When I began college, I would have told you that the truth was lies — and I preferred the darkness.
The third promise you make when you renew your baptismal promises is, “Do you reject Satan, father of lies and prince of darkness?”
The congregation says “I do,” but when I began college, I didn’t. I would have told you that the truth were lies — and I preferred the darkness.
In my freshman year at the University of Arizona, my life mostly took place in the dark.
I had all the things college is supposed to give you — politically correct classes, a girlfriend, and parties with friends.
But my classes filled me with doubts — and most of my time with friends was spent outside in the dark, holding Solo cups, trying to be heard over the music.
I read Heart of Darkness with a middle-aged literature professor in a corduroy jacket who quoted Albert Camus and the Moody Blues. He said “I don’t really care if you come to class; just turn in the papers.” So that’s what I did.
I took an Intro to Philosophy class from a teaching assistant with a green turtleneck. He told us that nothing was true. So I decided that everything he said must not be true either, including the statement that nothing was true.
I found I couldn’t sleep most nights, and I would go on long walks, ruminating.
I would walk through the campus, down U of A Mall past Old Main, then off campus past Zip’s Records and Bentley’s and back toward my apartment past Greasy Tony’s.
Without consciously planning it, I would often end up in the chapel at the campus Newman Center. It was indoors, it had seats, and it was open late. I had never been taught about the real presence, but something felt different there.
I would sit there in the dark and wonder why I was so unhappy.
When I transferred to a Catholic university in the Fall, it was like emerging from darkness into the light.
Entering the Catholic Great Books program in San Francisco the next fall was like Plato’s cave man emerging into the sun or Dorothy landing in Oz. My life went from gray to color — from perpetual night to the harsh light of day.
The students in my program tended to come from large Catholic families — my roommate was one of 13 — and they embraced me right away as one of their own. I found myself swept away on trips to Chinatown, picnics in Golden Gate park, and when we did gather in the dark, it was on the beach beside a giant bonfire.
I became a daily communicant, returned to confession, and started to live a Catholic life.
When it was my turn to say the Hail Mary in Father Joseph Fessio’s Old Testament class, I embarrassed myself by revealing that I didn’t know the Hail Mary — but I learned it that weekend praying the rosary at the abortion clinic with my classmates.
The biggest change was in the classroom.
The curriculum at my new school was intentional and integrated. They didn’t believe that nothing was true; they believed that truth was a person, and that generations have been seeking Truth in a grand conversation of great ideas.
The curriculum went from the ancients to today — from Plato to Flannery O’Connor, and it rewired my brain. I discovered Plato’s dialogues, Aristotle’s Ethics and St Thomas Aquinas. Classroom discussion spilled out into dorm-room conversations as we tried to put the puzzle pieces together of what is true and what isn’t.
One key class for me was Revelation and Christology, taught by Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, one of the institute’s cofounders. The class had only three texts: G.K. Chesterton’s Everlasting Man, C.S. Lewis’ Miracles and Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium. The homework was always just one chapter, but we were quizzed on the homework at each class. That meant we actually read everything with full attention (except when I studied with classmate April Beingessner, who is now April Hoopes).
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis taught another key class: The 20th Century Catholic Literary Revival, which taught me to love Charles Peguy, Leon Bloy, Gertrude von Le Fort and Evelyn Waugh. I still remember what I read in both classes, 35 years later.
If anyone in class wasn’t Catholic, those two classes tended to change that.
I finally found what I was looking for in those restless nighttime walks.
It gave me a community of people who embraced me, a faith life that didn’t have to force itself on me, and an intellectual life that gave me the humility and confidence of knowing that truth is real, and knowable.
I was learning the pre-requisites for faith: freedom, then authenticity and now the light of faith. It is all part of how I found my faith.
