Juraj Macko on his conversion was not interested in Christianity, one moment changed everything.

“It was a huge shock for me, I was 21 years old and I just cried there. Although it was a mass event, there was silence and peace. And suddenly I knew that God is there with me and that he is much bigger than I am,” blogger and programmer Juraj Macko, who has been living in Olomouc for years.

We talked about what converts faced in the church, how he coped with his failures, and why his first encounter with God was crucial for him. 

What kind of family did you grow up in?

Basically in atheistic. Although the father was baptized as a child and his parents were also Catholic, the mother comes from a completely non-practicing family. My parents were already atheists and faith was not discussed at all at home.

Now and then, when I went to my grandmother’s village, I saw a nativity scene at her place for Christmas and mud balls or crosses in the cemetery for Easter, but I didn’t attach any importance to that.

Didn’t your grandparents try to attract you to the faith?

No, I wasn’t under any pressure in this regard, they probably respected my parents’ upbringing. I only saw that Grandma went to church, and I asked her a few times about Christianity, but that was all.

In primary school, I was a very self-confident child, because for seven years I performed in the program Zlatá brána, which was known throughout Czechoslovakia, although it was broadcast from Košice. People recognized me on the street because the children who performed in it were celebrities of the time. Plus I was doing well in school, I was good at science, I had straight units, and I was winning Math Olympiads. Basically, I was a successful kid, for whom everything seemed to go well. But I was missing something, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.

So you didn’t know more about Christianity then, even from a cultural point of view? Not. Grandmother took me to church about twice as a boy, but I didn’t understand anything, it didn’t leave any impression on me.

I knew next to nothing about God until high school when communism fell and deregulation took place.

After the revolution, I was a freshman in high school, and in the housing estate in Košice where I lived, people suddenly started going to church en masse, and I discovered that many of my classmates were Christians.

It was my first intellectual breakthrough because I was interested in why my classmates go to church. I went to church on Sunday just to see what was going on there. I’ve been there about four times, but it didn’t appeal to me.

I was just intellectually curious, and I was equally interested in the various esoteric currents that sprang up after the revolution. I went through high school completely fine, nothing bothered me.

Some atheists need to cope with Christianity in their own way and either make a mockery of believers or are militantly angry at the church. Did you have these tendencies?

I had a positive attitude towards Christianity and even a certain respect, I did not need to mock it. But otherwise I didn’t care. I never categorized people according to faith, it was in a box for me, like when someone had a white t-shirt or a blue briefcase, being religious was one of the characteristics of a person.

However, you experienced a turning point in college. What has happened?

I was twenty years old when I finished my first year of college. At that time I was going through my first crisis, I was studying economics and it stopped making sense to me. 

In the second year, I helped high school students with a cultural event and later I learned that they are religious Christians. They asked me what I was doing on New Year’s Eve, that they were going to a Christian meeting in Paris. Since I didn’t have a program and the whole thing was very cheap, I signed up as a tourist as well.

It was a meeting of the Taizé movement and we stayed in families. Our family didn’t speak English well and they kept asking us how we liked the meeting. However, we did not participate in anything, we simply walked around the city and got to know Paris. When we felt stupid in front of them, we still went to one mass for the Slovak participants of this meeting in the center of Paris, so that we could at least tell them that we participated.

It was a huge church that was smashed by young people.

At this mass, which I happened to be attending, I experienced a key spiritual moment that changed my entire life.

The choir sang the song My Wisdom, in which the words “Don’t be afraid, Jesus is here” are sung during the chorus. Don’t be afraid, because our Lord is here…” Suddenly, at one point, I felt that God was there, I felt him there.

It was a huge shock for me, I was 21 years old and I just cried there. Although it was a mass event, there was silence and peace. And suddenly I knew that God was there with me and that He was much bigger than I was.

Suddenly I didn’t have to deal with whether he existed or not, he was just there and he was so real that there was no doubt.

It was a real meeting like ours now when I know that I am indisputably talking to you.

