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Stories

Freelance artist Holly Rodriguez had been an atheist all her life and never thought about God or considered joining a religion or even going to church, but one day …

 

It was December of 2016, I had woken up one winter morning wanting nothing more than my usual cup of coffee. I had been an atheist all of my life. I had never thought about God and certainly never considered joining a religion or going to church. However on that day, for no reason at all, I felt a sudden desire to go to church. There was nothing unusual going on in my life to bring about this sudden change of heart. I had been living a fairly normal, quiet life as a freelance artist in a small seaside town in Kent, England.

 

I searched for the closest church that was open that day and found a Roman Catholic church within walking distance. That was a surprise. Although I had passed that area many times, I had never noticed a church there before. It’s amazing how blind we are to the presence of God, and how near He is to us, when we walk the path of life with a closed heart.

 

I phoned the church and a kind lady answered the phone. She introduced herself as the parish secretary and I asked her some questions which she was happy to answer. She told me the church was Catholic and that she would let the priest know I had phoned and we said our goodbyes. I was shy and didn’t know what to expect. I’ve always been one of those people who likes to know everything about a situation before making a decision. I didn’t know what a Catholic Church was, and had never met a priest before. I decided to take the day off work and learn about the Catholic faith, so did a lot of reading on Wikipedia for a few hours.

 

Then my phone rang. On the other line was a kind voice—a priest who introduced himself as Father Mark. He was very friendly and enthusiastic which came as a shock to me. I had never in my life met someone so eager to meet me and welcome me. We scheduled a time for me to visit the church the next day. When I had arrived, Father Mark was there in his cassock to greet me. It was the first time I’d seen a priest in person and I remember being really fascinated by his cassock. I guess I’d never thought about what a priest looks like. I had only seen the Pope briefly on the television news occasionally, but never anything beyond that.

 

Father Mark sat with me and we talked for a couple of hours, then he invited me to join the “RCIA” classes. He also suggested that it was a good idea to start going to Mass right away, so I did. I can recall the first Mass I ever went to. It was Gaudete Sunday and I sat in the very front pew, absolutely clueless as to the etiquette. Everyone around me was standing and then sitting and then standing again and sometimes kneeling, and reciting the creed and other prayers. I was new and found this a bit intimidating, but also fascinating and intriguing. I followed what everyone else was doing to the best of my ability. The priest was wearing a beautiful rose vestment that looked very ornate and delicate. He chanted at the altar and I watched and listened closely as incense filled the chapel. It was a very beautiful English Mass, and from then on I knew I’d come back.

 

I liked it so much that I kept going back every weekend and even started attending daily Mass. My love for Jesus grew at every encounter. During my first Christmas Eve Mass, the priest tenderly carried the Christ Child statue, wrapped in his ivory satin cope the way that priests hold a monstrance.As he processed around the chapel with the Infant Christ to the crib, accompanied by the chanting of prayers, I was moved to tears. I thought that was so lovely. Never in my life had I seen anything like it before.

As I prepared to be received into the Catholic Church, I spent a lot of time reading at home, especially from the catechism given to me by the priests of the parish. A week before my baptism I was told I’d need to choose a Saint for my confirmation. There were thousands of Saints however, and didn’t know how I’d choose from them all. I knew nothing about them except for Saint Philomena because the priest did a homily on her one Sunday morning. By divine providence I came across a fascinating book, “Interior Castles” while I was volunteering in the parish café. It was written by a Spanish Saint I’d never even heard of before—the Carmelite nun, Saint Teresa of Avila. Since my family is of Spanish heritage, I chose her as my patron although I didn’t know much else about her.

 

Finally, during the Easter vigil Mass on April 15th 2017, I was baptized and confirmed into the Catholic Church. I was so excited that I could now receive the Blessed Sacrament at the altar rail instead of a blessing that I was up bright and early on Easter Sunday to sing with the choir at the main Mass. Soon after, I joined the Legion of Mary and began praying the Rosary, making Rosaries and doing mission work around the town to bring the lapsed Catholics back to Mass and pray the Rosary with people at home.

 

Saint Teresa remained a guiding influence in my life, teaching me to love Jesus more and more, but I had no idea who the Carmelites were until I joined our parish on a day pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Simon Stock at Aylesford Priory, a historic home of the Carmelite friars.

 

I kept receiving gifts from the Saints which were leading me to Carmel. One day, I was entranced by a bright pink rose growing out of the cement. Later I discovered that it was the birthday of Saint Thèrése of Lisieux who said that she would send people roses as a sign from Heaven. That same day, I was in a secular incense shop when I came across a box of pretty rose scented incense sticks with an image of St Thèrése of Lisieux on the box. These little signs helped plant seeds of vocation and seeds of faith.

 

As I write this, I am about to celebrate my 6th anniversary as a Catholic and preparing to enter the sacred garden of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Accepting this vocation to be a cloistered nun, if God wills it to be so, I spend my life praying for the Church, for the world, and for priests. It has been a long journey, and I have met so many wonderful people along the way.

