Sharing why I am Catholic is always exciting but daunting — there are so many things I could talk about. If I were to summarize my experience in one sentence, I would say that I am Catholic because I’ve fallen in love with God as a person, and I couldn’t imagine being separated from him.
My faith journey started in eighth grade when I attended Extreme Faith Camp for the first time. The camp included a night of adoration during which the Blessed Sacrament was processed in front of all the campers, stopping for a few seconds just a foot away from each of our faces.
For a brief moment, it was like I was alone with him in a room, just him and me. I can’t describe that moment other than saying that in those few seconds, my heart knew in a profound way that he was real, I was loved, and that I would never be the same. What I didn’t understand yet was that coming closer to Christ inevitably meant coming closer to the cross.
Shortly after this experience, it seemed like a dark cloud started to pass over everything around me. About six months later, a tragic death in my family left people I love in a state of deep suffering.
Around the same time, I received a few medical misdiagnoses from doctors. This experience took a physical toll on my body and made school increasingly difficult for me.
In all of this, I began to ask myself what the meaning of suffering was and why God would allow painful things to happen. I started to pray the rosary every day and ask Mary to enter into the suffering and walk alongside me. What she began to show me was the cross — that to get closer to Jesus and to let myself love him was to also allow myself to be crucified with him. To say yes to being Catholic is saying yes to Jesus making our hearts like his, and his is a heart that breaks for us to the point where he came and died for us. I had met him, and I loved him — so how could I choose something different?
In this place, I started to notice how even in suffering, the gift of loving also allows for unexplainable joy. It was almost paradoxical: Though there was more suffering in a life with Christ, I was becoming increasingly more joyful and alive than I was before I had met him. Everything around me seemed more colorful, the good and beautiful moments became even more beautiful. And, to make it better, suffering had eternal meaning. Entering more deeply into my Catholic faith has made me more myself and has given me a deep desire for everyone around me to experience the transformative power he has in our lives if we simply say yes to him.
Stella, 24, a member of Transfiguration in Oakdale, is a painter who also loves hiking, being in the woods and reading novels; her favorite novel is “The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Stella hails from a family that includes her five siblings. She is a graduate of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, spent two years as a FOCUS missionary at Ball State University in Indiana and moved back to Minnesota in hopes of pursuing a master’s degree in marriage counseling.
