If you are open, the possibilities are endless...

I don't know if it's true, but the rumor is that every Sunday in the city of Vienna there is the most amazing music ever composed played in cathedrals all through city played free of charge. It is a practice that has been around since before the first World War, and I'm sure it still happens on a regular basis.

And rumor also has it that there was a college aged student who made her rounds from church to church one Sunday listening to the free performances when she came across quite a crowd gathering at a Jesuit church. Maria Kutschera.

It was Palm Sunday and thought perhaps the crowd meant Bach.

But, trapped in the church by all the people she was greatly dismayed to learn that there was only a sermon. The message this preacher delivered quite upset her. She had been raised in the church but had stopped believing in God years prior. Rather angry, following the service she found the priest and grabbed his arm and began yelling, "How can you believe all this?"

(Memo to self if ever serving in ordained ministry... if preaching on the love of God, make sure to run and hide right after the service!)

His response surprised her because all he said to her was, "Meet me here Tuesday at 4:00pm" and it changed her life. Her childhood was anything but pleasant.. her mother died when she was young and she was forced to live with an older cousin. She rarely saw her father and he died before the age of 13. Being taken in by an abusive uncle she gave up on having any faith.

On Tuesday, she sat down with the priest and spewed off every argument against God that she had ever heard in her life for more than two hours. When she finished, the priest sat across from her in silence. She thought of more that she could say and continued and again, when she thought she finished, the priest sat there in silence. But still, she thought of more anger against God and continued on. This time, when she had finished and couldn't think of anything else, the priest finally spoke.

"Well my dear, you have been wrongly informed," he said. Realizing that at one point in her life she was a practicing Christian asked her, "when was the last time that you went to confession?" She was completely disarmed by' his unwillingness to acknowledge her doubt. Instead, the Jesuit received her mad ranting as a confession. "Take courage," he said. "I am going to pronounce the words, 'thy sins are forgiven' ... God will forget them, and your soul will look like the soul of a newly baptized person."

And low and behold, when he said the words, Maria found all of her arguments and hostility melting away. She felt as if she was floating on a cloud... confession was indeed good for the soul. From this experience, rumor has it, she became so zealous that she decided to join a convent and her story (from this point forward) may become very familiar to the average person. Maria Kutschera eventually became Maria Von Trapp whose life is ever captured in the movie - The Sound of Music.

Now the moral of the story is not that everyone should run to their parish priest and grab them after the service on Sunday (in fact, please don't!) and freak out at them because they have gone off the deep end, waiting for the (sacrament) of confession and being absolved of their sins... but instead, to look at the wonderful things that can happen if we are honest. Maria allowed herself to be honest with her feelings of abandonment and frustration with God; she didn't sugar coat her anger - she let God take it and mold it and God made something wonderful of it. He took the clay and molded it into one of the most amazing sculptures. Just think... he can do that with you too, if you let him.