Franciscan priest pens personal book because he had to
By Mark Haney
The Catholic Weekly
BATON ROUGE, La. —Franciscan Father Robert Konopa does not consider himself a writer and yet he was compelled to write a book.
The priest, who served as associate pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Saginaw for 15 years — 1990-93 and 1996-2008 — recently had “God You Must Have Me Confused with Someone Else, Seeing What I Was Missing” published by Tau Publishing of Phoenix, Ariz.
“I just consider the whole thing to be beyond me,” he said. “It was all new to me. How do you write a book? I’m not an author. How can I write a book?”
And yet it was something he was compelled to do.
“I had to do this,” he said. “I could not be at peace until I did it. I thought about it all of the time. Then something would happen or something would be said and there it would be again. I was being continually reminded that this was something that I really needed to do. I had to do it. I wanted to do it but it seemed like a monumental task and I kept saying, ‘I’m not a writer.’”
That compulsion was relentless.
“I would wake up at 1, 2, 3, a.m. and this kind of outline would come into my head,” he said. “And I would have to get up and write.
“There is a difference between doing the writing because you can’t let it go versus doing the writing because it doesn’t let go of you. It doesn’t go away. It does not let go of you. And you have to do it for some kind of peace of mind. It really is kind of exciting, but it leaves you very restless.”
The book ties the priest’s personal experiences and stories into the idea of seeing God, and ourselves, in a new way. He likened it to his experience of learning, as a young boy, that he needed glasses.
“I didn’t realize I wasn’t seeing very well until that eye chart went up on the wall,” said Fr. Konopa, who recently began a seven-month stint at a Cleveland, Ohio, parish as part of his Channel of Peace Itinerant Ministry, which is designed to cover for pastors so they can be away for an extended period of time, for example, to take a sabbatical, or because of an absence due to a health issue, or to pursue an educational opportunity. “I needed someone or something to know that. I use that kind of analogy for our own spiritual life. We don’t see as well as we could and we should. We don’t see ourselves in the way God sees us and we don’t see God in the way God wants to be known and seen. That is so, so important. When you begin to see things in a different way, it is like putting those new lenses on. Everything begins to change and you realize that, when you put those lenses on, that didn’t change anything — it was always like that — you are just seeing what you were missing.”
The stories, which he draws from personal experience, “were just ways for me to begin seeing things in a new way. That just changes our spirituality and really brings it alive.
“It just seemed like the image of God that we have, what we think God is like, is so important in the way we see ourselves, how we see our world, how we even interpret Scripture, just basically how we live our lives. I find that so much has changed for me and it got to the point where I wanted to tell people about how things have changed. I didn’t know how to do it. It is so important, how we look at God.”
Through the book, he said, “I am looking at our spiritual life and asking, ‘What are we not seeing yet? What is it that God is trying to show us, reveal to us in our very lives, in the stories of our lives, in our relationships with one another? How can that relate, be relevant to our very life with God?’
“Then the question becomes, now that I am seeing that, what else have I not been seeing? And so our life becomes what we so often see in Scripture: ‘Lord, I want to see. I want to see as You see. I want to hear as You hear.’ I have to think God honors that kind of prayer because that certainly would be God’s desire too.”
Fr. Konopa, 60, said he wanted also to get readers to realize how important it is to be known by another. He wrote about sending a Christmas card to a dear friend.
“And I wrote in the card, ‘How good it is to know you.’ But that didn’t seem to cover it. That somehow just seemed incomplete and kind of empty,” he said. “And so I continued to write, ‘And how good it is to know that I am known by you.’ That is the other half of the relationship. We know a lot of people, but the number of people who we know that know us and still love us all the way through and accept us all the way through, those are the people who change our lives because we are allowed to be who we are and we are also called to be our best selves. What happens when that is applied to God? When we say to God, ‘I know that you know me and Your mercy and Your forgiveness and Your grace are always, always there. You’ll never take that away from me. And that allows me to grow in a new way and in a free way.’”
To write the book, however, he had to open up his own personal life. “And I am more of a private person,” he said. “But I knew that this had to be personal because it was the only way I could write it. I could not just go on and on about theology and Church, it had to be something personal. If I am going to write about a personal God, a God who is very personal, then I would have to become personal in the book.
‘There are some things I wrote that were just so personal, not embarrassing but so personal. But I knew I had to, that it was so significant to once again support the idea that we have a very, very personal God, a God who is extremely personal, who knows all of our history and knows what we like and dislike.”
Because the book was built on stories drawn from personal experience, he said, “when it seemed I had exhausted that, I knew I was done.”
As the book was being written, Fr. Konopa had four or five people read and edit it. But then he didn’t know what to do next.
“I didn’t know any publishers,” he said. “What was I going to do with this? Whom do I give it to?”
One of those asked to review the book, fellow Franciscan Father Murray Bodo, wrote back, “This should be published. And I have the publisher for you.”
Fr. Bodo connected Fr. Konopa to Tau Publishing. Fr. Konopa submitted the manuscript in May and was told in June that the firm also liked what the priest had written and the rest, as they say, is published personal history.
Once the book was published, he worried he’d look at it and wish this had been changed or that had been added.
“I haven’t felt that at all,” he said. “I just feel good about everything that is in there.
“It feels wonderful to have it done. Still is kind of startling to me the effect it is having on people. It is gratifying but, and this word is overused, it is really very humbling.”
His book, it seems, left a good impression.
“Fr. Bob Konopa writes clearly, simply, honestly and with guidance, depth and wisdom that would help many people,” wrote Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
“Fr. Bob Konopa’s book is what books strive to be: Real,” wrote Fr. Bodo. “I thoroughly enjoyed this good book that is so Franciscan in its honesty and simplicity, and its homey, down-to-earth examples and stories.”
“What an honest, down-to-earth, and, therefore, wonderfully relevant book,” wrote Sr. Josephe Marie Flynn, S.S.N.D., author of “Rescuing Regina: The Battle to Save a Friend from Deportation and Death.” “Sharing his own simple story, Fr. Bob opens readers to the happy possibility of a God who treasures ordinary folks and delights in awakening them to their own, undreamed potential. “
Despite these and other glowing reviews, Fr. Konopa has no plans for another book.
“I can’t imagine sitting down at a keyboard and saying, ‘this is my second book,’” he said. “There is just no energy there for that at all. And that’s fine with me.
“I will not force (another book). I will not make that happen. I will not force that process. I have to be inspired in some way. If it is not inspired then I am just going to labor, just sit and labor through that. And I am not going to force that. That would be very unwise.”
To get a copy of Fr. Konopa’s book, visit www.tau-publishing.com.