But two years ago, that all changed….
In 2014, I received the greatest gift and blessing of my
life when I was baptized into the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil Mass.
In the weeks and months leading up to my baptism I had the real meaning behind
Easter explained to me in a new and profound way. But once I experienced first-hand
what is perhaps the most beautiful sacrament in the Church, I truly FELT the
meaning behind Easter.
Since that glorious evening, Easter is no longer just a
holiday for me…or even merely a date of remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion.
For me, Easter is the day I was saved and called to the highest purpose of my
life. It will forever be a time of year now when I recall the grace and
forgiveness I was granted—even though I didn’t deserve it—and was shouldered
with a cross and inner light to bear for the good of myself and humanity the
rest of my days.
Last Friday, I was given an incredible opportunity to
further extend the light of Christ within to those around me. I was emailed by
the musical director of my church to ask if I would give the reflection for the
last evening prayer service of Lent. Her words made me tear up because it was
the kind of opportunity I always knew I wanted but wasn’t sure I’d ever have. I
couldn’t write back quickly enough to tell her I was all in for it.
Pope Francis called for 2016 to be a Jubilee Year of Mercy,
so the overarching theme of the prayer services this year centered on mercy. I
thought to myself initially, “my lord, where do I even begin to explain all
that I have come to know about mercy.” But as always, after staring at the
blank screen for countless minutes and praying for divine intervention, I began
typing. Once I did, the words flowed out of me with such a fierce determination
that I could not stop them.
Being a writer I crossed out, deleted, rewrote and hung my
head dozens of times in the process of crafting my reflection. Even up until a
few hours before I was to deliver it at church, I was still tweaking things.
But when I finally walked up to the podium to speak to my brothers and sisters
of St. Mary Catholic Community, my words were confident, reflective, and
peaceful as they rolled out from my lips.
At the end of the prayer service, I received a round of
applause from everyone in the church. It’s rare to hear applause at church so I
greatly appreciated it. But what happened in the subsequent minutes though was
the real reward. I fully expected people to tell me I had done a good job. But
I received far more than that. After the service concluded, several people
rushed their way over to me and the first words out of their mouths were “Thank
You.” Thank you…..those were certainly words I never expected to hear. I wasn’t
even quite sure what to say back to them. But those two little words were the
greatest affirmation for me that not only was my story heard and appreciated,
but it had changed something in them…..even the older church ladies that I
didn’t expect to take anything away from the thoughts of a new and very young
Catholic.
The next day, I had the privilege to serve as a lector
during the Palm Sunday service. While processing outside with our palm branches
for some readings, an older lady stopped me to tell me how impressed she had
been with my reflection the night before. Not only had my speaking abilities
shown through to her but my words caused her to pause in her own reflection—a
reflection on her own baptism….69 years earlier. Her baptism had taken place decades
before but she still seemed to remember it like it was just yesterday. I
wondered how long it had been since she’d really thought about that day prior
to hearing me speak about my baptism. I wonder if what I had said had called to
mind the memory.
Her last comment to me was, “It must’ve been very hard for
you to share that story.” But I smiled and told her “no.” Sharing personal
stories about failure, tragedy and transformation are not the difficult part
for me. What is difficult is having such stories bottled up inside
you…..stories that you believe could transform the lives of others if you were
only given the opportunity to share them.
Sharing my story of coming into the church was a liberating
experience for me. I could’ve stood up in front of the church for hours telling
them about all the ways God has intervened in my life and saved me. But I was
content with my 15 minutes or so. In the two years since my baptism, it was
the greatest moment of public ministry for me and further inspired me to
continue on the journey I was called to with the waters of rebirth.
Below is the full text of the reflection I gave on Friday,
March 18. I hope that you find something to take away from it. If nothing else,
I hope it inspires you to share your own greatest stories with others. They are
some of the most powerful scriptures we have after all.
I’m
Lacey Galen and I’m a parishioner and lector here at St. Mary as well as a
former RCIA Candidate. When I first received the email from Eileen asking if I
would give the reflection for tonight’s service I was incredibly honored. But
then when I saw who some of the other speakers were each week listed in the
bulletins, I started wondering why on earth she’d chosen me. I knew I was going
up against professors from my alma mater at Carroll College and others who
seemed to have impressive credentials and backgrounds in religion and
spirituality. Then there was me. With as
young as I am and as recently as I’ve joined the church, I wondered what I
could possibly have to say to further shape people’s minds on God and
particularly his mercy?
