'This is the best thing that ever happened to me.'

 “I think what ultimately led me here was God.”

That is how 23-year-old Jonathan Gordon of Turner explains his journey from being a nonbeliever, who thought religion was “pretty bogus,” to becoming a baptized Catholic.

“I’m very excited to set aside my old self and live a new life in Christ,” he says.

Gordon was among 120 people around the state who were baptized and received the initiation sacraments of confirmation and first Eucharist this Easter. That is the highest number in the Diocese of Portland in 17 years.

Gordon says although his family identified as Christian, they did not practice any faith when he was a child, which left him with a lot of questions and doubts about religion and led him to what he described as “a really godless life as I approached my early 20s.”

He says, however, a serious motorcycle accident when he was 20 and the death of his grandmother the following year, led him to ask some serious life questions.

“Things like that forced me to look at mortality and the human soul, and as I started to look at Christian Church history, it was really obvious to me that Catholicism was the only true choice,” he says.

Although he says he hadn’t heard good things about the Catholic Church from some of his family members, he says he tried to approach it with an open mind. He says he found the teachings of Bishop Robert Barron particularly valuable.

“I really appreciate how a lot of what he has to say is theologically substantial. I think one of my favorite things about the Catholic faith is just how deep it actually is. There is never going to be a point where I know all about it. It is endlessly deep and ancient, and I really love things like that because I’ve always been a skeptic. I’ve always been a person who asks questions and wants to try to get to the bottom of things,” he says.

Gordon says it took him a long time, but he finally decided to attend a Catholic Mass, an experience that proved to be life changing.

“When Father Daniel [Greenleaf] held up the eucharistic host, I burst into tears. I wept. I still don’t understand why, even today, because I didn’t really believe or understand the Real Presence at that moment. It was at the basilica in Lewiston, and that is a very grand church, and the music and the incense and everything about it was just overwhelming in a good way. I spent weeks thinking about it afterwards. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I knew I needed to be part of this because there is something here, that thing that I was looking for ever since I was a child, ever since I started asking questions about God and about Jesus,” he says. “I really think it was the Holy Spirit working in me. I think the Holy Spirit brought me there in the first place because it took me a long time to even show up there.”

Gordon says after that Mass, he set up a meeting with Father Greenleaf because even then he felt drawn to join the Church.

“It wasn’t even something that I wanted to do. It was something that I needed to do,” he says.

Gordon says he found the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) classes to be a valuable experience.

“It’s really good to have a community of people who are a lot like me who are coming into the Church,” he says. “There is a lot I have to still learn about the Church.”

He says Father Greenleaf counseled him to be prepared for a lot of questions from friends when they learned about his decision. He says that turned out to be the case, but it hasn’t caused him to waver.

“This is the best thing that that ever happened to me,” he says. “I just pray that God lets me be a good witness to the faith, and hopefully, I can bring one person with me.”

Gordon says the experience has changed him.

“Not only in ways that I can notice, but in ways that I don’t necessarily notice but that other people mention to me,” he says. “I’ve always been very independent, a don’t-need-anything kind of person. It’s like, ‘Why on earth would I need a Savior?’ But now, I know that’s ridiculous.”

Jonathan says the experience has helped him learn what it means to sacrifice for others as Jesus did for us.

“I think it’s really understanding what it means to be humble and, in that, learning how to truly love another person,” he says. “It has allowed me to begin living in a way that is fuller and more authentic than I even thought was possible.”