Saved By the Light
I will never forget sophomore year of college, for all the wrong reasons. It was one of the most difficult years of my life. I knew not who I was, nor who I wanted to be. I was participating in everything that college lifestyle had to offer at a large public university, but had never felt more empty or alone. I was yearning for something more, but I was at a loss as to what should fill the void that I felt deep within me. Looking back, the answer should have been more obvious, but then again without having had a true encounter with such a force capable of satisfying my every want, maybe I was doomed to such a cycle of sin.
I had been raised Catholic, went to a Catholic School first grade through high school, and still found myself at Mass every Sunday. I attended mass at a local parish or the college Newman Center, but never got involved and certainly did not spend enough time there to make friends or reap the benefits of community. In all my years of Catholic education, I can say with certainty that I did not know what it meant to have an authentic encounter with God, a relationship with Jesus, or even what either of those looked like. I believed all that the Catholic Church professed to be true, including their teaching on morality and the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Yet, I had not internalized what it meant to be a baptized son of God, nor had I allowed for the Gospel to shape how I saw the world or acted. All I knew was that I was deeply unhappy, and certainly was not living to the best of my ability. What that looked like, I had not a clue.
It was beautiful spring afternoon, I had just finished my classes for the day and was walking back to my dorm. I had little planned for the day, so I wandered into the Catholic Newman center, just beyond my dorm. I do not know why I sought to spend time there, but they had a sign saying that Eucharistic Adoration and Confession were to begin at 4pm, and I was just in time. I have no other explanation than Divine intervention that lead me to that small chapel that afternoon, and thanks be to God, I went in.
I had never been to Eucharistic Adoration before, but it was the most beautiful sight to behold. The only light in the whole chapel came from the candles on the altar, the sanctuary candle, and the sunlight that beamed down on the monstrance from a skylight. It was there, in that moment, that I felt the love of God as I never had before. I felt compelled to just kneel before our Lord and just rest with him. It was in the silence of this chapel that I can say I came to know the love of the Father in an intimate way for the first time, as if to say that God saw into my soul, saw how physically and spiritually exhausted I was and invited me to rest in him so that he could form me as I was meant to be. The anxieties of the day almost melted away.
That invitation to come to God was answered both in that adoration chapel, but also in the Sacrament of Confession that I participated in about mid-way through my hour with the Lord. In my first trip to confession in quite some time, and the first trip done with the honest purpose of reuniting myself to God and his Church, I felt affirmation and love as I had never felt. It was as if God himself, in the grace of the confession and adoration, was welcoming me home with wave after wave of divine love. God had called me to rest with him and to return to communion with him. I now truly knew peace like I had never known before, it was as if I had experienced a “spiritual resurrection” (CCC 1468). I had heard the call, I had taken the time to rest and reconcile with God, and he rewarded me greatly with grace, peace, and the love that is unlike any other.
I still look back on that day as a moment that turned my life around forever. The effects of sin remained, but from that moment on I took action and resolved to turn my life around. I desired to know and unite myself to God, and since making that decision life has had its ups and downs, but I have always felt secure in God’s love and found myself back in an adoration chapel weekly to give thanks to God for all I have received.
