One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic

The Story of my Return Home to Rome

I love the liturgy of the Catholic Church, and I love the architectural designs of their buildings. The Catholic Church is very old. It has been around for 2000 years, which makes it the oldest Christian church. From my experience with most mainstream churches, it is the least judgmental in general. In particular, the church embraces the concepts of charity, love, and forgiveness. Here is the story of my relationship with the Catholic faith.

I was born to a Catholic couple in 1977, and was baptized in the church as an infant. When I was a young boy, I never knew that there were tensions between the various denominations of the Christian religion, until I talked with some of my friends in school. I remember one day we were telling each other which denomination we attended. As a child, I was never told to discriminate against another person's faith, so perhaps I was a little naive. The children would name their faith, such as "Lutheran" or "Presbyterian" or "Baptist", and most would smile or say something like "that's cool". Then it came to be my turn. Needless to say, I was looking forward to revealing my faith, as all eyes were on me. I actually felt proud when I said the word "Catholic". Imagine the confusion on my face when the smiles on their faces disappeared, and in some cases, were replaced with frowns! The Baptist boy, after his initial frown, smiled again with a rather unfriendly smile. He told me that his church said the Catholic Church was the "whore of Babylon", and that we secretly worshiped the devil in the form of the pope. I was completely astounded. I will never forget his words. I said, "Where did you hear that"? He replied, "My pastor said it during church". This particular exchange has always remained with me. Shortly after this incident, circumstances began to change at home. Your parents are normally the people you rely on as a child for guidance. Unfortunately, this was not the situation for my family or me.

Shortly after my first communion in the early 1990s, my father fell away from the Catholic faith after some Fundamentalist Charismatic Christians convinced him that Catholicism was a false religion. My father started attending the local Assembly of God Church and he eventually made the rest of us go with him. Soon, my father had convinced my mother and my two brothers that the Catholic faith was wrong. It took him and his church a little bit longer to convince me, but eventually, due to the fact that neither me nor anyone else in my family was knowledgeable of our own Catholic faith, I was unable to defend the faith to my father any longer and was convinced that Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism was the true, pure Christianity, but I was not happy about that at all. I especially hated thinking that the Baptist boy in my school might have been at least half way right.

Soon, my faith in God began to waver. As a young Catholic, my faith in God had been strong and there was no doubt in my mind about the reality of Jesus. I have very fond memories of spending time in conversation with my beloved Grandmother Yvonne. My siblings, cousins and I, all called her "Gamma". I was the oldest and as a toddler, I could not pronounce "Grandma" and I said it as "Gamma." The name stuck and all grandchildren that followed me called her by that name, too. She had a very special devotion for the Blessed Mother. She would share stories with me about St. Bernadette or Our Lady of Fatima and she was always buying me rosaries, medals and crucifixes. I loved it. She was an earth Angel, filled with true Agape and her faith in Jesus, as I reflect on it today, reminds me of the faith of the Roman Centurion who was such a delightful surprise to Jesus when he asked Christ to heal his servant boy. She and my beloved mother (her daughter) really painted a beautiful picture of God and of heaven for me. I was so very sad when she died in 1997 of lung cancer. She had been such a rock for our family. Yes, I had loved being a Catholic when I was very young, and God was good and loving to me then. But after I "learned" that everything I had believed and held dear was "false" (as was supposed), I began to doubt Christianity all together.

The church we were going to was called the "First Assembly of God" and it was located in Puyallup, Washington. I remember that the Pastor, I will call him Pastor Rob, was very anti Catholic, and anti single woman and anti a lot of things. He and the fundamentalists that I would come into contact with, including my father (this is not an attack on my father, who is loyal to Jesus, as he knows how to be, and is a very loving man) painted for me, a picture of a tyrant God. A cruel, judgmental God filled with spite and rage. I don't think that my father meant to add to such an image, but that was how it worked out. I eventually began to feel that I just could not possibly believe in such a God. This, in addition to other things that were happening in my life, helped to bring about in me a severe depression. I became suicidal, and I slipped into an antagonistic Agnosticism. Out of sheer spite, I tried to be an atheist, but I could never go that far. I back slid terribly.

