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2 ARCH B I S H O P ' S CO LU M N A s I look back upon my life, I am filled with gratitude to the Father who bestowed so many graces and blessings upon me. He truly sought me when I was lost and drew me closer into the love shared bet ween the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, especially through beaut y. Beaut y has revealed to me the grandeur of God, that someone has brought about the beaut y of creation and that it is not just an accident. I say with full conviction: my life is a pure gift, and the Lord has been generous to me. He has taught me that conversion is a lifelong journey. In this Denver Catholic testimony issue, I am delighted to share with you some pivotal moments in my life where Jesus revealed his love and called me to conversion. Two books changed my life as a young man. The first was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. When I picked it up, I was a college student at the Universit y of Colorado Boulder, away from the Church and living a t ypical worldly lifest yle. As I dove into Bonhoeffer's ideas, I was struck by the concept of cheap grace versus costly grace. Cheap grace means that the salvation Jesus offers us costs us next to nothing. We do not need to convert, repent, change our lives, give up anything or acknowledge or avoid sin. It is cheap. But grace is costly! The price for sal- vation is everything; your whole life. The price to follow Jesus as his disci- ple could not be higher. As I wrestled with this concept, the Holy Spirit began to convict me of the realit y of Jesus Christ. I could no longer see Jesus as just a histori- cal figure to be studied or some nice guy. I knew that Jesus was the truth and that he was the only person who could forgive sin and offer eternal life. The Holy Spirit also made me keenly aware that Jesus' call to follow him is as real today as it was for the apostles. It means leaving everything to follow Jesus. I knew that I needed to respond to Jesus' invitation. It was at that moment that I resolved to follow Jesus as his disciple and began to let go of my worldly ambitions. The verse I associate with this experience comes from the Gospel of John, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, Conversion: A Lifelong The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Confessions of St. Augustine AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2025 | DENVER CATHOLIC