JMJ
Dear Reader,
Welcome to JMJ forever! This is my first post after being banned from the internet haha… it’s good to be back!
I thought I’d start the blog with the why. Why am I Catholic? Seeing as this whole thing is about how I live as a Catholic, I thought why is the best place to start.
This post, the first of two, is my personal story. If you’re here because you want facts and arguments, go to part two. For now, though, I’m writing about my story.
I’m a cradle Catholic, so I grew up going to Mass every Sunday and saying the Rosary sometimes with my family. My parents, especially my mom, would talk to me and my siblings about faith, the saints, Mary, and Jesus. I knew, at least in my head, about the Eucharist and about God. But I did not love nor care about Him. Still, my childhood fear was devils.
To me, devils were not monsters that could be dismissed as a fantasy. They were real, as real as my Faith. My siblings and I called had a thing called the Phase– a time in each of our lives that we were deathly afraid of something. Devils were my Phase. For as long as I can remember, I could never go to sleep alone. I spent hours in bed, awake, scared that devils were around me. I had horrible nightmares, and at night my mind would fill with terror at the haunts of the world.
This culminated when, one night, I felt the devil in my room. It was hours past bedtime and it was quiet around me. I was in the same room as two of my sisters, but I assumed they were asleep since it was so late. In the middle of the night, fear crept over me– more fear than usual. I was almost paralyzed because I was so scared. I could still move, but I stayed beneath the covers. I just knew that a devil was outside the blankets, smiling at me.
The only thing I could do was to pray the Rosary. My mom had told me that devils were scared of Mama Mary, that they fled from her name. So I prayed. At first, I was just desperately trying to do something, anything, that would make it go away. But by the end, the fear was receding, and I fell asleep into an uneasy sleep.
The next day, I recounted what had happened to my family. My older sister, who I had not heard move the entire night, looked at me and said, “I felt that too.” She had been lying awake too and, though we had not talked the entire night, had thought the same exact thing. I was maybe 10 years old at the time. This shook me to the core. It affirmed my beliefs that devils were real; my worst fear had just come true. But, thank goodness, I had also just found the antidote to my plague.
Every night afterwards, I started saying my night prayers (which I had fallen out of habit of praying). Every night that I didn’t pray, I would not be able to go to sleep, or I would have nightmares. But every night that I did, I would go to sleep without much trouble. Eventually, I started saying the Rosary daily by myself. I started relying on prayer more because I saw how it affected my life. Thus began my journey to Our Lord.
It’s funny; I’ve told this story to many people. One of my dear friends, who I went to a Steubenville conference with, pointed out how my brush with the devil, ironically, started my journey to Christ. It’s true; God uses even the Evil One as instruments for our sanctification (that friend had a similar story with the devil and the Rosary btw). I’d like to mention that around that time, a lot of other things were happening in and around me spiritually. In hindsight, there was evil around me that let the devil get so close. But God, evidently, allowed it to happen and saved me from the darkness.
My spiritual journey slowly progressed until a few years ago when I went to a Catholic camp called Camp Veritas. It was such an enormous blessing in my life! It was there, at a walk-around Adoration, that I first truly believed and felt the love of God. He embraced me and loves me beyond my wildest dreams. But that is a story for another time.
Ever since then, I have embraced my Faith like nothing else. When Christ calls, you can’t do anything but drop everything and follow Him! He is my life and my everything now. And I have never been happier. I love Him very much.
That was the start of my faith journey! So much has happened since then. If there is anything you wish to take from this story, my advice is this: go to Confession, pray the Rosary, come to Him in Adoration, and, above all else, go to Mass! He loves you so much. Our Lady does too. Really– come to Him and He will make you whole! That is why I am Catholic. My Faith has made me whole– He has made me whole.
Since this is my first post, I think I should do something a bit special! Last time, I dedicated my blog to Our Lady. I think I shall do that again.
(from the St. Pio of Pietrelcina Prayer Booklet) O Mary, Virgin most powerful and Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven and Refuge of Sinners, we consecrate ourselves to thy Immaculate Heart. We consecrate to thee our very being and our whole life; all that we have, all that we love, all that we are. To thee we give our bodies, our hearts, and our souls; to thee we give our homes, our families and our country. We desire that all that is in us and around us may belong to thee and may share in the benefits of thy motherly blessing. And, that this act of consecration may be truly fruitful and lasting, we renew this day at thy feet the promises of our Baptism and of our First Holy Communion. We pledge ourselves to profess courageously and at all times the truths of our holy Faith, and to live as befits Catholics, who are submissive to all directions of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. We pledge ourselves to keep the Commandments of God and of His Church, in particular to keep holy the Lord’s Day. We pledge ourselves to make the consoling practices of the Christian religion, and above all, Holy Communion, and important part of our lives, in so far as we shall be able to do. Finally, we promise thee, O glorious Mother of God and loving Mother of men, to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to the spreading of devotion to thy Immaculate Heart, in order to hasten and assure, through the queenly rule of thy Immaculate Heart, the coming of the kingdom of the sacred Heart of thy adorable Son, in our own hearts and in those of all men, in our country, and in all the world, as in Heaven, so on earth. Amen.
Hail Mary! Totus Tuus! AMDG,
Lucia Vincentia