From Agnosticism, I slipped into Paganism and witchcraft. I began to believe in the "Great Goddess" or "Mother God/dess". I cast spells and purchased books by authors such as Silver Ravenwolf. I read the tarot, chanted to strange gods and goddesses. Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali and Innana were names that frequently formed on my lips as chants. I purchased copies of "The Witch's Almanac" so that I could be sure to celebrate the proper holidays, like Yule, Beltain, Samhain and Candlemas. At one point, I had even belonged to a coven and was sort of the leader, although we were "progressive" or thought of ourselves as such, because we never chose a High Priest or Priestess, although I was bossy enough and often filled our version of that position. I also began to sort of dabble in the darker aspects when I developed an obsession for dark beings and spirits.

Well, this went on for about three years. Then one day, I was out with some friends and we decided to browse around in a dollar store. As I was walking down the isle, searching for candles and incense, I stumbled across some Novena candles. They sort of tugged at my heart. Then I saw a statue of the Virgin Mary. Her arms were outstretched, like she was almost welcoming me, and was ready to take me into her arms. It was a dollar statue, but it caused my eyes to mist over. It reminded me of my grandmother and her love for Mary. I felt warmth that I did not understand at the time, fill my heart and I know that anyone who would have been looking at my eyes would have noticed that they were glistening. I snatched up the statue and two novena candles and I purchased them.

When I brought these three items home, I stared at them for a long time. The two Novena candles were of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart. I looked at the Sacred Heart and saw the face of Jesus. A face filled with love and compassion. A face that was never pictured by me while going to my dad's church and hearing about Jesus. Then I looked at the Immaculate Heart novena candle. Mary's eyes were so soft and warm. This was a face that I had not seen in years. Like the statue, it filled my heart with warmth.

Unfortunately, I felt that if I returned to Christianity fully, it couldn't possibly be Catholic. If Christianity WAS legit, I thought to myself, then the fundamentalists were still right. But, because of my memories of my grandmother, and those items from the dollar store, I had a distant respect for Catholicism. When I first used those candles and that statue, I am sort of ashamed to admit that I used them in a pagan-like way. I added them to all my witchcraft paraphernalia, and I treated the statue of Mary as an idol. I used it to represent the Goddess, rather than who it truly represented, and I did so in an idolatrous manner. Sometimes, while I was praying (yes, witches do pray), I would sense what I felt was a strong female presence, and I mistook it for the Goddess. I would even gleefully say to myself "Take that, Christianity! The Goddess is with me." But I now know that the female presence would have none of that sort of thinking.
I began to have some interesting dreams. And in my dreams, the female presence seemed to reveal herself. It was the Virgin Mary. Perhaps these dreams were brought on by the fact that I bought the statue, but I like to think that they were real. I remember that in one of them, I was very upset about something. I was pouting like a little kid and being very selfish, in the dream. I wasn't sure what I was so crabby about, but when I looked up, in the distance, I could see the shadow of a woman coming towards me. As she got closer, I saw that she was a woman dressed all in white with a white veil over her head. I knew that she was Mary. She walked up to me and embraced me. All the negative feelings vanished and then she smiled at me and I woke up. That day, I had planned on being lazy and relaxing, but my parents asked me if instead, I could accompany them to a cousin's wedding. I rolled my eyes and thought to myself "Great, another Christian church I have to go to." I still had some negative feelings towards Christianity. The dream I had was forgotten and I was crabby. I got ready for the wedding and was miserable the whole time.

