John 1:48
Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
One theme that often comes through in conversion stories is struggle. From Augustine’s Confessions to Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua to modern stories of conversion such as the accounts in Surprised By Truth, we often discover a picture of the pilgrim to Catholicism laboring over tremendous intellectual, spiritual, familial, and social obstacles in order to understand and, at length, to love Christ in his holy Catholic Church. Even in Scripture, that prototype of all converts — St. Paul — went through enormous trials and struggles not only before, but after, his entry into the church. It would be easy to get the idea that God plays hide and seek with us, or that conversion was primarily a matter of “figuring out” the truth of the faith by being clever or spiritual enough. But the truth is, long before Augustine knew about Jesus, Jesus knew all about Augustine. He saw him, not under the fig tree, but frolicking with his concubine. Likewise, neither Newman nor any other convert found Jesus for any other reason than this: Jesus knew them and drew them to himself. This is why Paul says God, “set me apart before I was born, … called me through his grace, [and] was pleased to reveal his Son to me” (Galatians 1: 15-16). God saw and loved Paul while Paul was obliviously approving the death of St. Stephen. “How do you know me?” asks Nathanael. Jesus replies, with a smile and a wink, “How can I not? I made you and loved you from the foundation of the world. I have come for you, you shall not have to work your way to me.” The same is true for you and me.
