Former skeptic, 80, enters Church at Easter
ARDEN — Tom Knost, 80, has embraced the Catholic Church after a lifetime of holding views fiercely opposed to Catholicism. And it was thanks to an Emmaus retreat and the encouragement of Catholics he knew that helped draw him to the faith.
Knost received the sacraments of initiation during the Easter Vigil Mass April 3 at St. Barnabas Church, becoming one of approximately 100 people expected to enter the Church this Easter season.
For Knost, becoming Catholic was the result of several profound encounters with the faith earlier in his life.
Although his own family was not religious, Knost grew up in Ohio living among and knowing many Catholics. He even married a Catholic when he was 19, but the couple did not practice the faith. They are no longer married.
“I was surrounded by Catholicism,” he says. “Even though there was no religion in my life, some of it seeped in. When I was 5, I thought, ‘If this guy Jesus is an important guy, people should be patterning their lives after Him.’ But I didn’t see anyone doing that in the world.”
Knost spent decades criticizing and debating his friends and colleagues about Christianity.
“What was really driving me was curiosity about God, but it didn’t show up that way,” he acknowledges. “I was ‘l’enfant terrible.’ If someone brought up God, it began a long argument.”
One question kept plaguing him over the years: “If there is a God, what should I do about it?”
In his early 30s, Knost participated in a personal growth program offered by his employer, and the experience had a strong impact on his outlook towards spirituality, if not religion or Catholicism specifically.
“It was a crucial thing for me,” he recalls. “I had already been such an ‘I’m going to do it myself kind of guy.’ Even knowing there was a God, I didn’t see it as a personal thing. I became aware of the reality of it. I didn’t feel a strong personal pull; there was no religious tug. But it altered how I looked at and treated others.”
When he was 35, a friendship with a colleague who worked as a psychological trainer prompted another nagging question for Knost: “Who do you have to be to have the Holy Spirit talk to you?”
“For 43 years I sat with that question,” he says. “That was a question that was burning inside me.”
Knost spent four decades “doing a lot of studying about Catholicism,” he says, but still not taking the next step.
What set him on the path to the Catholic Church was attending an Emmaus retreat near Charleston two years ago, after being invited by a Catholic friend. Even though the Emmaus retreat he attended was not Church sponsored, the people facilitating the retreat were Catholic.
His experience on that retreat was so profound and its impact so great that Knost was asked to give a talk at an Emmaus retreat the following year.
“The Holy Spirit chose me to stand up during the (initial) retreat and give my own testimony, so I sat down and put that talk together (for the retreat the next year),” he explains.
Everything he had been questioning since his 30s started to make sense after that second Emmaus retreat.
“For me, that was me lighting the wick on the end of a stick of dynamite,” he says. Knost then reached out to Father Adrian Porras, pastor of St. Barnabas Church near his home, to find out what he needed to do to become Catholic.
Father Porras says Knost “has brought such energy to this year’s RCIA class. He is a vibrant soul yearning to know more and more about God. Through his devotion to the Holy Spirit, Tom has found fulfillment and peace in entering into the Catholic Church. I am glad that St. Barnabas Parish has provided that opportunity for Tom.”
Knost believes he has been given the gift of his life to purify and strengthen his spirit.
“If I’m not doing that, I’m wasting the opportunity that God has given me,” he says.
Knost knows that his own journey into the Catholic Church has brought answers to the questions he has been seeking – just as the original disciples found through encountering Jesus while walking on the road to Emmaus.
“As I look out into the world and look at Christianity, there really is only one Christian church: the Catholic Church,” he says. “Anything else is someone else’s rehashing of stuff, and that is a mistake. Everything that is there from over 2,000 years is important, some extremely important.”
— SueAnn Howell, Senior reporter
Pictured: Tom Knost (third from left) stands with his sponsor Fred Charlton (far right) April 3 during rehearsal for the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Barnabas Church in Arden. Once a skeptic and critic of the Catholic faith, Knost felt the call to become Catholic after attending and then speaking at an Emmaus retreat. (Photos provided by Tom Knost and Simeon Willis)