Occasionally, Mr. Andi or I encounter someone who wants to know how we came to be Catholic after spending four-ish decades each as evangelicals. Mr. Andi, in particular, experienced this over the past few years, finding himself in situations where he was defending the Catholic church when he wasn’t Catholic himself. He has always said he’s a “doubting Thomas” and I think that was God’s way of reaching him – forcing him to “prove” the faith on his own.
My conversion was a gradual and meandering process.
It would be difficult for me to share in a single post all of the twists and turns and points along the journey that influenced my conversion, and impossible to pinpoint a single event or doctrine that was The Turning Point. However, Mother Angelica, the spunky media mogul nun of EWTN fame who died on Easter Sunday, figured into the story at various points along the way.
One especially remarkable event on my journey occurred ten years ago, and it involved Sarah Kate. On the day that it happened, I wrote down all of the details; today’s post is a condensed retelling of that story.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Sarah Kate was a few weeks away from her third birthday, which was to be followed eight days later by her selective dorsal rhizotomy surgery. We lived about an hour from the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament which was founded by Mother Angelica and is home to Our Lady of the Angels (OLAM) monastery. I had visited it before, but my neighbor Colleen, a Catholic, had not and we decided to go and take Sarah Kate. We were tourists, not pilgrims.
We arrived around 11:15 and went straight to the upper church. The shrine is beautiful, and it’s impossible to not feel the presence of God there. The Divine Office began at 11:30, followed immediately by the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at 11:50. The OLAM nuns are cloistered, so you can’t see them, but you can hear them. Their voices are so lovely – almost angelic – and I love to listen to them.
At noon, we went down to the lower church, and found that daily Mass was being said. We went in, just a few moments late, and sat down. Sarah Kate was quite taken with the kneelers, which she had never seen before at our Baptist church, and knelt next to Colleen, putting her little hands together to pray. When Mass was over, I placed a prayer request for her upcoming surgery in the box and we walked across the piazza to the gift shop.
Once inside, Sarah Kate spotted two small stuffed lambs with “I Love Jesus” embroidered on the chest. She wanted both of them, saying that one was for me (I let her have one). She held it and talked to it as I strolled her around the store, browsing. Colleen and I talked about saints, which I didn’t really “get” at the time and I jokingly asked her which saint to pray to about Sarah Kate’s surgery. On our way out, we entered the nearby creche which contains a beautiful, lifelike Fontanini nativity scene.
Once inside, I stopped Sarah Kate, still in the stroller, in the middle of the aisle. Another lady was there, lighting a candle, and Colleen did the same. The woman crossed in front of us and sat down. After a moment, she turned to me, stood up, and asked if she could “bless the baby.” I agreed, and she took her crucifix, placed it on Sarah Kate’s forehead, and began to say a silent blessing. Sarah Kate became solemn and appeared to be receiving the blessing – a stunning sight, given that she was not quite three years old and had never before experienced anything like it. She didn’t squirm or even look up at the lady – she continued to look straight ahead at the baby Jesus in the nativity scene in front of her.
When she was done, we chatted with the lady for a few minutes. She told me she doesn’t usually approach strangers, but when she saw Sarah Kate looking at the infant Jesus, she felt she needed to bless her. She told us we should pray around her, and she and I knelt on either side of the stroller. We all held hands, and the lady placed her crucifix on Sarah Kate’s back – on the exact spot where she would be having her surgery, although she could not have known the location based on what I had told her. Again, Sarah Kate sat quietly during the prayer.
The Shrine was inspired by Divino Niño – i.e., the Divine Child Jesus (I encourage you to read more about its history here) – and there are images of what our family has affectionately dubbed “toddler Jesus” prominently displayed. The lady talked to us about another devotion to the child Jesus, the Infant Child of Prague, and told me that she had a copy of a novena in her car that she wanted to give me to pray for Sarah Kate. I didn’t know what a novena was in those days, but something prodded me to step out in faith and trust this stranger. Colleen and I sat down and waited for her to return.
After several minutes of waiting, we decided maybe she wasn’t coming back and headed out toward the parking lot. She met us on the walkway and gave me several prayer cards, a bottle of holy water, and a statue of the Infant Jesus of Prague, which she said had previously been blessed by a priest. She hadn’t been able to find the novena, but assured me the gift shop would likely have a copy. I was stunned that she gave all of those things to me, a stranger.
During the exchange on the walkway, Sarah Kate was sitting quietly in her stroller, when out of the blue she pointed up in the air and said, “I see Jesus.” We all looked up and around – I assumed she had seen a statue or icon, because she was a very observant child, even as a toddler. She would notice the most miniscule of details, and she never made things up, so when she said she saw something, it was always there, even if it took a moment to find it. All three of us looked and looked, but there were no statues or icons anywhere in her field of vision.
While we were searching for her Jesus, she began reaching straight up with her arm, making noises as if she was struggling mightily, and said with dismay, “I can’t reach Him!” The lady looked down at her and said, “He can reach down to you.” Sarah Kate then put her arm back down and was quiet again, holding the lamb in her lap that I bought her in the gift shop.
Y’all. Sarah Kate saw Jesus.
I was having some ladies, including Colleen, over that evening, so I didn’t get a chance to talk to Mr. Andi about it when he got home from work, but while I was visiting with my guests, he called me into the bathroom. Sarah Kate had looked up at him while he was bathing her and said, “I saw Jesus today.” He didn’t know how to respond, but he asked her if Jesus spoke to her. She answered, “He said a prayer on my lambie.”
Several weeks later, that lambie was with her during her surgery.
If almost anyone else had been with me that day, I would probably have doubted, but I had my Catholic friend Colleen as a witness to what had transpired. If only Sarah Kate and I had been there, it wouldn’t have taken long to convince myself that it wasn’t real, or that I had missed something. If Sarah Kate hadn’t told her Daddy about it later that night, I might never have mentioned it again.
But I have no doubt that Sarah Kate saw Jesus.
Three years after Sarah Kate’s vision at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, I began RCIA classes in order to become Catholic. In those three years, I learned a lot about the Catholic view of suffering, and in the years since I’ve come to understand that although Sarah Kate faces physical pain due to her cerebral palsy, her pain isn’t without merit.
As Mother Angelica, the Shrine’s foundress who struggled against physical ailments her whole life, once said:
“…the greatest gift I have is the pain I carry every day… Many ask for physical healing, but I think spiritual healing is more important. I can go to heaven with crippled legs. I can’t get there being hateful or unforgiving.”
I don’t know what a Sarah Kate without cerebral palsy would have been like, but I know that the one with it is kind and generous, and accepts her cerebral palsy as one of many characteristics that make her who she is. She would tell you that though she has had physical pain, she has not suffered. I am the one who claims the mantle of suffering; mothers wish to free our children of pain, and we suffer when we can’t take it away. Mother Angelica again:
“Suffering is healing. There are those who think the path to holiness is to be healed of your bodily suffering, but oftentimes God uses the suffering to change us and to heal our souls.”
God hasn’t healed Sarah Kate. I once prayed for her physical healing, but I haven’t in a long time. Today I pray for an increase in faith for all of us, because in the end, that’s what will matter.
Mother Angelica, pray for us.
Shrine Photos Courtesy of OLAMShrine.org
Sarah Kate saw Jesus that day there is no doubt in my mind. It was such an amazing experience and your words about what happened that day are beautiful. I have goosebumps again. So thankful to have been with you that day. I will never forget it.
Wow! Just wow!