On being a ‘late–bloom’ Catholic…

By Dara Wilkinson

It becomes evident the moment you meet me. I’m not a ‘super Catholic’ —I’m a struggler. Lately, I’ve been struggling with staying calm, with extending forgiveness and with properly honouring my parents. Also, I’m a late-bloom Catholic.

After First Communion, we drifted away from the Church. Then as a young woman, I worshipped in a Full Gospel church four times a week as I studied abroad. When I returned to T&T at age 26, my mom was attending a Catholic church, so my father and I began to tag along.

After eight years of regular Mass attendance, I completed RCIA. I also completed RCIA because I was moving to a country with widespread spiritual practices that some saw as questionable. The latter was mostly non-expert speculation, but I still sought the extra covering of RCIA, bringing me further into the fold.

I returned from abroad and got married, attending a regular meeting with a Catholic group over two of those seven years wed. After separation then divorce, I attended meet-ups at the Church’s Separated, Divorced and Widowed (SDW) ministry. Encouraged by well-wishers from both groups, I found my way back to Mass. Grown-up but green in the culture of the Church, I made lots of blunders. It was all the awkward forays of the uninitiated.

Once I went to Confession with the lined pages pulled from a spiral notebook: eight bullet points and a fully written out Act of Contrition. The priest glanced at my two pages and regarded me with such unconcealed compassion, then closed his eyes and said, “Go ahead.”

My earnest genuflect was a stiff half-dip.

I made flubs. I gifted a devout friend a chicken pelau on a Friday during Lent. What a blessing that my friend was gracious, overlooking…

I found myself googling words like ‘sacristy’, ‘liturgy’, ‘catechists’…Between the Bible and Christian preachers, I felt I understood salvation, love, our Faith…

Yet, there were fundamentals that were lost on me.

When we switched to a longer Creed, I just kept reciting the old one and hoped no one would notice. Or I would follow the words just half a beat after those who knew the words by heart, full of halts and fumbles.

At a truly fortifying event, Jesus Explosion, I sat at the back and observed—when in Rome etcetera.

There at Jesus Explosion, too, one speaker expounded on a point that sometimes gets pushback in wider western society. The speaker, pointing to the roof, urged the audience to respond. “Yes!” my brothers and sisters affirmed in unison with arms upraised. I, too, responded but could only squeak out a “Yes?…Maybe? I dunno…” There is so much my understanding is yet to settle upon…

Indeed, it was Adoration that convicted me of the body, blood, soul, and divinity present in the Eucharist. The holy exposed Host would be raised at front, and something would happen as I sat there and knelt there.

I cannot explain what—except to say a real encounter. I was having a conversation and listening even though there were no audible words. I slowed my rosary to half my normal speed with many pauses in between. This latter was not a pre-meditated choice. Who knows why?

I had no church wardrobe. As such, I wore jeans to church and was happy to see others in jeans at church as well. And one time, when my laundry load of jeans would not dry in the dryer on time, I wore my billowing stretchy black yoga pants to church, and prayed all would forgive. I just so much wanted to attend.

In church, people are friendly, they smile at me, the only exception being the one parishioner who took one look at me and then moved her handbag some distance away. (Was it the yoga pants, ma’am?)

In one online ministry and one intercessory prayer group, people have been welcoming. My shyness, at present, is that we have returned to the beautiful shaking of hands for the Sign of Peace instead of the distanced bow. Will they shake my hand? Am I seen as a neighbour?

Already I have devised a plan to step outside and return holding a paper towel as if I skipped out to the restroom… or kneel and bow my head, eyes closed, in a deep and meditative prayer… or knock my purse to the ground, scattering items asunder so I need to bend and gather them up, until each hand-shaking musical flourish is finally over and done with. (Naturally, I’m kidding…)

We are all children of God—of that I feel an inner reassurance. And I’m also a seeker, a pilgrim. I’m a late-bloom Catholic.

And as we’ve seen from Juan Diego’s tilma: With the help of Our Mother, roses bloom in winter.