fruits that continue to accrue, even now, owing to such perseverance.
Today, Souls and Liberty presents another story of a mother interceding on behalf of her son. And while the intercession in this account occurred in a more hidden way than that of St. Monica – unfolding beneath the veil, so to speak – its salvific fruits were no less wondrous.
This is the story of Servant of God Fr. Augustine-Marie of the Blessed Sacrament, a 19th century hedonist-turned-holy priest – an anti-Catholic degenerate who, through the intercession of a beloved mother, experienced a deluge of God's grace that sparked his repentance and conversion.
Like the account of St. Monica, the story of Fr. Augustine-Marie is a testament to the unfathomable mercy of God and to the heroic efforts each of us must undertake, both for our own salvation, and for the salvation of our lost loved ones.
PRODIGY AND PRODIGAL
Before Fr. Augustine-Marie the Catholic priest, there was Hermann Cohen the precocious pianist.
Cohen was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg, Germany, on Nov. 10, 1821. From the age of four, he demonstrated a remarkable musical talent. His parents nurtured the budding prodigy by entrusting his artistic development to a professor of music – a man who, though an expert at his craft, was morally dissolute.
"As I saw him admired by everybody, I soon wanted to ape his behavior," Cohen reflected later in life. "He loved gambling, so I too took to it very early on. He loved horses and pleasure, and as he always found admirers ready to supply him with money for his exploits, I began to conceive the notion that there was no life happier than that of an artist. My master often said to my mother, 'Hermann is a genius.' That encouraged me still more."
Within just a few years, Cohen was an accomplished pianist, and had begun touring cities across Germany, delighting audiences with his exceptional gifts. But, as his artistic renown spread, his soul began to darken. He idolized "success, honors, celebrity – the pleasures in which artists spent a great part of their time, journeys, adventures," he later recalled, adding, "At twelve years old, I learnt many things harmful to me."
At age 13, Cohen's mother, Rosalie, took him to Paris in the hope of advancing his career. At that time, Paris was the center of the artistic world, with an unrivaled reputation as a proving ground for young talent hungry for all the world has to offer. There, through an introduction by famed German poet Heinrich Heine, Cohen came under the tutelage of another musical prodigy, twenty-year-old Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt – arguably history's greatest pianist.
Though benefitting his artistic development, Cohen's association with Liszt at that time fueled the teenager's moral corruption. A Catholic, Liszt had been pious in his youth, but as his fame increased, he fell into sin, becoming a notorious philanderer. As Liszt's star pupil, within a year of his arrival in Paris, Cohen was dripping with pride, disdainful of the simple and ordinary. Moreover, he had become a fixture of the city's most fashionable avant-garde salons, where he mixed with celebrated artists, as well as political, philosophical and clerical radicals:
"I was spoilt in the salons with its secular society. Soon they were determined to make me the scapegoat of all their reprehensible ideas – atheism, pantheism ... anarchy, terrorism and abolition of marriage, Communism, and hedonism. There was soon room for all this in the head of a fourteen year old. I then became a zealous propagandist of these groups and, consequently, the Benjamin of more than one of the modern prophets of so-called civilization."
At 15, Cohen accompanied Liszt and his mistress to Switzerland, where the teenager secured a lucrative position as a professor of music at Geneva's new music academy, founded by Liszt himself.
By the time Cohen arrived in Geneva, he was a passionate devotee of radical anticlerical philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But, it was at this point that God saw fit to plant within his heart the first seeds of divine grace.
While in Geneva, Liszt presented Cohen with a Bible, inscribing inside it a line from the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the pure of heart." Cohen treasured the gift, though initially more for his friend's gesture than for the words of Christ contained within it.
Another incident during his time in Switzerland stirred Cohen, spiritually. During an alpine outing one afternoon, he joined Liszt and his mistress on a tour of St. Nicholas Cathedral in the city of Fribourg, where one of the finest organs in Europe had just been installed. Eager to experience the instrument's glory, Liszt positioned himself before the keys and began playing "Dies Irae" from Mozart's "Requiem." The effect on Cohen, as he later wrote in his Confessions, was otherworldly:
"Liszt touched the great keys of this colossal harp of David, whose majestic sounds gave me an idea of your grandeur, O my God. I was filled with a foretaste of holiness. Did you not cause to stir in my soul an intimation of religious faith? What then was that deep feeling, which I always experienced since my youth when I myself touched or heard someone else play the notes of an organ? It would affect me so much that I became unwell and was advised to avoid the instrument. O Jesus, my beloved, you were at the door of my heart; and I would not open to you."
Once planted, these seeds were forgotten for many years; the Bohemian life resumed its call, and Cohen answered enthusiastically. Eventually, he accompanied Liszt back to Paris, where he again took up a profligate, playboy lifestyle.
"Music lessons provided me with ready money, and money provided me with the pleasure I craved," he recalled. "At that time, my life was given over to indulging every desire. But did this make me any the happier? Not at all. My God, the thirst for happiness could never be quenched in that way."
