My Witness Talk

Utreaya witness on February 10, 2023

Below you will find my witness talk, a summary of my life presented at a Ultreya event that highlights the story of my faith journey. Some of the details are repeated, or expanded upon, from earlier blog entries in another venue. This presentation is long (20 minutes) but if you read to the end, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page and let me know what you think. Cheers!

“The soul that is attached to anything however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine Union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken the bird cannot fly.” St. John of the Cross

Once upon a time in a land far away, while walking out of a chapel, I was caught off-guard by a guy in the parking lot asking if I was one of the church big shots. I said, “No. I’m just a lowly apostle.” I don’t know why he asked; maybe because he always saw me there. Paragraph 14 of the Catechism states, “Those who belong to Christ through faith and baptism must confess their baptismal faith before man.” Paragraph 143 states, “By faith, man completely submits his intellect and will to God.” 

 Faith, hope and love are the Holy Spirit’s presence in the intellect and will of the whole human soul. I am not whole. I’m broken. I once told a priest I’ll never be holy, and he gave me hope.  Here’s my story.  I’m here because of an Ignatian teaching called the long pattern of discernment.  I studied under theologian, Matthew Leonard who worked with Scott Hahn and now has his own Website called “The Science of Sainthood.” He says, it’s not good to tell people your dreams, consolations, visions and spiritual experiences. But I will tell you. I’ve never fit in. 

I learned to read in kindergarten. One day, my mother wanted me off her back and said, “Go read the Bible.” So, I carried a dictionary and a huge Bible outside and read Genesis, Chapter one.  And the whole world opened up to me. That year, while jumping rope with friends, I had what psychologists call “a flashback,” a repressed memory of being carried by my father, looking over his shoulder and seeing my family standing in the first pew of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Rochelle Park, NJ. He brought me to the altar and handed me to the priest.  I saw beautiful white rays shining through the windows and everything was crystal clear. Then suddenly it wasn’t. It was blurry, like water in my eyes.  And then it was my tears. My first communion was much more joyful. When the priest gave me the Eucharist, I felt God’s presence in that warm, stirring feeling that glows on your tongue.

I loved to play Jesus and Mary in my cousin’s back yard. She was a pretty blonde and fit the role of Mary. I was always Jesus. On May day, I built an altar with a white tablecloth in a field next to my house and filled it with hand-picked flowers and my mother’s statue of Mary. That’s where I prayed. Springtime was beautiful in New Jersey back then. When I was six, I was reprimanded for trying to convert a Jewish friend to Catholicism. I wasn’t a very good Evangelist.  

After Confirmation, I fell away from the church. Jesus said, “Be perfect,” and I believed I could never fulfill that mandate.  My mother, stepfather and younger sister moved to Florida, while I and my older siblings moved into a condemned house in Hackensack, N.J. with my dad. It was owned by a protestant school next door, which was no more than a converted 3-story house with a small parking lot separating us from the school. A woman and her teenage Puerto Rican foster girl lived on the third floor. The mom took us to the Church of the Nazarene coffeehouse for fellowship every Friday night. 

We had a diverse population in high school, and a popular black band that played “Sly and the Family Stone” songs at school dances. One band member went to the coffeehouse and preached to us teens. He invited us to come up and profess our faith, so I did. I was 17.  That faith-filled experience was short lived. After graduation, my friends and I flew to Puerto Rico on $99 roundtrip plane tickets. I told a local I didn’t believe Jesus was a real person. He said, “Jesus absolutely did live. He may not have been God, but he was a real person.” I was shocked but held onto that memory forever.  I often heard “God is within you,” but I didn’t feel it. 

Back home, I shared a bedroom with an oldest sister. One night, I was in a bad space and I said. “God, if you’re real, you need to prove it to me.” A voice said to bring my pillow and blanket and sleep on the couch. When I did, He asked if I was willing to die to myself, and I said yes. Immediately a little tornado zipped across the room and whoosh — went right into my body.   I didn’t expect it. I didn’t deserve it. But the Spirit was answering the call of me being born again.  John: 3 states, “…no one can see the kingdom of God without first being born again.” I felt at peace, but that too was short lived.

