My first touches with Catholicism were brief in my younger years.
I remember being in middle school, going to Mass with a school friend. I was so lost with what was going on. We were packed into a pew with a group of students, and I remember the building more than anything else—old stone walls, stone floors, a crucifix off to the side, a priest in vestments moving at the front, and those strange fold-up kneelers at the bottom of the pews.
I didn’t see it all that clearly. It’s more like a feeling I remember.
Everything felt unfamiliar. I felt completely out of place.
But also… curious.
We were all sitting when suddenly I felt a sharp jab in the back of my shoulder and a loud whisper from behind me:
“Get down!”
What?
Before I could even process it, I was scrambling onto my knees, fumbling for the kneeler—slightly panicked and mostly annoyed.
What’s-her-name from school had basically shoved me from behind.
What the heck???
And that’s all I really remember.
A big, confusing, slightly foggy blur.
(Shoulder shrug.)
Fast forward to high school.
At my Southern Baptist church, I remember hearing a group of students getting worked up because someone had brought a Catholic friend to a Sunday night service.
“And she’s Catholic???”
I remember glancing over with a bit of an eye roll.
I mean… what was she going to do? Burn the place down?
She was just a quiet girl from school, standing there next to her friend in our youth group.
I didn’t have any grand theological thoughts at the time—I just remember thinking,
That’s not really nice.
Then came college.
My first year, up in upstate New York.
My roommate and I met for the first time—me, a Texan and an aspiring opera singer; Candice, a Minnesotan and a French horn player.
And she was Catholic.
We had been paired together because we both took our faith seriously. That, apparently, was enough to make us a good match.
And it turned out to be just that. We spent hours in the evenings in the lounge, staying up late laughing at our accents, sharing family stories, and settling into something that felt easy and familiar.
It was a sweet time.
On Sundays, I would head toward the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group—not exactly for church, if I’m honest, but because that’s where the Christians were.
It felt like the thing I was supposed to do.
But at the same time, I started noticing something else.
Groups of girls from our dorm—Catholic girls—would gather together, dressed nicely, and walk as a group to a nearby cathedral.
And I remember being… a little taken aback by it.
There was a kind of devotion there.
A sense of responsibility.
And something else too—something like camaraderie.
They weren’t drifting in and out of church life. They were going together. Intentionally.
And it stayed with me.
And then one Sunday, I decided to come along.
I don’t remember the front lobby—or even how we got in.
What I do remember is crowding in next to Candice, somewhere in the middle of the pews—not too close to the front, not too far in the back.
And I remember having a strong realization that something was very different here.
There were so many different kinds of people.
Different ages. Different families. Different nationalities.
And there were babies and toddlers.
(They bring their babies to Mass?)
That alone surprised me.
I remember feeling almost overwhelmed—not just by the people, but by everything around me. Statues. Paintings. Scenes from Scripture everywhere I looked. It was like the walls themselves were telling stories I didn’t yet know how to read.
And then the cantor stood up.
She was a fellow student from our music school, which somehow made the moment feel both familiar and completely new.
She began leading a Psalm—a call and response.
I had never experienced anything like that before.
The entire congregation was involved. Or trying to be.
There were mumblers and singers—listening, responding—sometimes confidently, sometimes hesitantly.
Babies were crying.
Elderly men and women were slowly standing and sitting.
Parents were quietly managing their children.
There was movement. Noise. Imperfection.
And yet…
It felt whole.
It felt so incredibly… universal.
There was so much Scripture—being read, spoken, sung.
And in the middle of all that movement and sound, it didn’t feel chaotic.
It felt alive.
And inspiring.
And it was humbling to feel like one of the many people there that day—
just one small part of something much larger.
And then there was all of this time during the Mass that they focused on the Lord’s Supper—at least, that’s what I would have called it in my Southern Baptist understanding.
I remember wondering:
Why?
So I sat and watched, observing in awe and reverence something that I sensed was both ancient and timeless.
And then…
I don’t remember much of anything else from that morning.
We all just went back to the dorm.
I went with my crowd, and she went with hers.
And we sort of… continued on with our student life.
I kept drifting between the college Christian group, showing up more for the people than anything else.
She went on with her weekly Mass.
And in between all of that, we kept laughing about our accents, staying up too late, and working hard at our studies.
Life didn’t suddenly change.
Nothing dramatic happened.
But something had quietly settled into place.
A small awareness.
A memory I didn’t yet have words for.
But one that stayed. Just a flash of something — a quiet tug I couldn’t quite explain. I knew, somehow, that this moment had touched me. I just didn’t know yet what to do with it.
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