Not Beyond Redemption
Basic Instinct. Showgirls. Writer Joe Eszterhas made a fortune on these scripts and others like them. He used to cut a large swath in Hollywood. A lurid, indulgent and dissipated swath.
But he has been completed another kind of manuscript recently--a book published by St. Martin's Press: Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith
Get Religion posted a story published in the Toronto Blade about Eszterhas' conversion to Christianity. It's a remarkable story, filled with God's working in his life to overcome his addiction to alcohol and tobacco, healing throat cancer and, even more miraculously, healing the heart of a man. Eszterhas also praises the miracle of Holy Communion saying,
The Eucharist and the presence of the body and blood of Christ is, in my mind, an overwhelming experience for me. I find that Communion for me is empowering. It’s almost a feeling of a kind of high.Eszterhas understands the heart of repentance as well.
He went from doubting if he could make it through life without tobacco and alcohol, to knowing that he could “defeat myself and win.”
What a wonderful way to describe repentance! It reminded me of what I had read in my daily devotion:
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? (Luke 9:23-25 NKJV)
Read the entire piece here.
2 comments :
Not to belabor a minor point, but as the article states:
When Mr. visited a nondenominational megachurch, he heard a sensational sermon. But he felt empty afterward, missing Holy Communion and the Catholic liturgy
Being Hungarian Eszterhas was raised, not surprisingly, in the Roman Catholic tradition to which he has now returned. So perhaps one could call this a renewal of his spiritual roots?
God's grace does amazing things.
I'd thought about that too, but decided to call it what the journalist called it. Regardless, glory to God!
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