I have been on a major faith journey deep into my Catholic roots. Being French and Puerto Rican you are about as Catholic as you can be. I grew up in a very faith based family. The locally famous Monsignor Robert Fox baptized me in the basement of the building we lived in. The building was filled with ex-nuns, ex-priests, and other Catholics who had fallen from grace. It was basically the island of misfit Catholics. Into the that stew is what I grew up in. But I didn’t get it. I was bred Catholic but not of it. We were part of the communist wing of the Catholic Church. Whatever the anti-war Dorothy Day wing of the church there was that was me.

Anyway. Into that milieu I was born. We went to church and I distinctly remember hating it. I rolled around in the pew. Sat on the foot rests. Didn’t want to stand. Never really paid attention. Some days I would try to hide to avoid going. Then as I got older, and started living NFL football I found another reason not to go. To put it mildly none of it was connecting with me. It was part of my identity but not rooted in me. There was no connection to the Holy Spirit at all. I was just a kid who went to Church because my parents made me.

I did my sacraments. I remember crying the first time I had to go to Sunday school. I remember the CCD teacher talking about mortal sins and confession but again? It didn’t ring true. Everything seemed off.

I didn’t go to Catholic school. So some of this was foreign to me. Not a lot made sense. My father and mother were Catholic, but they were also intellectual. At least, they tried to be. They were progressive. They read the NY Times, watched PBS, and were not materialistic at all. They didn’t seem to be connected to popular culture at all. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what my father’s favorite band was. What sport team they liked or if they had a celebrity crush. They were my parents and that was that. Nothing of American culture was imprinted on them.

We were and still are very family oriented. Days out involved going to Queens with my dad’s family or Long Island with my mother’s family. Bronx for Christmas at my Uncles. My grandmother lived nearby as a kid and she was not religious at all. I was clearly in a faith influenced environment but it was not what we led with. I didn’t say grace before dinner. We didn’t say prayers before bed. While Catholicism was part of us, it was not of us?

Fast speed up to today… and I don’t know what I would do without my Catholic faith?

When my brother-in-law past away suddenly under awful circumstances, I didn’t know what to do. So I used whatever understanding of the Catholic faith I had. I remembered novenas of my uncle passing away when I was 4-5 and just did that. I didn’t even know how to do a Rosary. I think I just repeated some Hail Mary’s and some Our Father’s and hoped that God understood.
Then I had another moment… when I prayed that all my wonderful aunt’s and uncles who had passed over the decades would help my brother-in-law. Help him, because he needed it. Help him to Heaven – in a moment like the movie Coco.

Then after we returned home, I wandered into a Church and another moment happened. The pew. The glass. The altar. The space. The physical space of the Church connected me to every moment I had been in a Church in my life. Everything from a spiritual perspective made sense. That the Church is a portal. That the time spent at Mass is to commune with your people. The physical act of being in the space and repeating the ceremony of the Mass is the point. You become one with all. In time and in space. The Church acts as a portal to where you want to be. It is where you need to commune with someone.

I’m not pushing out to others. I am not dogmatic. But I feel a deep connection to the history and the identity of it.
That the Holy Roman Church has stood the test of time. That I am a part of that legacy of Catholics. That it is the Church of St. Peter. The universal messages of the church are more resonant than ever. That we are in a time of great spiritual need. That the pew, the stain glass, the Eucharist, the mass, the gospels, the readings, are the same. That in those walls of a Church. Time has stopped and something True for 2,000 years is happening. That there is something connecting humanity together happens at the mass. I find a tremendous sense of comfort and peace in that hour per day. Or those 25 minutes of saying a Rosary at night. There is Truth in it. In the otherworldly mysteries of faith and God and Jesus. I am finding it vital.

I am not here to defend the acts of Priests. I am not here to litigate all that man has done wrong under the guise of the Church. That is not the point. The point is that faith is needed. I am more certain that the material world is not enough. Science isn’t enough. What is of this Earth isn’t enough. We humans need more to find meaning in our lives – for me, right now, its being a Catholic.