I don’t remember anything about the day I was baptized because it happened before I could consciously say “I do believe.†I was baptized an infant like most Filipinos, and for many of us, if not most, our unchosen religion feels like an unfair imposition.
I once asked my student (also baptized as an infant) whether he believed in God. He gave me a look of uncertainty. So, in my friendliest tone, I asked him “do you still go to Mass?†He said yes. He went not because he was convinced he should, but was scared of what would happen if he didn’t.
I identified with him. I lived my first 14 years as a catholic uncertain of what I believed in and too scared of hell to turn my back on my unchosen Church. Then, in April 1999, this fear-ridden view changed when my parents took my brothers and I on a pilgrimage to Rome. It wasn’t the first, but this visit was faith-changing.
Two pivotal moments on that trip convinced me to stay catholic. These were: walking the via crucis a few feet behind St. John Paul II, receiving communion for the first time fully aware of Christ’s real presence,
I had never seen a priest pray as intently as the holy father did that night. As he led us through each station, he held up his well-known cross-staff with its trademark corpus and bent horizontal beam. His bent, weakening shoulders and Parkinson’s tremor made him a walking mirror of the cross he bore. In his silent perseverance, I sensed the tenacity of the faith he professed. In his prayer, I saw my inherited faith was about so much more than not going to hell.
By the end of that trip, my baptism no longer signified a plank I clung on to with unreflective desperation. It meant belonging to a Church where I could be touched and transformed by God in the most intimate, freeing way.
In hindsight though, my freely embracing catholicism began way before Rome. Despite the uncertainty and fear of my earlier years, there were a few cracks there that let grace-lit shafts in later.
Some of those shafts, are 3 philosophical questions my mom invited me to reflect on as a young girl. They became the deepest seeds that eventually grew into my chosen faith. I still find much meaning in pondering this threesome to this day.
I share these questions below and how they prepared me to finally choose catholicism without having to leave the Church, hoping that they might help other families too to find deeper roots for their inherited faith.
Does God exist and how do we know?
It was this question, I think, that led me to recognize God’s presence in the steadfast faith of John Paul II. It also led me to see the power of His grace in the witness of martyrs who suffered in that same coliseum, and the many saints I learned about during our pilgrimage. Simply put, this question led me to discover that the best evidence we have for God’s existence isn’t a well-explained theory but real lives transformed by belief in Him.
What does love mean?
Even if I find inspiration in well-written descriptions of love, the most moving replies I’ve found are from those who serve God by loving in astounding ways: saints, martyrs, and current-day believers who serve with unwavering commitment, sometimes to the point of risking their lives.
I first saw how captivating a holy life is while in Rome, where I heard countless stories about real men and women who bravely chose holiness. This choice led them to lives of prayer and heroic self-emptying. Each one, a testament to how faith expands and purifies the human capacity to love.
But after that trip, I began to recognize the best descriptions of love in the many lives I watched unfold around me: my parents’ marriage, the many holy marriages of other praying couples I later met, my brothers’ kindness, many other friends who fought hard daily to choose service over convenience despite the many professional and familial responsibilities on their plates. These are only a few of countless examples I began to pay more attention to after my faith became my own.
What is life really for?
One evening in Rome, I found myself returning to the sacrament of reconciliation after years of avoiding it. After receiving absolution, I attended Mass, and when I received communion, I felt an inner light switch on. For the first time, my soul saw that the piece of bread on my tongue was really Jesus.
That was when I first found refuge in His real presence. In the years that followed, that moment led me to seek His comfort and peace countless times in Mass and adoration. Each time of prayer before the Eucharist, His silent, yet generous presence gave me the fullest answer to this last question: life is most nourishing when lived like Him, with persevering patience and quiet, other-centered generosity.
These questions may sound simple, but pondering them frequently has kept the faith I learned to embrace more than 20 years ago as alive and compelling as that Good Friday night in the Coliseum. In fact, each time I revisit these basic questions, I find myself falling in love more deeply with the depth, beauty, sacramentality, and living, large human family that is the Catholic church.
I share them here with you, hoping they might be easy-to-open windows to grace for you and your families, as they’ve been for me.