She was a mother who saw me at my worst, but never gave up on me, watched the convoluted plans I made and, with the help of her partner, the Holy Spirit, seamlessly changed my destination to his.
God accepts infants, no questions asked, at baptism. But at some point the baby grows up and has to answer for his faith.
I told you how I learned to accept the first four baptismal promises. That left the last two: “Do you believe in Jesus Christ? … Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?”
At 19, I could finally say “Yes” at Easter.
But first, I had to help carry an eight-foot cross 160 miles down English country lanes.
If my Juliet was like Shakespeare, the next part of my story was like Chaucer. My roommate convinced me to join him on the Oxford leg of the 50-year-old “Student Cross” pilgrimage to the ancient Marian shrine of Walsingham. So we headed out on the Friday before Palm Sunday, 1989, to arrive in Walsingham on March 25, the date of the Annunciation, when Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Our Lady.
We walked on country roads, ate donated food, and slept in parish halls throughout Holy Week. Father Herb McCabe called Student Cross “a crash course in community,” and that’s what it was. Here we were, living 24/7 with people we would never spend any time with in any other circumstances.
The pilgrims told their stories, and now I had my own to tell.
Andrew, a tall and pale British Bob Dylan fan with long red hair, had a girlfriend back home, so I told him about mine.
I didn’t mention Juliet to him, or to my girlfriend, either, when she flew from San Francisco and traveled with my new friends to Rome.
I had a powerful confession in St. Peter’s Square; she declined to go. I was profoundly moved by midnight Mass with St. John Paul II; she wasn’t. Then, we left our friends in Rome and headed back to England to catch her flight — but had to hitchhike late at night from Dover to London.
It could have been a bonding experience. — but it was the opposite, with her in tears and me apologetic. I think we both sensed that our relationship was over. “I bet you’re going to marry some Catholic girl,” she told me.
“Whoa,” Andy said. “Spot on, though.”
Two enthusiastically Catholic Spanish college women had been on several pilgrimages before, so we compared notes.
I told them how John Mallory had arranged epic Marian trips in Europe. In Medjugorge I had prayed as never before to Our Lady. In Lourdes I felt part of the Church as never before, in the other-worldly candlelight procession. Last, my personal Fatima miracle locked in my faith for life.
“You must really love Mary,” the Spanish girls said.
“I guess?” I said. “I even go door to door with the Legion of Mary.”
Two feminist British pilgrims were aghast at that.
They already disliked me because I had been photographed in the Oxford newspaper at a pro-life rally. But knocking on doors to talk about the faith was just as bad.
So I told them how the experience had changed me.
A young man answered at one door overlooking the spires and domes of Oxford, lit up in the late afternoon son. He said his parents, both professors, weren’t home and didn’t believe in God anyway. Neither did he. “There’s no evidence,” he said. “It’s anti-intellectual.”
The Holy Spirit seized me for the first time. “Then how do you explain all of this?” I asked pointing to view. “If that’s not evidence, what is? All ages have believed, and Christians built these colleges as monuments to God and the intellect. They didn’t stifle education — they invented it!”
The second time the Holy Spirit seized me was with a widow in Cowley who had stopped going to church. Her husband had died recently. Her son got drunk at the wake, then died in a motorcycle accident.
“Why would God take them both from me?” she asked. “I prayed. I begged. It’s cruel!” she stopped, overcome with emotion.
Words came from my mouth unbidden. “When you die and join them, you will see the plan God had for them, and you will be amazed. You will drop on your knees and tell God how grateful you are for what he did. You will tell him you didn’t understand it on earth, but his plan is beautiful, and you are overwhelmed with gratitude.”
I saw life in her eyes and she invited us back.
The Spanish girls were impressed, but the British feminists weren’t.
Then we arrived altogether at the Catholic Slipper Chapel on Good Friday, laid our crosses against the wall, took off our shoes, and walked the last mile to the Walsingham Shrine barefoot.
That’s when it dawned on me.
Three years earlier, I had seen my dreams of freedom go up in the flames of a burning Cadillac — now I would accept God’s freedom around an Easter Vigil fire. I had sneered at Guadalupe pilgrims — now I was walking barefoot with Walsingham pilgrims. I had gone from telling strangers I was pretending to be Catholic to telling strangers about God.
And the one constant in all of it was Our Lady.
She was a mother who saw me at my worst, but never gave up on me, watched the convoluted plans I made and, with the help of her partner, the Holy Spirit, seamlessly changed my destination to his.
I felt made new, and I adopted a new plan for my life: I would be a priest! Our Lady smiled and planned her next move in How I Found My Faith.
