If you are: (1) a Catholic guy (2) who is currently engaging in pre-marital sexual relationships (3) and/or practicing masturbation (even as a married man) … then I INVITE YOU WHOLEHEARTEDLY TO READ MY TESTIMONY!

I’d love to say I immediately got down on my knees and sought the Lord. The truth is I hit the bottle and started womanising. Yet remarkably God's hand was on me.

I have had over the years long periods of separation from my wife, and have, in between bouts of fighting cancer, experienced - painful to admit it - a kind of belated midlife crisis, with all the typical desires: to be young and healthy again; to be more active and more popular; to escape the inevitable call of the grave, the one certain thing that waits us all. One other thing that can hit you, as you become a reluctant old man, is a desire for an adventure, a desire to escape the boring, to rage against the new-fangled nonsense of modernity and the bleakness of individualism.

I was baptised when I was young, though as a teenager I didn’t practice the Faith. I had no thought of going to the Church, or to the sacraments. Although my life seemed fine to me, I became ill during my time at college. After a while, I began to ask questions and one of these questions I sought to answer was, does God exist?

My mother is of Lebanese Maronite lineage and, if you trace far back enough, this is the same lineage as Christ himself. My mother's father spoke Aramaic which is the native language of Christ and am proud to be of middle Eastern decent.

For the first time, I saw her smile about the Faith. It helped her grieving, knowing how much faith I had that her Nanna's soul had passed on.