When we arrived at the Church, though, I saw that it was a Catholic Church, which was a shocker. When I walked through the doors, all the negative feelings vanished. And at that instant, I recalled the dream and was struck by the similarities of the dream and what was happening to me for real that day. I entered the sanctuary and it was like a breath of beautiful, fresh air. Like a cool drink of water after living in a desert for years and years.
I walked the Stations of the Cross and tears fell down my cheeks. I lit prayer candles and gazed at life sized statues of the like I had not seen in many years. There was a special pavilion like room for the tabernacle and I went into it and there was a lady there, and she and I chatted for a long time about the Catholic faith. I almost missed the wedding. I was significantly changed that day.

When I got home, I immediately decided that it was time I let Catholicism give ITS side of the story. I was fairly sure that it was a legitimate religion and I wanted to prove it to spite my father. So I began to tear through web-sites that covered Catholic apologetics. On AOL, I would spend many hours in Catholic chat rooms. So many common objections to Catholicism made by Protestants and Fundamentalists were BLOWN out of the water. I started going to a Catholic bookstore and I began to devour literature on the Catholic Church. I discovered something that shocked me to the bone and it actually terrified me at first. Catholicism was not only a legitimate Christian faith. It was THE faith founded by Christ Himself on the Rock of St. Peter and it was THE Church that received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I found that ironic since my dad and the people of his church called themselves "Pentecostals." I was amazed that even the Papacy was legit. That was one thing I never DREAMED could have had a defense. I shared all of this with a witch friend of mine. I met her in Junior high and she was my best friend. Her name was (and is) Sarah and she had been blind since birth. And as I read and learned and was convinced, she too learned and was convinced, and she had NO Catholicism in her Christian back ground. She was Lutheran before she was a witch.

After a year of this, we together one day realized that we were no longer witches. We were just too Catholic in our hearts to be witches. We just up and understood it one day. We were not witches anymore. We didn't need witchcraft. We were both HIGHLY devoted to the Blessed Mother by this time, and we KNOW that she guided us back to her Son. I remember that it was my love for her that was my first motive for renting the movie "Jesus of Nazareth." I had heard that they had a good portrayal of Mary in that film. I was loyal to Jesus by this time, however it was hard to feel close to Him and to love Him. The movie moved me to tears and made Jesus very real for me. After that movie, I loved Jesus more than I thought would ever have been possible. Through that movie, Mary taught me to love her Son above all others in the world. Jesus is my beloved, my King, my Savior and He is my All.

Sarah is now in RCIA and she loves it. When she attended her first Mass, she cried. I took her around to the Stations of the Cross and she felt the statues with her hands. I took her to a statue of the Pieta and she was able to feel Mary's face and Christ's wounds. The Gospel was made real for her in a special way that day. My parents are slowly beginning to understand the Catholic faith. They are not close to being ready to return, but I just know that through prayer, one day they will come home. My dad finally admitted that "Catholics aren't so bad" and I know that my mother misses devotion to Mary. Almost two years ago, I made my first confession. I returned to the Church almost two and a half years ago, but it wasn't until a year and a half ago that I felt worthy enough for Jesus to forgive me, and worthy enough to forgive myself. I sat face to face with the Priest, who is a fantastic, kind and loving man. I was so nervous. I told him everything I could remember. Twenty-three years of sinning. He absolved me and told me that God did not expect me to remember every sin, and that even the ones I forgot were absolved. Then he gave me my penance. I expected a bunch of Hail Marys, which I would not have minded, because I have developed a huge devotion to the Rosary (Its my favorite prayer), but instead, he asked me to pray to God and thank Him for all the special people in my life. It was a very long list.

When I went up to take Communion for the very first time in nine years, I cried. I for the first time took communion and actually understood the significance of it. It was a highly emotional experience for me.

On that list of people I thanked God for was Mary of course. She is my Mother and my Queen and she played such a large role in my return to Jesus. Sarah is on that list, my parents are and of course, my beloved Grandmother Yvonne. I just know that her intercession played a great role in my return to the Church. Thank you so much, Gamma, I still miss you and love you.

One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic

My Spiritual Beliefs

The Story of my Return Home to Rome

St. Catherine of Siena

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