This is an excerpt from Eugenio Zolli’s autobiography, Before the Dawn (1954), which chronicles his life and faith journey to Christianity.
In 1945 light broke forth in my soul. It was the high summer of my spiritual life: after my sorrow a great abundance of fruit issued from the eternally flowering Wood of Christ’s Cross. He said, “Follow Me.” It was the call of God. I followed, receiving Baptism in the Roman Catholic Church on February 13, 1945. I had the great joy of being joined in this act by my wife, who received the sacrament with me.
Conversions always come as a more or less agree¬ able surprise for everyone. Inevitably there is discussion of the causes which have brought the conversion about; and the question is one that is very difficult to resolve. And from the point of view of the convert himself? There too, much will remain obscure. I have never paid any attention to the literature on this subject. I think that it is very hard to create a typology— that is to say, to divide the various conversions and classify them under one type or another. This is a work that one can do sitting at a desk, abandoning living reality: and the product of the undertaking will be only theory, abstracted from reality.
I don’t think that the first movements, the growing and maturing processes of conversion, are clearly perceived phenomena even for the convert himself—the man who has lived them. By this I do not mean to suggest that this development has taken place in the subconscious, as it is the fashion of today to suppose. I prefer to leave the subconscious out of the present discussion.
If I were to use a simile to express what I have to say about conversion, I should employ Jesus’ own words about the grain of mustard. The seed, embedded in the earth, grows in a hidden manner, and no one heeds its growing. After a time it manifests itself as the fresh shoot pierces the topsoil; yet it occasions no surprise—only in retrospect has one a confused remembrance of this first appearance. And so in the mind: one does not think about this new development as something to be dealt with, perhaps eliminated. So many stimuli pass through the mind—thoughts and fragments of thoughts, affections: they are born secretly and they die away unheeded. Thus the development of this grain of mustard seed gives rise to no alarm; it is something new in us, and yet it is in no way strange or disturbing, because it is something that, in a very deep sense, belongs to us.
To tell the truth, I could not say that I was quickly aware of the first manifestation in myself of love for the Gospel and for the person of Christ, nor did I welcome it with great tenderness or emotion. No, I received it with the same sentiment with which one receives a member of one’s family or a person one loves as a close relation.
The green shoot grows; it becomes stronger and more vivid in color. And this is inevitable. It does not astonish us, because it is part of the whole natural process of development. What is it? In reality it is a new area of knowledge. I mean knowledge and not experience. One’s interest in it has nothing in common with the interest one feels in the events of the scientific laboratory, nor even in introspection of the psycho¬ logical order. I venture to say that, although I took my academic degree in psychology and am deeply interested in psychological problems, I remained quite detached from what was happening within myself, from the point of view of analysis. The event taking place in the depths of my soul was for me like the arrival of a loved guest. Nothing occurred to give rise to conflict in my conscience. I only began to hear the voice of Christ speaking louder and more clearly in the Gospels. In my soul God did not reveal Himself through tempest or fire, but in a gentle murmur. This may be explained by my character: I am not of a dramatic temper. Everything in me develops slowly. So in regard to scientific research and likewise in the sphere of the emotions.
Only now do I understand that Providence has given me a tendency towards mysticism; but, to speak truth¬ fully, I knew nothing about this myself. When, some ten years ago, readers of my articles began to notice it, I thought they erred in judgment. But their number increased, and they were persons wholly unacquainted with one another, living even on different continents. Then I began to think about a man my mother used to tell me about when I was a boy. One day he came home at noon, said goodnight to everybody, and went to bed. His wife, much concerned, asked him if he were ill, and the good man answered: “I am quite well. But this morning everybody told me that I was drunk. I am not drunk—you know that I do not even take wine, that I am an abstainer—but I love peace, and in order not to contradict them I am going to bed.” I felt the same way; I became a mystic even to myself.
In the years that followed, when the seed of the Christian life that the invisible hand of God had cast into my soul began to grow with greater vigor, I still did not observe any conflict between this development and my part as a member of the Jewish religious com¬ munity. In biblical literature and in the very abundant rabbinical writings there is such a wealth of ideas that one can find much common ground between Hebraism and Christianity. The lives and ideals of the Christian saints were for me reminiscent of the Hassidic literature (of the pietists) which I had known since my childhood and loved dearly. The legalistic passages of the Talmud interested me as mental gymnastics, but how much more beautiful and more touching was the Zohar, the cabalistic Bible! I had it in my private library in a three-volume edition—practically pocket books. The Aramaic language of the book seemed easy to me—and then, the language was only the envelope; what was inside was so rich and so stimulating. The interpretations of the Song of Songs which may be found here and there in the Zohar seemed to me far more lovely than those offered by the Aramaic version (the Targum) or even by the Midrash (the rabbinical interpretation).
