Exodus Trekkers: A Lifetime of Searching Until Her Climatic Leap of Faith

(originally posted in March, 2015 )

By Robert R. Schwarz

Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation,
concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by
the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision
of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of
suffering, and endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness.
(Catechism of the Catholic Church , second edition, # 1435 )

' Somebody's knockin' at your door ' ( African-American spiritual harmony )

Julia , a "grains"research scientist , in her lab

It was, she would say later, "the crowning moment of my spiritual life ." Nervously confident , Julia DesRochers waited for one of the four priests to lay hands of blessing upon her head. She was standing on her church's altar with 12 other adults , and behind each of them stood their "sponsor" , the one who had eight months ago enthusiastically encouraged Julia and the others to receive this soul-changing sacrament.

Today was the Easter Vigil , and the church was alive with music befitting the mounting joy felt by Julia .

Sitting in pews were smiling friends and family . Smiles for Julia came from her aunt, a cousin, and a close friend.

The priestly cadre of the St. James Catholic Church of Arlington Heights, Illinois made their move. Frs. Zavaski ( then pastor ) , Foley ( recently back from a long U.S. Army chaplaincy stint in Afghanistan and soon to be pastor) , Gilbert ( recently from Tanzania ) , and Joji ( originally from India ) approached each of the "elect" and , placing both hands on their heads, blessed the 13 . Then the priests dipped a finger into the Holy Oil , ( a mixture of oil of olives and balsam ) .

Julia felt Fr. Joji's fingers make the sign of the cross on her forehead , thus "sealing" her with the chrism and proclaiming her a true member of the Roman Catholic Church.

" I felt like I was really joining the body of Christ," Julia later told this reporter in a recent Exodus Trekker interview. For Julia, this was the climax of a decades- long spiritual journey that had challenged her with many twists and turns .

A Lukewarm Journey Begun at Age 14

Julia isn't sure when she first became aware of her spiritual dimension. Growing up in nearby Palatine, she to Sunday school there and was, she said, an "occasional church-goer" with her mother at the United Church of Christ. When her mother remarried and she and daughter moved to New Jersey, Julia joined a youth group at a Presbyterian church . The group had weekly prayer breakfasts . " That's probably when my spiritual awareness began to evolve, " she said. "I was fourteen . I was not really that into boys and was a pretty straight arrow sort of kid. "

Then came a phase in the life of mother and daughter when both of them became "less religious." Some of this, Julia claims, was influenced by the divorce of their pastor, whom Julia described as a "neat, charismatic guy whom everybody liked except for the several who wanted to give him the boot. It was pretty divisive. " Julia's mother referred to the pastor's critics as a "bunch of hypocrites who were suppose to be forgiving, not judgmental. " The incident , Julia recalled, "definitely changed the mood in our house ."

Dad and Daughter Test the Spiritual Waters

Now 35 and out of graduate school and married , Julia admitted that she then "had a very hard heart about religion." One day while visiting her divorced father at his retirement cabin in Door County, Wisconsin, she rose early before her husband and joined her father for coffee on the porch . "Dad and I had a real good relationship. " She began to tell him about her joining a marathon running group and meeting two Catholics and a married couple , the husband being a Protestant minister. "Sometimes," she related to her father that morning, "we would talk about church , and I remember thinking that these people weren't so weird or hypocritical. " But she also told father that she believed "religion is just a crutch for people . "

In Florida on vacation: in 2003 ( from right ): Julia,
her father, John, husband Glenn, and a family friend

The conversation turned to a library book Julia had read recently that confronted the reader with his or her possible ignorance about the Bible. "I don't know what whispered to inspired me to read this book, " Julia commented to her father who, though he believed in God , was not a Christian. This led to father and daughter talking about "spiritual things."

In our interview, Julia said she and her father that morning were "testing the spiritual waters " of the Christian faith . " I think God on that porch was working on my heart, softening it, " she said. "He does this in such a subtle way. You have to sort of move close to Him inch by inch . He knows it's got to be at the right time for you. "

Tragedy Brought Her 'Finest Moment '

In May, 2003, Julia's father was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. " I remember praying like I hadn't prayed for years , " Julia said. She began to cry as she related one of those prayers: God help me to be strong for him because he's going to need me a lot to get through this. " And then I had this peace that I never had felt. It was so awesome. "

Her father was moved to his daughter's home for hospice care , where he died a week later. "It was such a good death, " Julia said. Without faith in God that was then "blossoming" in her , she said she never could have gone through her father's dying. "It was like God just held on to me, " she said. "It wasn't really me who had done this. It was all Him."

" I loved my Dad, but before his passing I wasn't a much of a giving person. " She admitted that if not for those "searching" conversations with her father on that cabin porch, she might have been tempted to just walk away from all of the ordeal. "But not for a second did I have that temptation. My husband —and he is not a religious person— later said to me: 'Julia, that was your finest moment.' "

Her Dad's Death the 'Tipping Point '

"In my spiritual walk, my father's death was the tipping point, " Julia recalled. "After that , I said to God: After you have done all this for me with my father, how can I turn my back on you now?"

