Michael R. Wilson retweetledi
Here is the single most effective way to convert your loved ones to Catholicism.
It's not arguing.
It's not apologetics.
It's not even fasting.
St. Monica used it to convert St. Augustine.
Almost no Catholic prays this way today.
Here's what she did.
Her son was a complete mess.
Stealing. Lying. Living with a girlfriend. Mocking the faith his mother had poured into him for years.
So Monica did what any desperate Catholic mother would do.
She went to the holiest bishop she knew — St. Ambrose — fell at his feet, and begged him through her tears:
"Please. Speak to my son. Convert him. Save him."
His response shocked her.
Three words.
"Leave him alone."
What kind of bishop says that to a weeping mother?
But before Monica could protest, Ambrose said the sentence that would change her entire life:
"Go your way, and God bless you. For it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish."
She left filled with peace instead of despair.
And her son?
He became St. Augustine — one of the greatest saints, theologians, and Doctors the Church has ever known.
So what did Ambrose know that Monica didn't?
He knew the one principle that turns ordinary prayers into invincible ones.
And almost nobody prays this way.
Here's how most Catholics pray:
"God, if you just convert my brother, I'll be happy."
"God, if you just bring my husband back to Mass, everything will be okay."
"God, if you just do this one thing..."
Read those again and notice what's actually happening.
We're not surrendering our will to God.
We're trying to bend God's will to ours. Not the other way around.
We're treating the Almighty like a vending machine — the right combination of prayers, fasts, and good works, and out pops the conversion we want.
That's not prayer.
That's negotiation.
And St. James calls it out by name:
"You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." — James 4:3
Here's the part most Catholics never grasp:
God controls not just what happens — but how it happens.
Maybe He's already ordained your family member's conversion.
But maybe He's ordained that he'll convert only through your prayers, your suffering, your surrender.
And as long as you're white-knuckling it — trying to be the engine behind her conversion — you're getting in the way of the very thing you're begging God for.
So what's the answer?
Surrender.
Stop trying to sell your family the faith.
Stop shoving apologetics in their face.
Stop trying to prove you're happier than them.
Pray the way Abraham prayed.
Remember what God asked of him in Genesis 22?
To take Isaac — his only son, the son of the promise, the son he loved more than his own life — and lay him on the altar as a sacrifice.
And Abraham obeyed.
He raised the knife, fully surrendered.
And the moment he did, God stayed his hand and gave him back his son — and made him father of nations.
Because Abraham was willing to lose what he loved most, he received more than he ever dared ask for.
That is exactly how to pray for your loved ones.
Not: "God, you have to do this."
But: "Jesus, you want this person's conversion even more than I do. Not my will, but thine be done. On your time. In your way. And if it's only through my suffering — so be it."
When you can pray like that, your prayers become unstoppable.
One of the Eastern Church Fathers put it this way:
"He who obeys God — God obeys him."
Read that one more time.
The Monica who clenched her fists and demanded action got nothing for years.
The Monica who finally surrendered her son to God with open hands got St. Augustine.
She got the Confessions.
She got a Doctor of the Church.
She got to spend eternity with the very son she once feared she'd lost forever.
If you have someone you're praying back to the faith — a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling — hear this:
Stop fighting, start surrendering.
Open your hands.
Let God be God.
Send this to a friend who needs to hear it.
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