I am no longer a believer in the sense that I believe that God exists. I know he is because I felt his presence. It is already something obvious to me. I can’t explain it any other way. It is certainly the strongest experience of my life.

Did you feel the need to tell someone immediately after that mass?

No, I didn’t know what to do with it. It is possible that no one there even noticed. Only after returning home did I gradually tell someone, because I still perceive what I experienced as a mystical experience.

God reveals himself in different ways, I don’t know why he chose such an emotional way at one moment just for me, who is more of an intellectual thinking person. But I don’t even think that if someone has a completely different path to God, then it is something less. I don’t evaluate it in any way, I take it as a fact that I got to know God in this way.

What were your next steps?

I decided to be baptized and somehow naturally I ended up with the Catholics. I studied in Bratislava, so I went to the Jesuits. An old priest was sitting on the gatehouse, darning his socks. He asked me what I needed. When I told him that I wanted to be baptized, he rolled his eyes at me and was surprised. He sent me to prepare for baptism, which lasted half a year at that time.

How did your family react?

They took note without much drama. I was baptized in Košice during the youth mass. And as an adult, I also received the sacrament of Holy Communion and Confirmation. The godparents were two high school classmates whom I knew to be religious. 

I started going to mass regularly and gradually got to know the principles of Christianity. Before, I really thought that the Holy Trinity was Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, I knew almost nothing, so I learned theology completely from the basics.

Meeting God is one thing, but have you had to deal with some things that didn’t sit right with you while studying Christianity?

I had no problem with anything at all since the experience of the meeting was so strong, I accepted everything, the catechism and all the truths of the faith. At that time I was very vulnerable, it was like a period of falling in love, and I did not perceive anything critically.

How long did such an intense, even emotional relationship with God last?

About two years. It is also described by other converts that the first months are really like when you are in love. In this period, therefore, the church stipulates that converts should not enter a religious order or a seminary, so that it is not a decision made in the initial euphoria. For the first “wow effect” to subside, let faith mature. 

You didn’t have a problem with the category of sin, since you didn’t have to deal with anything like that until then?

Well, I had to admit that I too am a sinner. As a convert, I rather had the idea that I would suddenly be perfect and would not commit sins anymore. Of course, I ran into it and dealt with it for a long time. A person who converts and gives everything to God desires to be perfect and it is very difficult to admit that he is still sinful. 

I had no problem with confession until I understood that I would be sinful all my life and many of my sins would be repeated until death. Coping with it was difficult, especially for the male ego.

When you compare yourself to people who received their faith from their parents, what do you see as the differences and possibly the biggest risks for converts?

The advantage of converts is that they had a very intense experience in adulthood that led them to faith, and they can return to it. The disadvantage is that they do not have a built-in background, because it is very difficult to build up all the habits that those baptized in childhood already have in them. It costs us a lot of energy and study. Just to accept the entire terminology and theology, that’s a study for a few years. The risk of a convert is also the initial enthusiasm, when he feels that he will convert the whole world and be holy, but after some time disappointment can come.

On the other hand, the risk of people being baptized in childhood is that they already take everything automatically and too habitually. Therefore, every person should experience conversion in order to realize the true depth of what he believes, to search for the true meaning of his faith, and to find a personal relationship with God.

I noticed this in the example of the Eucharist. Most people who go to church don’t even think about what happens at the altar. We believe that there is a God in the wafer, but somehow we are not really aware of it.

If we realize every time that God is really present in that little wafer, that is wonderful information. It’s either nonsense, or it’s true, and then I have to look at mass, adoration, or communion in a completely different way. This is so strong in the Catholic faith that when one accepts the essence of these things one experiences great depth.

Sometimes I perceive that we converts can help believers realize what treasures the church brings. If I recognize that I repeatedly meet the living God at mass, that is the fundamental reason why I go there. After that, I don’t care if the pastor is a jerk or if the child next to me is disturbing me. When one realizes that a miracle happens every day at Mass, it is wonderful. We converts can have the advantage that we had to go to the root of the matter and realize it all in depth. But I don’t want to generalize.

