“Please — come join us in the cafeteria after Mass has concluded!”
Father Ariel’s jaunty voice echoed from where he was standing at the slabbed marble pulpit, as he smiled out at the congregation. His family, who had arrived from the Philippines in droves to celebrate his 50th birthday, beamed from the first several rows of glossy, varnished pews.
I’m not an atheist per se, but trying to find an equilibrium with faith has undoubtedly become a game of mental Tetris.
Mid-morning light filtered through stained glass depicting saints and the Stations of the Cross, casting soft pinks and blues and greens across the church: our local parish, St. James. Sun illuminated the top of Father Ariel’s head, and behind him, a domed mural of the stages of Jesus’ life — his birth in a manger, his crucifixion atop Calvary, and his resurrection after emerging from a stone sepulchre — seemed to swell higher with every slow, measured note of music from the raftered choir.
It was a Sunday morning in April, not exactly Easter but right around the time. The smell of incense — a combination of frankincense and myrrh — leached from every corner of the space, creating a somewhat soporific effect. I pictured my family, friends and neighbors gently falling asleep to its bitter, powdery aroma, like Dorothy did in the poppy field. Everything felt buoyant and peaceful.
My family and many other parishioners — mainly gentle, geriatric hordes — joined Father Ariel with his multitude of relatives in my middle-school cafeteria for an authentic Filipino feast. Side dishes of pearly quail eggs, roasted fish and meats, bright salads and an array of desserts adorned every inch of table space, the very same where I ate many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my youth. At the center of it all was a huge roast pig, or lechón, with delicate, crisped skin. I looked at the pig’s face, then at the people ambling around the dingy, linoleum floors, and immediately felt love.
This was nearly 10 years ago, back during a time when I went to Church every Sunday and consistently prayed to God. I don’t consider myself a particularly religious person anymore. I’m not an atheist per se, but trying to find an equilibrium with faith has undoubtedly become a game of mental Tetris. Sure, Jesus seemed like a pretty cool guy — to me, his message has always unequivocally been "love,” in a broader sense. I’m on board with that.
But I still remain immensely put off by how Catholicism’s sordid underbelly has blended into sociopolitical life, underpinning the dismantling of women’s reproductive rights and enabling sexual abusers. I find myself still clinging to it largely because it’s woven tightly into many people I love. It’s a perturbing relationship; I feel as though my continued shunning of organized religion has in a sense estranged me from the memory of some very important people.
And yet, Easter and springtime always bring me back to church. I find myself craving, not exactly the scriptures and the teachings embedded in them, but how the space evokes the memories of people I love — chiefly my maternal grandmother and my mom — and an inclusive sense of community.
A deeply spiritual person, my grandma — born in a small Bolivian jungle village called Riberalta — spent her teenage years living in a convent with a U.S.-based congregation of nuns performing foreign missionary work. She was readying to enter the sisterhood when she met my grandfather, a Sicilian and civil engineer volunteering with a Catholic mission group to help build new infrastructure in Riberalta. They returned to America together and settled in Bayonne, New Jersey, joined in a union forged out of a shared devotion to God and each other.
Though my mom didn’t pray a daily rosary or make pilgrimages to Lourdes like my grandma, she was deeply affected by her religious upbringing, a heritage she inculcated her five children with through weekly mass, and offering up nightly intentions along with prayers before dinner: family and friends who were sick or had died, poverty and homelessness, wartime conflict, our cat Sweet Pea’s hypothyroidism.
In my grandmother’s house and my own, the iconography of Jesus and other religious figures was everywhere, peppering walls and mantelpieces alongside family photos and wedding albums. Each time one of my more than 25 cousins or I received a sacrament — Baptism, First Holy Eucharist, Confirmation — a sprawling, family-wide party followed, usually at an Italian restaurant with a generically benevolent, pot-bellied owner who would toddle around and ask, “How yous all likin’ the food?” And of course, there was always a large white sheet cake, piped in bubbled fonts: “God Bless ____!”
Seeing as my mom’s eight siblings were spread out across central New Jersey, I essentially ran the gauntlet of various Catholic parishes in our area for different holidays and events. I had my favorite churches. St. James retained the top position. Then came St. Michael’s, a red-bricked church that was famous for its live-animal manger display during the Christmas season. Holy Cross — located in one of the more affluent towns in my county — had a stunning interior, but its reputation had always been somewhat sullied in my mind from a 2006 embezzlement incident.
While I was able to evade formal liturgical participation, my three younger sisters were all urged to be altar servers, helping St. James’ priests — mostly middle-aged men from the Phillippines and India — prepare and proceed with weekly Sunday mass. One sister recalled a time when she and another altar server accidentally spilled open a bag of already-consecrated Eucharist wafers as they were preparing for mass in the wood-paneled sacristy.
“Oh! Uh, don’t worry girls — I’ll consume these later,” the priest said when he walked in and saw them scooping the body of Christ off the floor and into Ziploc bags.
Another time several years ago, my family was running late for Easter Sunday mass, half of us with our hair still wet. “Overflow,” an usher posted outside the church doors said as we approached, jerking his thumb toward the rear parking lot where the grammar school was located. Given that creasters (Catholics who only attend church on Christmas and Easter) come out of the woodwork every winter and spring, tardy worshippers are forced to attend the secondary service, held in the gymnasium or auditorium.
From my seat in a metal folding chair, nostalgia washed over me as the priest carried a gold crucifix across the same floor where I’d once played dodgeball, toward the makeshift altar where I’d watched classmates act out a rendition of “The Little Mermaid.”
I feel as though my continued shunning of organized religion has in a sense estranged me from the memory of some very important people.
I spent last Easter in Newport, Rhode Island with my family for a short holiday vacation. The weekend was oceanic cliffs and Gilded Age mansions and a kaleidoscopic assortment of saltwater taffy. On Easter Sunday, we walked from our quaint bed and breakfast to St. Mary’s, Our Lady of the Isle, where JFK and Jackie O wed in September of 1953. We took turns waiting outside with our two Great Pyrenees, who had reaped the benefits of Newport’s reputation for being dog-friendly.
Ahead of the homily, the part of the service when the priest explains the Gospel reading in further detail, I elected to relieve my mom of dog duty, knowing she wouldn’t want to miss the crux of the mass.
As I turned toward the door to trade off with her, the sharp New England morning air — and an emotional pang — made me bristle. I didn’t want to leave. Mashed tightly in hard-backed pews alongside other Catholics, loyalists and creasters alike, I felt a distinct sense of calm. The very same that came to me years ago as I gazed at a pig’s snout.
This Easter, we’ll be going back to St. James. Father Ariel is no longer at the parish — I don’t know many of the priests there anymore, my connection to the parish steadily eroded by distance, time and sheer obstinance on my part. It’s an elegiac relationship, compounded by the recent passing of my grandmother, who embodied holiness and unadulterated love in every sense.
And while I may not take the time to philosophize about my salvation on Sunday, I’m certain I’ll think of her and what my being there would mean to her. For me, that’s enough to return every spring.
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