 

Saint Thèrése of Lisieux referred to Carmel as her desert where Our Lord spent forty days in contemplation and prayer, but for me it is the garden of Gethsemane where Our Lord sat among the olive trees in agony. I join Him in His agony with unbridled love, and walk with Him on the Via Dolorosa. Together we suffer for souls and offer the world our love.'

Read how Elliott Cannon was drawn to the Carmelite novitiate in a monastery in Derry via the Secular Carmelites.

 

When I was young, I lived next to the old MG Rovers factory in Birmingham though it soon went out of business. It had been sold off to some big Chinese conglomerate. Since then, the site has been turned into a retail park yet there's a sign that still recalls its past. It reads: "YOU WERE RULED BY THE TRACK.” All in bold black letters and it always catches my eye whenever I pass it. The MG workers would stand at their stations as the assembly line moved the car parts to them. Each worker would be designated a particular task that had to be completed before it moved on but the trick is that it never stopped, it was never satisfied, so came the saying "YOU WERE RULED BY THE TRACK.” There’s something almost nihilistically crude about the statement. ‘You were ruled by the track’ I guess that's how I would describe the first 16 years of my life.

 

As a baby I was nominally baptised a Catholic thanks to the presence of my Catholic Nan but within my household faith was non-existent. It was just never talked about. Maybe God existed or maybe He didn't but it doesn't matter either way. And it wasn't much better at my secular school either and so my life progressed along the same 'track' that the majority of young people take today, into a vague and distant agnosticism.

 

In my teenage years the culture of the world really took hold where the greatest possible achievements were to have a girlfriend and to get drunk at parties. However, I always found that this left a bitter taste in my mouth (literally!). It never satisfied me and so I looked for other ways of nullifying my innate desire for God like acting out and playing the fool. And as I journeyed from ‘station to station’ down the ‘assembly track' I found that my mental health was following on the cart behind, despite my best efforts to forget it. The further you go on this journey the emptier you realise it is and so the more you have to fill the gap. At my lowest point my Nan spoke out like a candle in the dark, "why don't you try praying?" and I was so desperate that I did. Now I didn't have an epiphany nor did I go into ecstasy but I did strangely feel called back to it the next day as if I had done something that I should have done a long time ago.

 

This continued to be the case for the next year but I remained for the most part the same. Prayer was more of a superstition for me, a get out of jail free card if you like, but the idea that the Gospel should radically change my life hadn't quite dawned.

 

Until one day the next year I got a job working on cars (not at MG!) at a garage not far from my house. So apprehensively I turn up and one of the mechanics introduced himself, his name was Jordan. Over the next few months working in the body shop with Jordie, respraying cars in this boiling hot cramped garage converted into a make shift paint shop, he slowly preached the Gospel to me not in a proselytising way but in a way that came from his very being, he was a Christian. "Here is a man without deceit!" (Jn 1:47) a man who had managed to get off the “TRACK” and I was fascinated. Where does he get his joy despite the fact that he had given up so much in pursuit of being a Christian? Yet it is this Biblically bitter irony that permeates the Gospel, "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." (Mt 16:25) And he was calling me to join him.

 

"You should go to Mass" he would say and to be honest I knew he was right. I decided to go at Christmas which was only a few weeks away. So I went and I had a similar experience to the one I had when I began to pray, no epiphany, no euphoria but a sense that I was where we are all made to be. Yet my understanding of God deepened In the Mass. It was not just me who spoke but God spoke to me: in the hymns, the readings and especially in the Eucharist. The “TRACK” no longer ruled me.

 

"Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee! For behold Thou wert within me, and I outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things Thou hast made... Had they not been in Thee they would not have been at all... Thou didst breath fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for Thee." St Augustine aptly puts how I felt during the next nine months. I began to pray more and read the Bible more, I was in awe. I found the Carmelites too, I read Teresa and Therese there they taught me the truth that “Thou wert within me”.

 

The time approached for my Confirmation and first Holy Communion and providentially my priest advised me to take John of the Cross as my Confirmation Saint. Although I knew almost nothing about him, I felt that I should choose him. Afterwards I began to look into his teaching and delved deeper into Carmelite spirituality. At the same time, I got a job working for the Diocese of East Anglia doing youth ministry and so I moved to Norwich. I lived just opposite the Cathedral and I heard that there was a community of Secular Carmelites that gathered there. I was sold and asked where I could begin. 

 

Kindly I was invited to join the meetings and the book club they ran. Before, I had read about the Carmelites and their spirituality here I saw it put into action. How they followed the call "to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ through friendship with the One we know loves us." It was this Vocation to friendship with God that had called me from the very beginning, right back when I first began to pray to this present moment, and I hope that it will continue to resound in my heart to the end. I now live in our Priory in Derry, training to be a Friar of the Order and I am immensely grateful for the love and inspiration that the Secular Carmelites instilled in me and for the support they still continue to provide me. Deo Gratias!

 

"I marvel now that I did not remain where I was, and I praise the mercy of God, who alone gave me His hand. May He be blessed for ever. Amen.”

 

*St Augustine’s Confessions Book X

*Constitution of the Secular Order No 3. (2003)

*St Teresa’s Book of Life VII

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