Convicted by Mercy: The Journey of Frank Simmonds from the Streets to Sanctity (Extraordinary Lives)

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This riveting book by Rita Simmonds tells the true story of a saint. A saint who was a crack addict. A saint who was a shoplifter and did time. A saint who once lived in a cardboard shack on the roughest streets of New York City. A saint who, one cold night, told God that he would serve him for the rest of his life, and who was able to make good on that promise in the most extraordinary of ways. And yet, this is not the tale of a man who was “bad” and became “good.” Rather, it is the story of a long and transformative relationship, between a man and his God. It is the story of an ordinary New Yorker named Frank Simmonds, who had an extraordinary and unbiased openness to what was good in his life, and who allowed himself to be slowly but radically transformed, by the people he met and the things that happened to him, into a person who radiated the joy and peace of God to all he met. By the time Frank was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the prime of his life, the first reaction of this man who had once contemplated suicide was: “The Lord is my strength and my song!” And this life really is a song. Recounted by his wife, whose spare and direct prose holds back no episode of the often uproariously funny journey of her mischievous, rule-averse, but big-hearted husband, the narrative moves from his troubled early adulthood, to the rock-bottom moment that changed his heart, and on to their life together. It describes the long road to overcome their considerable differences, their struggles to find apartments in racist New York City, the births of their two sons, and the growth of their faith and their community of Catholic friends, of which Frank eventually became a leader and a pillar. Then the final chapter of illness, during which Frank’s spirit soared as his body declined, punctuated by transcripts of the messages he left behind, testifying to the source of his joy with his habitual, no-frills directness. Lawrence E. Sullivan, former President of the American Academy of Religions, has called this book “a parable for our age.” Indeed, Frank’s life, extraordinary for its holiness, is also extraordinary in its ability to touch those of us who are back there, where he started. In a country plagued by racism, drug addiction, and an epidemic of suicides, Frank Simmonds comes like the figure of Virgil in Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY – he walks through that Inferno with us, and emerges on the other side to ascend to a marvelous light, turning back to tell us: “Suffering has meaning. Come and see!”

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