Andrea Földi-Kovács gave a touching and beautiful testimony in Marosvásárhely in the Church of Szent János the Baptist.
In his testimony, prayer played a central role, but the well-known journalist also spoke honestly about his conversion, his sins, and his relationship with God. We are sharing details from this beautiful testimony now, but it can be viewed in its entirety below the article.
Since my spiritual renewal, I often tell Jesus:
“Jesus, thank you for coming so far for me. Thank you for finding me, for calling me by my name. Thank you for bending down to me and lifting me out of the morass of guilt, despair, and hopelessness. Thank you for taking me in your arms, for rocking me, for cleaning me, for healing me and for comforting me. Thank you for taking away everything that separated me from you. But dear Jesus! Thank you for leaving my tears, the only worthy prayer, with which I can thank you every day for all this."
I say this gratitude often. It is by the grace of God that I am able to stand here before you today, and like all of you, I am the living proof of His faithful and unfailing love.
The only difference between you and me is that I have nothing to boast about except my weaknesses.
In my line of work, in the media, it is customary for everyone to put on their best form in front of the cameras. It was the same with me, I tried to be very prepared. Then God asked me a very difficult thing after He renewed my heart and asked me to show everything that I have not shown before the cameras. Let me show you the me that has been hidden until now. He asked me to talk about what was not visible until now, about my worst self, so that I could testify more authentically about what He did to me. This will be for His glory and the salvation of souls.
A striking hallmark of today's age is friendly religiosity. Convenience religiosity, open-minded religiosity, in my opinion, religiosity. I myself was in this friendly religiosity for many, many years.
Then my calling, as I will talk about tonight, was to expose lies, hypocrisy, sin in myself with the guidance of the Spirit, but not only what is contained in the Ten Commandments, but rather the sins of my heart. Unlove, anger, selfishness, impatience, or even envy.
God has a personal plan for all of us, and Jesus loves us to be what the Father dreamed us to be!
I grew up in a very loving family. But I wasn't brought up in the faith, and I wasn't even baptized. I secretly ran away to the first religion class at church. The result of this was that a year later, at the age of fourteen, I was baptized in a parish in Budapest, in Albertfalva. To this day, this day is very, very vivid in my mind. I remember my white dress, which my sister sewed for me, I remember the strip between the pews, which was illuminated by colored light through the glass windows. I remember walking towards the altar and the statue of Saint Michael the Archangel looking down at me from behind the altar. I remember every little detail perfectly. But what burned into my heart the most was how God loved my soul at my baptism. It was a very, very defining experience for me, a very wonderful experience of God. And my conversion completely transformed my thinking, my perception of the world. St. Clare of Assisi became my patron saint at baptism. Twenty years later, as a television reporter, I found out that XII. In 1957, Pope Pius chose St. Clare of Assisi as the patron saint of television and televangelists.
After a few years, I turned my back on God and left my faith, I left Jesus for a long time, I turned my back on the Father and deliberately silenced the Holy Spirit within me.
This was the second very important lesson in my life! After I turned away from God, I really entered the shadow and there is no commandment that I did not break during the years to come, there really is none. I was in very serious and very, very many sins for many years. I have repented of certain sins. It was then that the thought that there was no forgiveness for my sins came to me. God granted that I had a little girl relatively young, out of wedlock, but to this day I am infinitely grateful that I said yes to her life, and it is beautiful to see her unfold before my eyes.
Then, over time, I got to know my husband, with whom we are a great gift to each other. Perhaps we have not yet discovered how great a grace it is that we are for each other, but God warns us again and again to delight in each other.
I became a hard-working, a little withdrawn, very agile and increasingly successful journalist. My career started to unfold nicely and quickly. After a while, I lived a relatively exemplary life free of major scandals.
I left the swings that characterized my youth.
Then I slowly returned to the church, I tried to get closer to God, but only formally. I was always present at Sunday mass, I went to confession at Christmas and Easter, I said the prayers morning and evening, before and after meals. I liked to warn the people around me about their religious obligations, I told everyone how to be a good Christian. And I believed in myself that my life belongs to Christ again. Meanwhile, I was nothing more than a religious impostor.