God began to be more human for me—if I may use such an expression. He was no longer the God of thunder, the God who reveals Himself through the tempest; whose Law is developed and enunciated in so many laws, precepts, and commandments. No, I began to be conscious of a God whom I loved, One who wants to be loved and who Himself loves. I said to myself: From the beginning of the world men have killed themselves and made their fellow men suffer. They destroy their own lives in order to possess a river, a mountain, a pipeline, a market—and even for the sake of religious doctrines. And sometimes a race comes to regard itself as more gifted and more powerful than all others, and sees in this a sign of election, finding in it a new reason to kill.
I began to feel more and more keenly the desire to find someone who would speak to me of the God of Love, the God who loves all without distinction and desires that the bonds which unite men should be those of love. Was this utopia? That might be, but I told myself: A novelist dreamed of the submarine long before it was ever invented; an artist likewise conceived the airplane. And I began to realize that I had a concrete desire for something like that utopia: I dared to say, the utopia itself.
And I inquired of myself: Surely the realization of my dream of Jesus is not to be merely at the “end of the days,” in the prophets’ language? Is the sea of love entered only at the end of life? Has not God created us for love? And shall we ascend to God, if we have not loved everyone and everything? This is the path I was treading as I approached the promised land of Christianity.
And still I was conscious of no conflict with Hebraism. God’s pilgrims walk on solitary paths. I never spoke about this state of my soul, this growing love, to anybody. The man who loves may feel his love as a burden; but it is a sweet burden which he carries out of inner necessity. “Amor meus pondus meum,” he says, with St. Augustine. The man who loves, says St. Thomas Aquinas, tries to become more and more assimilated to the object of his love. And I loved Jesus; I loved Him ever increasingly.
For many years I had been able to unite Hebraism and Christianity—or was this an illusion? is the idea absurd?—because I loved both. What else could I do?
*****
It was the Day of Atonement in the fall of 1944, and I was presiding over the religious service in the Temple. (The German Jews like to call this “the long day,” but it is not long; it is a day of enormous content if one is able to comprehend it. I remember, when I was a child, seeing my mother and father weeping during the most touching moments of the Atonement Day service. Now tears have gone out of fashion; I myself cannot weep.) The day was nearing its end, and I was all alone in the midst of a great number of persons. I began to feel as though a fog were creeping into my soul; it became denser, and I wholly lost touch with the men and things around me. A candle, almost consumed, burned on its candlestick near me. As the wax liquefied, the small flame flared into a larger one, leaping heaven¬ wards. I was fascinated by the sight of it, looked with wondering amazement at the simple spectacle. I said to myself: In this flame there is something of my own being. The tongue of fire flickered and writhed, tortured; and my soul participated, suffered.
In the evening there was the last service, and I was there with two assistants, one on my right and the other on my left. But I felt so far withdrawn from the ritual that I let others recite the prayers and sing. I was conscious of neither joy nor sorrow; I was devoid of thought and feeling. My heart lay as though dead in my breast. And just then I saw with my mind’s eye a meadow sweeping upward, with bright grass but with no flower. In this meadow I saw Jesus Christ clad in a white mantle, and beyond His head the blue sky. I experienced the greatest interior peace. If I were to give an image of the state of my soul at that moment I should say: a crystal-clear lake amid high mountains. Within my heart I found the words: “You are here for the last time.” I considered them with the greatest serenity of soul and without any particular emotion. The reply of my heart was: So it is, so it shall be, so it must be.
Nearly an hour later my wife, my daughter, and I were at home for supper after the fast. After supper my wife took some newspapers and went to her room, and so did my daughter. I remained in my workingroom to write letters and read magazines. When I was tired I went to my bedroom. The door of my daugh¬ ter’s room was shut. Suddenly my wife said to me: “Today while you were before the Ark of the Torah, it seemed to me as if the white figure of Jesus put His hands on your head as if He were blessing you.” I was amazed but still very calm. I pretended not to have understood. She repeated what she had just said, word for word. At this very moment we heard the “Little Trumpet”—so we used to call our younger daughter, Miriam, when she called from afar, “Papaaa!” I went to her room. “What is the matter?” I asked. “You are talking about Jesus Christ,” she replied. “You know, Papa, tonight I have been dreaming that I saw a very tall, white Jesus, but I don’t remember what came next.”
I wished them both goodnight and, wholly un¬ troubled, went on thinking about the unusual concur¬ rence of events. Then I went peacefully to sleep.
It was a few days after this that I resigned my post in the Israelite Community and went to a quite un¬ known priest in order to receive instruction. An interval of some weeks elapsed, until the 13th of February, when I received the Sacrament of Baptism and was incorporated into the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.
Featured: Eugenio Zolli. Life Magazine (1945).
