Just a young woman wearing a cross whom he asked at a dinner he was attending if she was a Catholic. When she said “Yes,” he, a non-practicing Jew, confided that he and his wife had been attending Mass every Sunday for four years. “Mr. Novak,” she said, “life is short, but eternity is forever.” Whoever she was, she was the instrumental grace that sent him to Catholic instruction classes to prepare for baptism. After his reception into the Church in 1998 he gave this simple response to an interviewer who asked about his conversion: “I consider this [Catholicism] the only one true faith, so I believe the Holy Spirit led me to it.”
Deacon Keith Fournier has an interesting tribute on his Catholic Online website. May Mr. Robert Novak rest in peace.