I lied to myself, I lied to my environment and I also lied to Almighty Father God.
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done..." - by no means did I want the will of the Father to be fulfilled in my life; I wanted my own will to be fulfilled. And for this, if possible, I should get as much help as possible from God, to whom I prayed.
"And forgive us our trespasses, as we have forgiven those who trespassed against us..." - and I did not forgive those who trespassed against me! My heart was full of cherished grievances, impatience, desire for revenge, hatred, and anger. I felt these were legitimate grievances and embraced them as if they were some sort of inheritance.
It was a very one-sided relationship. I selected the religious truths I liked according to my taste, and I lived only a part of my life as a Christian. I didn't give my life to God, just my Sunday.
When I finally had the courage to despair quite frankly, one night I cried out like this: I cry out to you from the depths, Lord!
I blamed God the Father for all the bad things that happened in my life. I experienced Him as a merciless New Testament judge. I imagined an insensible huge person before me during prayer.
And yet He could hear!
This is the third lesson in my life, in the words of St. Teresa of Avila: "No matter how weak one prays, God always listens very attentively."
Answered. Today I know that the Father does not always give us what we ask in prayer, but he always gives us what we need for our salvation. Because God sent me and has been sending people who point to Him in my life ever since. I didn't recognize these people before.
I took the next step towards God with serious determination, through Sister Margaritha Valappila's retreat. I prepared for this spiritual exercise with great longing. After my arrival, we gathered for glorification and Holy Mass in a very beautiful small hall with an arch. There was a lady there, Csilla, who has been my very dear prayer partner ever since. He invited me forward, I sat next to him. When the first chords were played and the first song of praise was sung, God unexpectedly gave me the grace I had been longing for for thirty years, and He loved my heart anew. Exactly the same as he did at my baptism.
I fell to my knees and started to cry.
But this was not the most important experience of God during this retreat, because on the third day I confessed to God as I had never before. It was a wonderful, honest and full confession. In the following days, Jesus sent me countless messages of encouragement through this brother, Csilla, with whom we sat next to each other quite by chance.
He gently asked you to cry, but mourn your past, because I will make a new way for you and I will glorify my name in your life.
Encouraged! Repent of your sins, but finally forgive yourself, because I forgave you everything a long time ago.
During this spiritual exercise, he changed my heart of stone to a heart of flesh and called me: never take your eyes off me again, because now I have taught you to walk on water.
My biggest sin was assuming that God no longer loved me.
But I really experienced that even though I left Him, He never left me, not even for a moment. God illuminated my soul with his incredible light.
On a recent group pilgrimage to Medjugorje, where my husband and I both went to the mountain of apparitions, I left barefoot. As I started up the mountain, a thought formed very strongly inside me. His thought was: Let him hurt me! And I thought that Our Lady was asking me not to look for these nice flat smooth big stones, but to step on those sharp rocks and small prickly pebbles that also accompany us along the way. That's why I didn't spare my legs. I stepped on every sharp rock and every little pebble. My husband accompanied me half way, and we reached the statue. I prayed to Our Lady for a long time, and miraculously, in the next two days in Međugorje, during the devotions and the mass, she very gently revealed to me that She did not want me to injure my legs! He wanted me to want him without fear of getting my heart hurt.
Our Lady asked me to hug the cactus too and not to care if it stings or hurts me. Because that cactus might need the hug much more than the sting hurts me.
God's love is wasteful! He lavishes His love upon us endlessly, even if we are not aware of it, even if we stab Him in the side with a spear. His answer to this is blood and water flowing from his side.
This is what Our Lady led me to do in Međugorje, to love in this way, because this is the love I received, and I must pass this love on. Let Jesus wound my heart with His love!
The full testimony of Andrea Földi-Kovács can be viewed here:
Featured image: Árpád Földházi/Mandiner