After his return to Paris, Cohen's penchant for gambling metastasized into a full-blown addiction – an affliction so monstrous that he began contemplating suicide. Reflecting on this period later in life, Cohen blanched at the horror he subjected himself to; describing his pain of soul in the third person, he painted a vivid picture of the anguish that any addict, whatever his or her particular vice, knows all-too-well:
"He had become a slave to an implacable tyrant, which gave him no rest by day or night. If he did happen to snatch a few moments sleep, he was disturbed by bad dreams, incessant hopes of gain, or the horror of loss. He woke up with a start, memory recalling a picture of his desperate plight. During these long sleepless nights, he planned to take his life but wanted to try his luck just one more time before carrying out his plan."
Cohen's plight worsened in 1840, when he and Liszt suffered a falling out – an estrangement that lasted for years. A few years after his break with Liszt, Cohen was sent reeling once again, this time when a Parisian femme fatale with whom he was in love rebuffed his advances.
A decade-and-a-half of aimless wandering and soulless pleasure-seeking had left Cohen grappling with a canyon of inner emptiness – a chasm that no amount of self-indulgence could fill.
ENCOUNTERING THE EUCHARIST IN THE MONTH OF MARY
Somewhere in the midst of his desolation, Cohen began to cry out to God. Incredibly, he did not seek solace in the temples of his own religious tradition; instead, he began to frequent Catholic parishes throughout the French capital, including the Church of Saint-Sulpice and La Madeleine, where he spent hours in contemplation. At this stage, Cohen had no conscious desire to become Catholic; nevertheless, it was to Catholic sanctuaries that he felt drawn for prayer and reflection.
Over time, Cohen's confreres noted subtle, but significant, changes in him. Once devoted to ostentatious displays of fashion, he began to adopt a humbler style. His apartment, too, began to reflect a new simplicity. One friend, Chevalier Charles Asnarez, later described it as furnished only with a bed, a trunk and a piano; Asnarez also noted that the young Jewish artist had taken to adorning his living quarters with Catholic sacramentals – a crucifix, a statue of Our Lady, an image of St. Augustine and a picture of St. Teresa of Avila.
Before long, Cohen reached out to Asnarez, recounting in a letter recent events that had sparked the inner transformation that, more and more, was becoming outwardly visible to all who knew him.
In May of 1847, one of Cohen's friends asked him to fill in as choir director for an upcoming Benediction service at Paris' Church of St. Valère.
"I agreed and went to take my place purely from my interest in music and a desire to do the job well," Cohen explained to Asnarez, noting almost as an afterthought that "Mary's month was celebrated with great pomp at the Church of St. Valère."
Cohen noted that at the pinnacle of the Eucharistic ceremony that Friday evening in May something unusual happened to him:
"At the moment of Benediction, though I was not kneeling like the congregation, I felt something deep within me as if I had found myself. It was like the prodigal son facing himself. I was automatically bowing my head."
Though confused by the encounter, a week later, Cohen returned to St. Valère, where he experienced another taste of Eucharistic transcendence. There – for the first time – the thought of becoming Catholic entered his mind.
These incidents, he told Asnarez, were only the beginning; over the next few months, his encounters with grace magnified:
"A few days later, I was passing the same church ... while the bell was ringing for Mass. I went in and attended Mass with devotion and stayed on for several more Masses, not understanding what was holding me there. Even when I came home that evening, I was drawn to return. Again the church bell was ringing and the Blessed Sacrament was exposed for veneration. As soon as I saw it, I felt drawn to the altar rail and knelt down. I bowed my head at the moment of Benediction, and afterwards I felt a new peace in my heart. I came home and went to bed and felt the same thing in my dreams."
In another letter from this period, Cohen shared with a new friend, Fr. Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne – a Jewish convert to Catholicism – additional details of what he had been experiencing.
"I wished to see a priest to talk things over," he recalled. "This was amazing seeing I distrusted them ... eventually I was introduced to a priest named Legrand. He listened with interest, calmed me, and told me to continue as I was doing. He told me to trust in Divine Providence who would show me what to do."
"I found this churchman good and kind and he certainly changed my opinion of priests, having only known them in the pages of novels where they threatened excommunication and hell-fire." Cohen explained. "Now I had met a learned man, humble, kind, and open-minded, looking to God – not himself."
Following his meeting with Fr. Legrand, Cohen was called away to Germany for a concert. While there, he attended Mass and, again, his experience of God intensified.
"Everything affected me – the hymns and prayers and God's invisible presence," he remembered. "I was very moved and felt the Lord was touching me. When the priest raised the host, my tears began to flow. It was a consoling and unforgettable moment."
"And while the tears flowed, a deep sorrow for my past welled up. I immediately wanted to confess everything to the Lord, all the sins of my life. There they were all before me, countless and despicable and deserving God's punishment.
But at the same time, I felt a deep peace that really healed me, and I was convinced that the merciful Lord would forgive me and overlook my sins and accept my sorrow. I knew he would forgive me recognizing my resolve to love him above all things from now on.
