Shoved to Them
I was having a discussion with my eldest son this evening about God, faith, and the Church. He’s searching for Truth and asking all of the difficult questions that come with being sixteen. The questions are painful as he weighs what he believes, and the kind of man that he hopes to become.
We came eventually to my own faith journey, he asked if I had ever questioned my Catholic faith, and was surprised to learn that I had been an agnostic/atheist for many years in my teens and early twenties. It is not a truth I have kept hidden, but it’s also not one that’s often discussed in our household. As my children are growing older, I’m beginning to think it’s something we should talk about more often.
“What made you believe?” He eventually asked.
I reminded him of the story of his own tumultuous beginnings, and how they had brought me back to my knees and back to God. We talked briefly about how superficial that faith was, and it was only the memory of my Catholic childhood which brought me to the Mass on Sunday mornings. In those days, I couldn’t have told you the difference between Christian denominations or what they meant. I saw very little separating Christianity from other world religions and had a very “to each his own” view about the various paths to Heaven. I was devout in my ignorance, and content to go no further. In my simple trust, I had all of a relationship with God that I thought I needed. The church I attended was purely from personal convenience.
I put on a good show of my Catholicity in those early days. I’ve always been a quick study, and could glean enough words and phrases from conversation to appear to be a serious Catholic when I was with my co-religionists. It was a farce that I didn’t comprehend. I thought their experience was as shallow as my own, and I enjoyed the linguistic gymnastics of a lively debate. It was all intellect and no soul.
Then I saw a book by Fr Amorth, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, on a friend’s bookshelf and asked to borrow it. She gladly handed it over and talked about the spiritual battle that had been waged as she had read each of his books. I barely listened as I slipped it into my purse. I was looking forward to an interesting read, and nothing more.
What I remember most clearly about the first time I read it was that I would forget to breathe. I was so horrified by his tales of possession and demons that breathing was secondary to anything on the page. I had expected fantastic fairy stories, but everything I read rang with honesty and truth. And I was afraid of every word of it.
By the end of the first book, I was convinced absolutely of the existence of demons. By the end of the second, I knew that the devil was real. And I walked in fear of him.
It would be some weeks before I came to realize that if the devil were real and the things the exorcist had written about him were also true, then the Church was the only Earthly power set against him. The more I learned about Satan, the more I yearned to know about the Catholic Church. The more familiar I was with absolute darkness, the more I needed to find the Light.
It was my trembling fear of the demonic which urged me to learn about the spirituality of the Church. Just as sparring with Protestants had taught me the Catechism and history of the Catholic Church, battling against the ever-present forces of evil led me in search of the Sacred Inviolable arms of Holy Mother Church. In a very real way, it was the devil who sent me home.
My son listened as I told him about my own circuitous journey home. He asked questions, and I could see that he was really thinking about it.
“So the devil….you think he’s real?”
“I know he is.” I told him. “Of that I’m absolutely certain.”
He nodded, and frowned as he turned that over in his head. He’s asking all the right questions, and looking for answers in all the right places – his parents, his priest, the Bible, research, and prayer. He’s searching for Truth the same way that I did all those years ago. It’s a hard road full to walk on the way from the belief of a child to the faith of an adult, but it’s one I am happy to walk beside him. He has to start in the beginning with the light and the dark. Just as the darkness teaching us the wonder of daylight, he needs to know that evil exists in order to fully appreciate the magnificence of our God.
Image credit:By Félix Joseph Barrias (1822 - 1907) (French) (Details of artist on Google Art Project) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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