Ahmad's Profession of Faith

On the fifth day, I went with Ahmad to the project and there we had a conversation in the place that later became the shrine of the Virgin.

He said, “Father, there is something, a missing thread, a key[1] that you’re not giving to me.”

I replied, “Ahmad, I know the key, but I’m not giving it to you. You have to discover it on your own.”

But, to make things easier, I told him the story about a girl I met in the United States who was not Christian, but who met Christ and decided to be baptized. After she received the sacrament of baptism, she went to visit her parents and she couldn’t sleep because she felt a dark and gloomy presence in the home.  She went from room to room making the sign of the cross and saying, “In the Name of Jesus Christ get out of here.”

So Ahmad interrupted me saying: “How? How? Make this sign one more time.”

So I made the sign of the cross.  Then he said, “This is the sign which I saw on Friday night in the chapel.  The light went out of the Box (the Tabernacle) in the shape of a cross and it entered my heart.”

I was surprised, but I now understood why the light went from left to right. I said, “Ahmad, you’ve been here in Deir-El-Kamar for five days and Christ is revealing Himself to you in a powerful way. Who do you say Jesus Christ is?”

He was quiet for a moment then he raised his head, looked at the sky and said,

“I used to consider Him a prophet, but now I can see that He is the Lord of heaven and earth.”

He proclaimed this in the place where the shrine of the Virgin was built later on.

Evening came, and morning followed--the fifth day.

On the seventh day, Ahmad completed his work at the shrine, and I was certain that God was finished with the work He had been doing in the life of this man.

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[1]  What is the thread or the key to a person who is non-Christian? It is baptism, the person who is not Christian feels that there is something that he misses but he doesn’t know what it is.