And she didn't. After she and her husband moved back to Arlington Heights, Julia renewed her search for a church that was "modern and progressive –and had likeable music. " Her spiritual outlook began to change after she read " A Purpose Driven Life" by the noted evangelical Rick Warren . From his words she learned that "studying and praying is fine but you really need to have people around you. "

For "nostalgic reasons" and to renew her faith , Julia returned to her former Protestant church in Palatine where her parents had been married. But she soon left this church after the congregation and the pastor had a "falling out." ( She would later hear a Catholic priest comment humorously, that when Catholics are dissatisfied with their pastor they find a new parish, but Protestants go off and form their own church.)

Julia began more "hopping around " to different denominational churches . But all their theology, she said, sounded the same to her , and she got "really tired of the relativism" of their sermons . "I asked myself, well, if that particular Bible translation I just heard is good now, what about 20 years from now? "

Julia knew she needed "something else ." But what ? " Being a Catholic was furthest from my mind. I was raised Protestant and had heard a lot of miscommunication about the Catholic church . I had a friend who challenged me with two questions: 'How can you worship Mary and believe that the Pope is infallible?' " Julia's reply today would be this quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate

the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they

wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.

She continued to go "in and out" of several churches, "trying to get their version of the mass…but never to become Catholic, for my family might become upset. I fought that and fought it. " But two years ago she said she " yearned for a deeper connection with Christian faith traditions and those saint and holy souls who have gone before us. "

Now Drawn to the Catholic Faith

Then it happened: " I felt drawn to the Catholic faith tradition in a way I cannot describe. I finally accepted that the 'whisper ' I kept sensing was the Holy Spirit guiding me to consider Catholicism. I wrestled with this for a while until I decided that I had to trust, obey, and say ' here I am Lord. ' And one day while praying, all of a sudden I had this epiphany: Well, why don’t you actually consider becoming Catholic instead of all these other things that make you feel close to being a Catholic but don't ?"

In Her home at the table where her
epiphany occurred

At our interview in her home, we sat around the same small room table where Julia's epiphany occurred. A candle was burning on it, illuminating a Bible open to Psalm 23 and also a small Byzantine icon of Jesus the Good Shepherd. My host with the brown hair and blue eyes wore black slacks and white blouse, and with a coy smile and lilting voice she brought to mind Audrey Hepburn. One of the family's two dogs yipped now and then in a distant room.

Julia continued : " I knew that thought was not mine, but totally the Holy Spirit…I called up Fr. Joji because I had seen his name on the St. James website. I met with him. He was reassuring about my lingering doubts about going through RCIA and advised me: " That's exactly what you should do. There's no obligation. You're just coming to find out more about the faith. "

Yet Julia had "tons of doubts ". One thing she was sure of, though: "I didn't want to be a cafeteria Catholic, picking and choosing what I wanted to believe. If I were to chose becoming a Catholic, I really wanted to understand the doctrines and dogmas of the church and remain faithful to them ." Then, deciding that this was her faith journey and not her family's, Julia last September took her first step to conversion and began the RCIA process ; soon she was enjoying the "wonderful fellowship and generosity of spirit "of her classmates .

When asked to comment on his 13 years of directing RCIA and of seeing Christians of all ages brought into the church, Jim Hamman said : " I always feel like a proud parent , seeing them gradually lose their doubts as the Holy Spirit grabs them. " [ update note: Since then , Julia has joined the RCIA team, she says, "to help other people come into the church. " ]

'It's So Beautiful—Really !'

Not all of Julia's doubts disappeared overnight. She admitted to struggling with doctrines like such as Mary being born without sin and the need to confess sins to a priest rather than just to herself. She asked Fr. Joji if she should turn back from her intentions. He told her , she said, that there are a lot of things which Catholic seminarians struggle with; but as long as she remained open to God revealing the truth to her about things like Mary being born without sin, then all would be right with her. Julia now tries to see her spiritual director monthly—"so it can become a habit"—at the Sisters of the Living Word convent. "I have really now come to appreciate reconciliation ( confession ) ."

Julia will stay "open to the truth, " she said "because people much smarter than me have studied scripture much more than me. "

Now married 25 years to Glenn, a chemical engineer, and having "put down roots" in a home for ten years—"longest we ever lived in any place"—Julia sings in the 8:30 a.m. choir, has joined the church's mission group to Dominican Republic, and plans to sponsor one of next year's RCIA candidates. She has a PhD in grain science and works full-time for a Chicago company doing research on bakery products. "It certainly has been a path that I never could have anticipated. But God is good and here I am. As I've walked along this path for the last year, it keeps feeling more and more rich. It's so beautiful—really ! "

Her message to fence-straddlers ? " Sometimes you just have to step out in faith and trust that the step is going to be there. Like when you walk down the stairwell in the middle of the night, you can't see that certain step, but you trust that it's there."