Fast forward to 2008. I was going through a separation and divorce. I had been to a Catholic Church maybe 5 times in 35 years, but I insisted my husband and I talk to a priest. It didn’t save my marriage, but I saved myself. Lent came, and I was a mess. The Holy Spirit nudged me to go to church and I did. A mission priest said Mass, and when I heard his homily, I thought, “This guy is genuine.” I later heard he was a priest at a church in town and started going there because I wanted to hear what he had to say about God. He eventually became my spiritual director and I often told him my faith was not that strong. 

I didn’t understand prayer. I relearned the Glory Be the first time I went to confession in 35 years by the priest who gave me penance. “What’s the Glory Be?” I asked, and he recited it for me. I studied a book about a guy who read Proverbs over and over for 2 years.  He said “Read Proverbs every day.  Read one chapter a day. On the last day of the month, if it falls in a month with 30 days, read two chapters.” I did that, and I learned diligence.

I went to the Easter Triduum for the first time in my life. They wanted to wash my feet on Holy Thursday, and I said no. The procession on Good Friday was heavy and emotional. But it wasn’t until the Easter Vigil, when I was prompted to put what little faith I had finally into action. The fire outside the church shined on the altar and the gong startled me. When the lector proclaimed the first reading, something touched my soul. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Shortly thereafter, I began my own lector journey, my first and most loved ministry, to be a voice for God to speak to his faithful. The Holy Spirit guided me again.  I didn’t know reading scripture to the faithful was apostolic action until years later. 

In 2014, I went to see Monuments Men at a town theater, but instead they were showing “The Son of God.” I had a profound revelation and knew I had found Christ. That’s when I began my blog. One of the first entries was about how a grade school nun urged me to say three Hail Mary’s a day for the rest of my life and Mary would come three days before I die and warn me. Of course, I never did that, but I calculated how many Hail Marys I would have to say to catch up. It was 40 a day for three-and-a half-years. And, I did it. I believe those prayers inspired me to take the first of three spiritual pilgrimages.  In 2017, I left Alachua County to photograph Catholic cathedrals up the East Coast. I slept in my car and in a tent. The first time I walked into Saint Anthony’s Chapel, in Pittsburgh, P.A., it took my breath away with the most relics in the world, second only to the Vatican. When I got back home, I blogged about everything, never realizing how that trip changed my life, until I went to the 2018 Chrism Mass, in Jacksonville. 

At lunch, I asked a friend if she loved Jesus.  She said, “Oh, Suzanne, I love him so much.” Her unbridled honesty affected me.  I asked about Divine Mercy Sunday, and she said it was a chant. So I went. When we started singing the Chaplet, something caught hold of my throat. The Holy Spirit was on fire in me. That was my reversion of faith, my fork in the road. I know I was crying over all my sins. For a long time — like months – I felt the presence of all the angels and saints in heaven rejoicing in my return home. I knew I was God’s prodigal daughter and it was that experience, which increased my faith exponentially. I wanted to reach Divine Union with God. I read the book The Fire Within, on Ibooks.

On Formed.org, I watched a movie, read a book, or listened to an Augustine Institute talk each night. I learned about Guigo’s Ladder and Contemplacio. I watched Father Dave Pivonka’s Wild Goose and relearned that even Catholics can believe in being born again like Protestants do, that there really is a thing about being baptized in the Holy Spirit and Fire, that it makes you different. It sets you apart.  If you’ve never watched the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire, episode 3, I urge you to.  The book, “The Way of the Pilgrim” taught me how to pray without ceasing.  Mathew Leonard’s audio, “Three Stages of the Spiritual Life,” taught me it really is possible to become a saint. But it’s hard. God uses us and purifies us in the refiner’s fire and molds us. I’m no closer to a saint, but now I have the tools to pursue it. 

