Marie Mazzanti
My story isn’t as exciting as most, but it has the twists and turns of a good Catholic dramedy.
Being a cradle Catholic, I had an added benefit of being raised by a Catholic father and a convert mother (from Baptist) guided to conversion by a canon lawyer priest, two years prior to my birth.
This dynamic instilled in me not only the wisdom of the traditional teachings and values of Our Mother Church, but a fire for Christ from my mother, that burns in only a way conversion can incite. However, this fire lay relatively dormant for my early teen years. I was proud to be Catholic, but allowed worldly vices and idols to consume me. Consequently, I found myself at a private Lutheran school to combat the secular influence. There, in the midst of the crowded desks of a Lutheran religion class, my faith was challenged for the first time.
“Catholics pray to Mary and the Saints”, shouted a kid in the front row. To everyone's surprise (and my own), I sat up from my slumped over sleeping position, and gave the class a short lesson on intercession. After this moment, it dawned on me that I needed to be able to back up ALL of my beliefs. I engulfed myself in encyclicals, the catechism, and apologetics resulting in my acceptance of these beliefs through the sacrament of Confirmation two years later.
Fast forward to freshman year of college, where God unveiled His path for my vocation through a bit of comedy. After a devastating break up with my Catholic boyfriend (years later he would become a priest) I sought God deeply to guide me to my vocation of marriage. My relationship with God has always had a splash of humor… and His humor shined through when God placed a tall, dark, charming, Christ loving Protestant man in my life. We spent the next five years discerning a Catholic marriage thoughtfully and carefully through prayer and a multitude of in depth conversations on Church dogma, doctrines, and teachings about what it meant to marry a devout Catholic woman and raise devout Catholic kids. The process was tedious and stressful; and throughout this time I leaned heavily on my favorite Pope and Saint, John Paul II.
My husband's “Yes” to me was a “Yes” to God, why? Because although He isn’t Catholic, he leads our family with Christ in his heart by loving me the way Christ loves His Church. He holds true to his promises made prior to engagement by attending Mass every Sunday with us and Holy Days of obligation while simultaneously encouraging our boys in reverence to the Eucharist, he prays the rosary with us, and he fully supports our children receiving the sacraments. He may not currently have Catholic faith, but he lives out Ephesians 5:25 with fervor and knows I am guiding our family toward Christ.
My speaking of my ecumenical marriage positively may make some uncomfortable, but God’s plan for me isn’t your plan, and that's the beauty of Our Faith! We can see the individuality of our calls to holiness through the lives of The Saints. What a gift! The events and relationships in my life revealed that God's path to Sainthood for us is as versatile and unique as His love for us!
My husband was the wood to the embers of faith in my heart, and our marriage has been like lighter fluid to that wood. This vocation and the fruit of it (our children) sanctified me. Every hardship we both faced was drawing us closer and closer to Him. Is it difficult? Of course. Does it purify us? Absolutely. Being the main educator to our children on Our Faith is a heavy cross, but a cross that I carry humbly and with the strength I receive from my favorite spiritual work out: Adoration. Saint John Paul II called it the ‘secret of his day’ and asks us to ‘bring to your encounter with Jesus, hidden in the Eucharist, all the enthusiasms of your age, all your hopes, all your desire to love’ and these influential words by this adored saint evolved Adoration from a “nice to have” to a “need to have” in my life. The virtues I need to carry the crosses placed upon me have been found in being intentional about visiting Our Savior, alive in the Eucharist, weekly. The greatest outcome of my weekly visits to Our Savior was the gift of surrender. Surrendering to His will and not my own happens weekly, daily, and hourly, and I will never again take for granted the power of this heavenly gift on earth nor Saint John Paul II’s words.