I am a Catholic and I will always be proud of it.  But trust me, I was also lost for while.

I grew up in a Catholic family.  My great aunts, with whom I grew up with, were churchgoers and they sort of force me to go to mass with them.  Then there is also the evening prayers, the rosary, the chapel visits every May to bring flowers.  There are also the prayer for the souls in purgatory, the no-taking-a-bath on Good Friday, no pork and no meat Lenten.  I use to dread all those, stopped practicing all those things when I had a chance, and even said that they were not in the Bible anyway.

Then, I went to a Catholic school in college.  They taught us about the different religions.  I was even fascinated with Buddhism.  I almost went to an Iglesia ni Kristo church.  I attended Bible studies under the protestant church.  Went out with a Seventh Day Adventist, and almost went to their church.  I did not eat pork for about a year during the time when we were dating.  I then got into a relationship with someone from Dating Daan.  I did not go to church for years and I probably would have gone searching for the right church until my brother entered the seminary under the Alliance of the Two Hearts.

Even after my brother has entered, I still went on with my promiscuous life.  Materialism and other worldly things succumbed me.  Until that day when I went to a test I never even imagined would happen to me.  I thought I was too smart for that.  You will probably say that after going through the test, I would have become a better Catholic but I was not.  I still went on.  Everytime I will come from  a retreat, I will be good but days after that, I will be back to my old life again.  There are things that I never understood and if I don’t understand something, then you cannot really expect me to believe and follow. Until I have encountered another problem, probably the worse I had been through.  My boyfriend left me for another woman and I was so broken.  I was too proud to accept that someone has fallen out of love for me and has chosen someone else whom in my opinion, is a lot less than I am.  From that brokenness, I found healing.  After I became so broken that my God started fixing me.  If you have been reading my blog, you would have seen my long journey.

Slowly, God has started making me understand the value of the things He taught us through the Catholic church.  Now, I believe in the mass, the rosary, the prayers, the rituals.  No matter how much my mind rejects some of the things I learned, my heart keeps telling me that I am at the right track.  That I have never felt at peace until now.  The teachings were not easy but I surely believe they are from Jesus.

Let me try to explain some things and I hope you will understand but believe me, you will only do once you opened your heart.  It is like love, you just know you found the one.

I go to mass to be with Christ, to commemorate the breaking of the bread which He did during the last supper.  The priest represents Christ and reminds us of how Jesus died for us.  It is a celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection.  It is in the Eucharist where Christ lives and when we take part of the communion, Christ starts living within us.  God is present in the Eucharist and I pray, whenever I take the communion for Him to be part of me, to stay with me and guide me through this pilgrimage.

The rosary is a contemplative prayer.  You pray each  mystery contemplating on the life and death of our Lord.  Some say it is repetitive prayer.  I have no argument about that.  But each bead of the rosary is a prayer offered for the salvation of souls in purgatory or here on earth.  It is like a sacrifice you offer God to save souls.

I use to think confession is useless and why would I even bother telling the priest about my sins when I can tell those to God directly.  Yet, come to think of it, would it not be so much better if God can tell you that you have been absolved from your sins?  He gave the disciples the power to absolve His people from their sins and the priests are His disciples.  I have gone to various confessors but only those from the Alliance made me feel that I am really talking to someone sent by God.

I use to just disregard the Blessed Mother.  Yet, come to think of it, if God wanted and needed to use her for Jesus to be born here on earth, why would He disregard her once her mission has been served?  Do you think God is someone who just casts out people or things that He no longer have use for? Of course not.  If God used Mary as a vessel for Christ for Him to be born here on earth, don’t you think she will also have the power to be the vessel to Christ now that He is in heaven? I do believe she does have the power to talk to Jesus and be our mediator. And when I talk to her, it is like I am talking to my mother asking her to ask my father a certain favor.  Don’t we all go to our mother in time of need?  Mary is our mother, our mother in heaven and she is always waiting for us to knock on her door and implore her mercy.

What about the statues?  If I remember it correctly, God did not want us to worship statues of animals and other creatures.  But do you think God will also not be happy if we worship an image of Him?  Jesus have become man, thus He has a face, a body, an image.  What is wrong with making images of Jesus according to His human form and have it as God’s representative, a reminder that God became man and is truly present? We do not worship the wood, the painting, the statues, we worship God represented by those statues.  It is not easy to believe in something we do not see and having something to show us that it is real even if it is just an image, a representation that is probably based on man’s perception, make it easier for us to believe.  It should not be the end though, it is meant to be something we can start with.  This may not be the stand of the Catholic Church but this is how I have come to accept and believe in the sacred art.

I have had a rough journey but it sure feels good to be home.  The Alliance teaches us of victimhood, of redemption, of a reparatory lifestyle.  That we can offer our actions to console our God.  Jesus has suffered enough and to console Him, we should all take our cross and walk with Him.  I will not lie and say that the cross does not scare me.  No man would probably want to suffer but if suffering will bring me to Jesus and will at least, lessen His pain, as a Catholic, I willingly accept it.  Like what St. Francis de Sales said: “Many would be willing to have afflictions provided that they not be inconvenience by them”.  I wish not to be one of those people for as St. John of the Cross said: Whoever does not see the cross of Christ doesn’t see the glory of Christ”.

I am Catholic and I will always be Catholic.

Categories : Faith