After a period of euphoria from faith, did you have a period of crisis?

Reality came when God no longer spoke so intensely. But there were also downfalls. The biggest one is probably that ten years ago my marriage broke up and was declared invalid. I knew I wouldn’t be euphoric all my life, but I didn’t expect this.

The convert may stumble, but it is necessary to remember those first moments with God and return to them. 

Did the breakup of your marriage shake your faith in God?

In those moments, I didn’t question the existence of God, but I asked what the point of it all was. I learned to trust him even in different life situations. Even when I was going through the hardest times, I never had a dark period where I didn’t feel anything at all.

Didn’t you have a problem with the way the Catholics defined their morals or teachings on marriage?

On the contrary, over time I understood the depth of every single legality in the church and what logic it hides. We think that our questions and doubts are genius and original, but the church has been solving them for more than two thousand years. And every time I have a doubt, I start studying and discovering America, and when I come across justifications, it’s an intellectual blessing for me, how the teachings of the church give logic.

I had the same impression from the church court where our marriage was judged. When I saw how honestly it was handled and how the truth was sought, it all confirmed the marriage teachings.

Although I was put down and I was mentally and physically at the bottom, the impression of the process left me in awe of how seriously it is taken and that the definition of marriage makes a lot of sense. Plus I experienced great sensitivity, although very painful things were also opening. However, out of respect, I cannot go into details. In the case of our marriage, it was declared invalid from the beginning.

I was going through a huge personal crisis, I expected everyone to judge me. I judged myself much more harshly, for a long time I could not come to terms with the direction my life was going. I was worried about how they would treat me now that I was divorced, but I didn’t experience any condemnation. I received help and encouragement from the church.

Has the aforementioned emotional relationship with God changed?I keep going back to the first meeting with him. But later, as an intellectual, I was glad to come across the works of Chesterton or CS Lewis, in which faith is also logically based, as well as in the works of Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustina. Even in the most difficult period, I did not come across a contradiction with what I believed in at the beginning. I also experienced intellectual astonishment at how consistent and logically arranged the teachings of the faith are.

When you joined the church in the 1990s, it was still strong and had great social influence. Currently, it is marked by many scandals and, especially in the Western world, by a massive outflow of believers, we also observe a low number of vocations in our country. Is it more difficult for people today to decide on baptism as an adult?

Even today, people have to ask themselves what the essence is honestly. The most essential is the relationship between me and God, but that is not all. The Church is not just priests, religious, and some organizational structure. They are all the saints in the history of the church and Jesus Christ, who is the head, so when we realize the meaning and depth with which this structure is built, we remain in awe.

I am not naive, I see all the mistakes of the church and I often hear how such and such priests have failed, you are such and such, but I always ask myself what I am, and who I am within the church. First of all, I am an adult and I take responsibility for my relationship with God and how I develop it, regardless of whether I like how this or that priest acts.

And then sin is the basic teaching of Christianity because Jesus died for us precisely because we are sinners. We are not better than other people. Being sinful is my basic premise. Therefore, I will not derive my participation in the church from whether others are sinners. I count on that in advance, because we are all sinners. Without it, we wouldn’t need Easter. And what we cannot manage with our strength, the Holy Spirit can complete.

Almost thirty years ago, you experienced the moment when you believed in Jesus as your God. How long is today for you?

I am aware of my sin and for me, Jesus is the one who gave his life for my sin. When I realize, especially during Easter, what God has done for me, I cannot stand aside. It may sound like a cliché, but I feel nothing but gratitude for knowing him.

I may have complicated my life with Jesus, but today, as a soon-to-be 50-year-old, I know that when we try to simplify our lives, it does not lead in a good direction. In this sense, I have complicated my life, but paradoxically, many things have become easier for me and I have matured. I’m glad about this complication.