By the time I left the church ... I already felt I was a Christian, or at least as much a Christian as it is possible to be before being baptized."
Prompted by an intense hunger for the Eucharist, while in Germany, Cohen determined that he would take the next step – that he would go all the way and enter officially into the Catholic Church.
Upon his return to Paris, Cohen began meeting nightly with Fr. Legrand for religious instruction. During this period, he attended the reception of a number of Jewish converts into the Church at the chapel of the Sisters of Sion – an order cofounded by his friend and fellow Jewish convert, Fr. Ratisbonne – and decided he would like his own reception to take place there, as well.
Fittingly, Cohen was received into the Catholic Church on the Feast of St. Augustine, Aug. 28, 1847 — 177 years ago today.
Later describing his experience of baptism to Fr. Ratisbonne, he explained that as the holy water began to flow across his forehead, he was suddenly swept up in a supernatural encounter with God:
"I had an inner vision as if the Holy Spirit, as though to seal his promise, took me by the hand and revealed to my gaze, rapt in ecstasy, while directed above that which no finite being can ever understand – the infinite ... I saw ... a great and unlimited brightness, space without end.
A gentle warmth penetrated me and, in spite of the brilliant light which radiated from all sides, my gaze never tired of plunging into the rays of light ... for deep within there was an even brighter light ... and there stood a glorious throne and seated on the throne was Our Lord Jesus Christ, beautiful with eternal youth, with his beloved mother on his right, and around his feet a host of saints clothed in the brightest colors of the rainbow.
The saints were prostrated at the foot of the throne in adoration and yet at the same time they looked toward me and smiled kindly ... Heaven and its inhabitants seemed to rejoice at my baptism as though the poor soul of a redeemed sinner weighed in the balance of eternity."
THE CONDUIT OF GRACE
The story of Hermann Cohen's conversion is stunning, as nothing from his background would hint at the possibility of such a profound spiritual turnaround.
What – or who – prevented him from being completely consumed by his gambling addiction or its attendant vices? What – or who – stopped him from carrying out his fantasies of suicide? What – or who – steered him into Catholic sanctuaries to seek God, rather than into the Judaic temples of his youth? What – or who – explains his remarkable metamorphosis from playboy prodigy to pious champion of the Eucharist?
In one sense, we'll never know – the precise underpinnings of his encounter with grace, and of his responsiveness to it, will likely forever be known only to Heaven.
In another sense, it is intriguing to note who Cohen himself credited with his conversion.
Cohen's mother, Rosalie, was an ardent anti-Catholic; thus, it's certain that she held no nightly vigils imploring Christ to pour His salvific grace upon her son. Who, then, could be responsible for appealing to God for his conversion, if not his biological mother?
Cohen pointed to another "Jewish mother" – the Jewish mother, in fact – crediting Her, his spiritual mother, with his embrace of Christ.
It was the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cohen maintained, who interceded for him, obtaining from Her Son the grace required for his repentance.
Cohen often reminded others that his first major experience of grace – the Benediction encounter at the Church of St. Valère, which triggered the unstoppable sprouting of the seeds sown years earlier in Switzerland – occurred during "Mary's Month" of May.
He also noted that the incident at Mass while he was on tour in Germany – the moment he experienced true contrition for his sins and the resolve to love God above all else – came amid an increasing devotion to Our Lady. This was compounded by the fact that as he was leaving Mass that day, Cohen happened to meet a friend who asked him about the visible changes in his life. After sharing with her his recent encounters with God, his friend handed him an image of the Blessed Virgin's assumption into heaven and told him to thank Her for the graces he was receiving.
After his reception into the Catholic Church, Cohen began referring to Mary as "Mother of the Eucharist," for it was She, he declared, who revealed Christ to him through Her motherly intercession.
With Cohen's testimony in mind, Catholics (and other Christians who are willing) would do well to entrust the salvation of lost loved ones to the Blessed Virgin. We must keep praying, certainly, and we should punctuate our supplications to God with confidence in Our Lady's intercession; with an unwavering trust that She will do for our wayward loved ones what She did for Hermann Cohen – that Mary, full of grace, will secure whatever grace is needed to secure their salvation.
The preceding account is just the beginning of the story of Hermann Cohen's journey into Catholicism, and his trek toward becoming Fr. Augustine-Marie. In Part II, we will examine a converted Cohen's mighty works for God – how his devotion to intercessory prayer inspired countless contemporaries across Europe and beyond to deepen their walk with Christ. Finally, in Part III, we will spotlight another, related conversion story; one that in some ways eclipses even the magnificence of Cohen's own – that of the person who, throughout his life, was dearest to him.
Click here to read Part II.
Writer, editor and producer Stephen Wynne has spent the past seven years covering, from a Catholic perspective, the latest developments in the Church, the nation and the world. Prior to his work in journalism, he spent eight years co-authoring “Repairing the Breach,” a book examining the war of worldviews between Christianity and Darwinism. A Show-Me State native, he holds a BA in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University and an Executive MBA from the Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.