Sacramentals and Evangelization: My Personal Conversion Narrative, Part 1

While attending the University of Toledo in 2011, I participated in an independent study in which I taught Peace Education at the Padua Center in Toledo, Ohio, under the direction of Sister Virginia (Ginny) Welsh. Sister Ginny serves as both the Pastoral Leader of St. Martin de Porres Church and the Director of the Padua Center, a sponsored ministry of St. Martin de Porres Church that provides education, support, and community services based on the seven Principles of Kwanzaa. The Padua Center is located in the three-story rectory of the former St. Anthony of Padua Church.

Sister Ginny not only guided my integration into Padua Center activities during my independent classes and the two years of volunteerism that followed, but also assisted with my conversion to Catholicism. The center became a very special place of peace and love for me. I would arrive early at the center to pray in the oratory on the third floor, which is in a turret with three windows overlooking the neighborhood. It was there that I found Jesus Christ. In late 2013, I began attending Church and RCIA classes weekly. I received my Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion on April 4, 2015.

Besides the isolated prayer room on the top floor, three sacramentals guided me to my conversion. The first sacramental was a Franciscan prayer card. The words “May the Lord Give You Peace” are written on the front of the card. A priest is depicted reaching out his arms in a Franciscan habit shaped like a cross. A Franciscan Tau gold cardboard cross with the words “Pace e Bene” printed on it hangs over the priest on a gold string. Sister Ginny offered me the card, which I brought home and hung on my refrigerator. The back of the card explains, “Pace e Bene (Italian for Peace and Good) is a common Franciscan greeting.” It also notes that St. Francis of Assisi greeted everyone at the beginning of his homily with a proclamation of peace. As a student studying peace, I was intrigued by the relationship between peace and Catholicism.

The second item was a ceramic wall-hanging depicting the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I was unfamiliar with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, yet I was drawn to the love radiating from his heart. I took a photo of the image and kept it on my phone so I could feel its warmth whenever I looked at it. The wall-hanging was outside Sister Ginny’s office, where I often waited to speak with her, so it combined my love for Sister Ginny with the love of Jesus, which, at the time, was unbeknownst to me. It wrapped me in the grace of Jesus and the love of the Holy Spirit, although I only knew the feeling, not the terminology.

The third item was a large poster depicting the Return of the Prodigal Son, in which a father welcomed his son from a distance. One of the students in my peace class asked what the poster meant. I could not answer him, so I asked Sister Ginny to explain the parable. After hearing her explanation, I felt drawn to return to God through Catholicism rather than my birth religion because of the Father's love for his children, his unconditional mercy, and his desire for reconciliation.

As a student pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology at our local seminary, I recently took a class, Sacramental Life of the Church, where I learned about sacramentals. I learned that sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the same way as the sacraments, but through the Church’s prayer they prepare us to receive and cooperate with the grace given in the sacraments. Sacramentals spread the grace of Jesus by making the Paschal mystery present in daily life. My personal experience highlights the movement of sacramentals from external signs to inner realities that invite participation in the Church’s sacramental ministry.

Before I spent time at the Padua Center in prayer with God and in acts of Christian charity, I was happiest immersed in learning at a secular university. After praying in the rectory oratory, I learned that my true happiness and peace come from praying in solitude and silence, as well as from communion with others in my ministry and in the Church. This is the happiest I have been in my life, and I hope to bring others to conversion by using sacramentals evangelistically, as Sister Ginny did. Pray for me!