But
I believe that each of us has a unique story to share and something to teach
about life, God and mercy—even those people who haven’t fully found God yet.
And it’s critical that we all share our stories because there is something to
be gained from each of them. So while I am no great scholar or expert on
Catholicism or God or anything in between, I do have my own story about
experiencing God’s mercy first hand in a way that most Christians don’t
remember. And I feel very proud to be able to share part of that story with you
tonight and how it forever changed me.
This
past fall on September 12th I was blessed to marry a man, right here in this
beautiful church, who is not only my best friend but has also been one of the
biggest saving graces of my life. Our wedding day was the second time I walked
down the aisle of this church in a white gown and pledged my life and all that
I am—all the good, bad and broken parts of me—to someone greater than myself.
The other occasion came a year and a half earlier on April 19, 2014, when I was
baptized into the Catholic Church at 27 years old….right in that font in the
back here that we dip our fingers into each time before Mass.
If
you ask most Christians they will tell you they were baptized as infants and
have absolutely no memory of the occasion. I feel so sad for those people sometimes
because I am now among the blessed few who have full recollection of that
actual and profound moment in my life and faith journey when God’s grace and
spirit first descended on me.
I
had wanted to be baptized for a long time and over the course of a few years I
began recognizing God’s calling in me. But I waited until it felt right….until
I knew it was entirely my decision and that it was what God truly wanted for
me. I read a quote once that said that “Waiting to come to the Lord when you
get your life cleaned up is like waiting to go to the ER when you stop
bleeding. He doesn’t love some future version of us; he loves us in our mess.”
That quote really sums up a lot of how I reached my decision.
Just before approaching Deb here at
St. Mary and telling her I wanted to be baptized, I had reached a place of
profound shame over the mistakes I’d made in my past and the person I was
starting to become as a result of them. I felt broken and lost from many of the
struggles and burdens I’d encountered in recent years. While I’d always
believed I could fix things on my own, I slowly began to realize that God was
the only one who could ultimately heal me and guide me into becoming a better
person and living a better life.
There
was no grand epiphany or epic event that finally called me to the church. I
just knew one day—all the way to my bones—that it was time. And from the moment I officially spoke the words aloud to Deb that “I
want to be baptized,” I grew more reassured of my decision and of God’s calling
in me with each passing day.
Just a few weeks
before Easter I underwent my first scrutiny in preparation for the Easter
Vigil. One of the first remarks I remember Father Richard saying as I stood up
in front of the whole parish was “God has chosen you for baptism.” The moment I
heard those words I was struck by the immense truth behind them. God CHOSE ME
to be initiated….not the other way around. I had simply been receptive enough
to hear his call and trusted him enough to answer it.
The night
of the Easter Vigil two years ago, will always hold the place in my heart as
the best night of my life. When I first stepped into the font, everything and
everyone around me disappeared. When Father Richard pushed my head underwater,
all I remember was hearing his words of “I baptize you in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The water covered my face and
head and with each plunge under I felt a greater sense of peace enter my heart.
When I rose up after the third time, I kept my eyes closed and felt the water
run down my face. I didn’t want to open my eyes because I wanted to breathe in
and feel that moment for as long as possible. When I did finally open my eyes,
Father's hand was extended down to help me up from kneeling down in the font. I
didn't look up to see that it was Father's hand, and truthfully, a piece of me
in that moment felt like it was Jesus' hand outreached to help me up into my
new life.
When I first walked down the aisle in my white rope after changing, I felt like a halo of light must’ve been surrounding me for all the happiness I felt. When Father anointed my head with oil and confirmed me, I felt like all of the scattered and broken pieces of my life were fused together in an unbreakable bond. When I went up and received the Eucharist for the first time, I finally felt the significance of that sacrament and was reminded in a profound way of what Christ did for me. Truly feeling His sacrifice made me want to work so much harder in my own life moving forward to prove to him that His sacrifice was worth it…..that giving His life so that I might live was worth it.