On August 9, 2018 I went to confession.  The next morning, at Mass after communion, I thanked God for all he had given me. With eyes closed, I saw a huge hole open up in the ceiling , and a pale-yellow light shined on a man sitting a few rows ahead of me. I never noticed him. I opened my eyes to see a man hunched over in that exact spot.  After Mass, as he left, I meant to speak until I saw his face. It was contorted in extreme agony and maybe even anger, and I froze.  I later told the priest what happened and said, “maybe that vision wasn’t meant for me, but he assured me it was.  I didn’t know why it happened until 4 years later and I’m still waiting to do God’s will.  

I watched a Baptism later that year. As the assembly witnessed a toddler’s doorway introduction, I wondered about my own baptism. God heard my question because I recalled that flashback I mentioned earlier. But this time there was more. I heard the priest say, “Here, you take her” in a disgusted tone. I recalled my mom telling me I was screaming at my Baptism.  Yes. I was a screamer.  She wasn’t happy about it. “Maybe it was Shirley,” she said. “No. No, it was you.”

In 2019, I was asked to lead a 5-week Divine Mercy retreat, culminating in a church-wide consecration on Divine Mercy Sunday. My Baptism anniversary fell on Good Friday that year and that was an omen I was about to truly die to self.  As I prepared, I knew “consecration” was the most important part.  Somehow, I found John 17.   Jesus was praying his high priestly prayer and asking the Father to consecrate us all.  I stopped dead in my tracks in a God moment, when a lightbulb lit up in my brain.  “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth.” John: 17.

A month after the Consecration, I was traumatized. That soul crushing experience was so insufferable it led me to where we are today. My prayer life was interrupted. My life was put on hold, and my faith was challenged. I was in so much pain I knew I had to either find joy in suffering or die. About prayer, Matthew Leonard says, “Don’t stop.”  So, I pushed through the grief. God was allowing it to happen as a much-needed sacrifice and purification.  I’ll always be a sinner.We’re taught we all must suffer, and sometimes that spiritual affliction is forever.  The longer I live, the more God exposes my flaws.

In 2020, I lost almost all of my hearing. But, I know God allowed that to happen and I believe it was so I could hear Him speak to me in prayer.

Study is good. Also in 2020, I did the Spiritual Exercises. I just did two years of the BIAY. Now, I’m doing the CIAY. This past Advent, I joined the 25-day Advent Challenge on Hallow. On day one, they read John: 1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” On Friday, January 13^th, I had another painful spiritual setback, but I amped up my prayer and presence in front of the Holy Eucharist. Yesterday, I was brought low again, by the same person. But it was necessary and needed, and it humbled me. I live on the peripheries anyway, so it’s like being in the Wilderness with the Israelites. I’m familiar with the Wilderness. It is not new to me. Sometimes, I even find joy there. Scripture helps me to navigate the mysteries of my heart and to move with God. I’m lucky to have been able to hold onto my faith. Not everyone has been given that grace.  On January 17, I heard a homily about hope, and I wept. He said, “…love is the end of our journey, hope is the middle and faith is the beginning.” I began praying for hope.

Some of my most cherished Bible verses are: 

*Let those who are friendly to you be many, but one in a 1000, your confidant. When you gain friends, gain them through testing. Sirach: Chapter 6.

*Hear! Oh, Israel the commandments of life. Listen, and know prudence. Baruch: Chapter 3.

* When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret. Matthew: 6.

*The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. John: 1.

A priest once told me God doesn’t grant extraordinary graces, consolations, or spiritual experiences to people because they are special, or holy. He does it because they need it. I thought Cursillo would save me but, Cursillo doesn’t make me holy. It isn’t a miracle prescription. It’s an outlet to share our faith and God’s truth working in us. The Holy Spirit always does the rest.