Coming Home: Part I

14 of 40

Jul 05, 2023

Hello! I’m Walther, this is Peregrino, and you’re about to read essay #14 of “40 Before 40,” a memoir I intend to finish before I enter midlife. A few other pieces that people have enjoyed are “American Dream,” “On Death and Loss,” and “On Fatherhood.” The rest of the essays can be found here.

In this week’s essay, I write about my journey from faithless to zealous. In Part I, I describe my upbringing, detour, and eventual return to the Church. In Part II, coming next week, I’ll tell you about the zealous part of the story. I hope you enjoy reading it, and don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t!

AMDG

Culturally Catholic

I was born into a culturally Catholic family in Mexico in the 80s. We had an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that someone gave my parents as a wedding present. My mom and I would say several prayers before bed as a kid. And on Christmas Eve, the whole family on my mom’s side would gather at my grandparent’s home to pray the rosary. That’s what I thought being Catholic entailed.

Both of my parents are cradle Catholics. However, my dad never really made the faith his own, and my mom dabbled in Buddhism right before she met my dad. Still, I was baptized and confirmed as an infant, I assume out of tradition and under the guidance of my maternal grandmother.

Grandma Cuca, the matriarch of the López family, was the most Catholic person I knew growing up. She would organize her neighborhood’s posadas every year, nine days of prayer leading up to Christmas Eve. And when the time came for my cousins and me to receive our first communion, my grandma catechized us for several Saturday mornings.

We were not Mass goers, but for a short stint after receiving my first communion, we frequented a Church with a Misa con niños, a “kid-friendly” Mass, which I could best describe as a charismatic Mass with catchy songs. It was the 90s.

Ecumenical

We went back to not attending Mass other than weddings, quinceañeras, or funerals. Then, my parents put me in a private school that, even though it wasn’t a Catholic one, would have school-wide Mass on the first Friday of every month. Missing class for a couple of hours once a month seemed like a good deal; all I had to do was sit quietly in Church and hang out.

The first time I realized not everyone was Catholic was in high school when one of my dad’s friends, famous for being an alcoholic, got sober and was now referred to as a hermano separado, our separated brother, code for protestant or born-again Christian.

In high school, some of my classmates were Jewish. I remember them talking about how hard the Yom Kippur fast was. I thanked God we Catholics didn’t have to do such extreme things.

Ash Wednesday is one of the two days the Catholic Church asks those fourteen and older to abstain from red meat and fast; one may eat one normal meal and two smaller meals that don’t amount to a normal meal. My experience was the complete opposite of this. We would gather at Grandma Cuca’s and gorge on fried fish, rice, and beans. The only penitential thing about that meal was eating the nopales—cactus—salad.

Not a murderer

Even though I lived like a pagan through high school and college, I would still think of myself as Catholic. Not a great one, but at least I hadn’t killed anyone. That was my bar; I was not a murderer; therefore, I couldn’t be that bad.

My parents attended a couples retreat in 2000. Let me rephrase that; my mom dragged my dad to a couples retreat in 2000, where they experienced conversion. It was the first time I saw my dad interested in religion, and it made me consider learning more about the faith for about two seconds. After that, it was business as usual; I was still at zero murders, so I was good.

I was now a young professional trying to get my career off the ground so I could pay off my student loans and start enjoying life.

Then tragedy hit our family. In July 2007, my sister Tania was severely injured in a bus crash. From the outside looking in, I can say that faith carried my parents through this dark chapter of their marriage. I saw their community deploying all sorts of help, visiting my parents in San Luis Potosi—where the accident happened—encouraging them and being with them. I saw the power of prayer at play. And still, I didn’t change the way I lived my life.

Spiritual Dimension

I had been working on myself; after the surgery, I started losing weight, working out, and gaining confidence. It was the first time I felt comfortable in my skin. On the emotional front, I was going to therapy and working on several wounds. Suddenly, my therapist asked me, “Are you doing anything to take care of your spiritual dimension?” The question took me aback. The answer was no; I had been avoiding the spiritual dimension of my person.

I went to Otto, my best friend, and told him about this conversation. I said, “Maybe Buddhism can help; meditation seems cool. I don’t think Catholicism is for me; many archaic, arbitrary rules.” He looked me in the eye and said, “What you think you know about Catholicism is a caricature of what it really is. You should try to learn what Catholicism teaches and then decide if you want to walk away from the faith.” I knew he was right, so I asked him where to begin. Providentially, the parish Otto attended was starting a workshop on prayer, and he had signed up. He asked me if I would be interested in joining, and I said yes.

Return

Several things happened during this workshop. It was the first time anyone told me God loved me, individually, and I could call Him father. I had prayed the “Our Father” multiple times, but a very different thing was understanding the why behind it. Now it was personal. I wanted to know why God would care about me, and the more I dug into it, the more I found out how reckless God’s love is for His creatures.

I started journaling as part of my daily prayer. Journaling allowed me to process the word of God and write down my stream of consciousness. I remember making lists of the things I was grateful for and telling God about the hurdles I was going through.

A Spanish documentary on the life of a diocesan priest, Pablo Dominguez, sealed the deal for me. La Última Cima portrayed the life of a joyful priest, loved and respected by family, parishioners, and students. Someone who was a mountaineer and unfortunately died at forty-two while climbing El Moncayo, one of the highest summits in Spain. In fragments of his last conference, Fr. Pablo is shown talking about how reason and faith can coexist and that an intellectual conversion is necessary for the heart to follow. As an engineer learning my way through the faith, this claim made sense to me.

One night, our instructor told us we wouldn’t have class; instead, we would have a holy hour in the main Church with a couple of priests hearing confessions. Even though I had gone back to attending Mass on Sundays, I hadn’t received communion in ten years, mainly because I knew I had to go to confession before receiving worthily. Moved by the Spirit, I got in line. Anxious about what it would be like. I didn’t even remember what I was supposed to say. Yes, your sins, but ten years’ worth of sinning? What if I forgot something? Would the priest yell at me? Should I get out of the line and go home?

I stayed in line, praying for God’s will. I went into the confessional and knelt face-to-face with the priest. I told him it had been ten years since my last confession. I don’t know if this was a general confession, one where you confess the sins of your past life, but it felt a lot like one. The priest guided me through the sacrament and let me know that since I had deprived my soul of grace—the life of God in us—it probably was emaciated and in need of an IV. I left the confessional feeling lighter, and the next time I went to Mass, tears kept rolling down my face while walking down the aisle to receive communion for the first time in a decade.

The IV therapy for my soul took the shape of First Fridays’ adoration, where I would go to confession and pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament. I attended daily Mass several nights during the work week. I was on a mission to learn everything there was to learn about the faith. I realized this task is enormous, but I started by intentionally living the faith and seeking God’s will.

Becoming a practicing Catholic didn’t make my life easier; problems didn’t magically disappear. I still was in the same amount of crippling debt and wrestling with this feeling of being stuck. I would pray for a change of air regularly. Eventually, my prayer was heard, and I made it to Phoenix, where I became as zealous about the faith as ever. But I’ll tell you that part of the story in the next one.