When I first walked down the aisle in my white rope after changing, I felt like a halo of light must’ve been surrounding me for all the happiness I felt. When Father anointed my head with oil and confirmed me, I felt like all of the scattered and broken pieces of my life were fused together in an unbreakable bond. When I went up and received the Eucharist for the first time, I finally felt the significance of that sacrament and was reminded in a profound way of what Christ did for me. Truly feeling His sacrifice made me want to work so much harder in my own life moving forward to prove to him that His sacrifice was worth it…..that giving His life so that I might live was worth it.
I was told many times by members of
my RCIA team that coming into the church would not be the end of my journey but
merely the beginning. I had a glorious 12 hours of so after my baptism of
feeling utterly at peace with myself and the world and truly feeling God’s
forgiveness and love for the first time in my life. But in the nearly two years
since I’ve come to realize just how much the work has really only begun for me.
The feeling of having over two
decades of sins washed away in one night is something I could never fully
convey to anyone. And it’s one of the big differences of being baptized as an
adult. As infants we have original sin forgiven but I experienced 27 years
being forgiven in an instant. But I quickly learned that my baptism wasn’t a
cure all for my brokenness and sinful ways. I was not perfect still and many of
the sins I hoped to have washed away forever from my life with my baptism I
continued to struggle with. But there was a difference this time around. This
time, I had the spirit of Christ within me.
While I’ve suffered plenty of
failures in the days since my baptism, the one thing I have not failed to do is
to turn to God every day of my life….whether it be in prayer, attending Mass or
confession or Adoration or simply crying out for assistance. And slowly, with
all of those practices becoming an integral part of my daily life, God has
healed me in the ways that my baptism didn’t fully do. From the moment his
spirit first descended on me, He has never left me or stopped helping to mold
me into the best possible version of myself.
It would have been very easy for me
to get baptized and then say, well wonderful! Now I’m forgiven and saved and
part of the church…my work is done. I could’ve just decided to do the bare
minimum and attend Mass—when it was convenient, made my annual visit to
confession like I’m told I’m supposed to do and skipped meat on Fridays during
Lent and called it good. But my baptism, and the fact that it happened as an
adult, made me see how much of a lifelong conversion I had begun and that I
owed it to God and the rest of the world around me to continue the work that he
had started. To not just become robotic and stagnant in my new faith but to
continue moving forward and constantly improving myself and the ways in which I
serve those around me.
Each of our baptisms, whenever and
however we experienced them, do not just join us with God’s love and mercy,
they join us with his death on the cross. The death he suffered so that we
might have another chance to lead a different life. We are called then through
our baptisms to honor his sacrifice for us every day after.
The task is not always easy but it
is simple. All we really must do is choose God every day—though our actions,
thoughts and words….through how we love and forgive others….in how we love and
forgive ourselves. I was told by a priest once in confession that God loves us
so much that he has always given us the freedom to make our own decisions.
What we have to learn and strive to
do then is to choose God every day, in every single thing we do regardless of
our current situations in life. We have to choose him when we are sick or
hurting, when we are busy or preoccupied. We must chose God whether we’ve done
good deeds or sinned repeatedly. We must choose him whether we are understanding
and accepting of the hardships he has put on our shoulders or whether we are
fighting to understand why life must be so hard sometimes. Because the fact is
that whatever God leads us to he will always lead us through with his abundance
of mercy and love when we trust him to do so.
Most every week when I find myself
sitting in the pews here during Mass my eyes are fixated on the crucifix behind
the altar. I never understood Catholics’ fixation on the seemingly morbid
display of Christ on the cross prior to joining the church. And now it is the
one image I cannot bring myself to look away from. It is a depiction of the
greatest mercy in the history of the world. We must learn to never take that
mercy Christ showed us for granted.
Tonight’s reading from Paul’s letter
to the Philippians is especially meaningful for me and truly conveys my current
state in my faith journey. In choosing to answer God’s calling and be baptized
I “accepted the loss of all the things and ways of living that I’d grown
accustomed to and thought were good enough as well. I consider all of it
rubbish now as Paul put it compared to the righteous things and new ways of
living I have gained through Christ. While I now have the spirt of Christ
within me, I still have yet to attain, however, perfect maturity (again, as
Paul described) but I continue my pursuit in the hope that I may possess it
someday.
Mercy--whether received through
baptism, reconciliation, forgiveness or kindness from others, or any other
means--calls us to forget what lies behind but instead strain forward to what
lies ahead. I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward
calling in Christ Jesus. I hope the rest of you will do the same.
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