At the risk of sounding self-important, I will say that I am a living laboratory of all the Catholic Church has gone through in the modern world. Born in 1957, the year of the most US births of the post-war era, I am a Boomer of Boomers. I received First Communion in 1965, the year the Second Vatican Council closed, with the old Mass and traditions (kneeling at the altar rail, receiving on the tongue) and was confirmed two years later (yes, age 9) with some elements of both the old and the in-revision Mass, though the bishop did give us a tap on the cheek for good measure.
For seven years of Catholic school in midtown Manhattan, there were religious sisters sweeping the hallways with their long black habits and hair hidden by tightly tied bonnets in the style of Mother Seton. In 8th grade, 1970, suddenly the sisters showed beauty-parlor hair, neat jackets and midi-skirts, though they still walked with that soft convent step along the halls to sneak up on mischievous kids. The Mass was all new, in English, with hootenanny hymns and Communion in the hand. In my all-boys Catholic high school, Brother John one year became Mr. Ford the next, still teaching religion with Brother Ed, who was cool in short sleeves and corduroys.
I was young, innocent, painfully shy and defensively cynical. Too much had changed in the blink of an eye, and I had really believed all that I learned from the habited nuns and the Baltimore Catechism about Holy Communion and the other sacraments, the love of a good God, as well as the joys of Heaven and the eternal pains of Hell. By the time of my high school graduation, in 1975, I felt I had been cut from the sure moorings of faith and left to drift into unchartered waters. Everyone I knew, family and friends, had stopped going to Mass, so I did too. I wasn’t happy about it, but I thought it was the pain one passed through to adulthood, and I would find my own way to God.
Yet a funny thing happened on my way to a modern, me-first religion.
I became editor of a running and fitness magazine, searching out novel and ever-more intense experiences of the authentic inner I. One afternoon, I was testing the waters of a health fad of the 1980s, the flotation tank, where I was enclosed in a dark, silent box, floating on super-saturated salt water, alone with myself and my thoughts, trying hard to relax and release the pent-up tension that the tank was supposed to relieve. In the sense-deprived environment, I heard my heartbeat, my blood flow and my nasal drip, and was gripped with sudden fear. What if this was Hell? Total isolation, eternal separation from light and sound and human touch, with only me, myself and the exhausting thoughts of ego?
From a place deep within, an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus emerged in my consciousness. I knew with sure survival instinct that I must choose, at that very moment, between my sinful heart and His Sacred Heart. Would I sink spiritually further into myself or rise toward the Lord? I heard the lilting brogue of my recently deceased grandmother and the words, “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me!” It was one of my earliest memories, kneeling on the dining room floor with my Irish grandma, praying the rosary before images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In the darkness of the flotation tank, I reached out a hand to the Sacred Heart.
It was a first, small movement back to the Catholic Church, to Confession and Holy Communion. Though I am long back to Catholic Mass and practices, the journey of faith continues, sometimes with confident strides, sometimes with baby steps. If ever I doubt the reality of the Four Last Things — Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell — I simply think of that experience in the tank, when I was literally naked to myself, exposed as a sinner in need of salvation, deprived of friends and sensory stimulation, and floating nowhere. Jesus came to rescue me through the loving prayers of grandma, and the Sacred Heart saved me from myself.
Now, in my role at the Knights of Columbus headquarters, I am privileged to help promote the Order’s pilgrim icon program, in which framed images of the Sacred Heart are being carried to councils and parishes throughout the world over a two-year period. And I will take part in the Sacred Heart Novena (June 19-27) sponsored by the Knights, with a special intention for the pontificate and intentions of Pope Leo XIV. It’s the least I can do for the new lease on life I received some 40 years ago.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!
