A family's journey to Catholicism
In April 2022, Leesa and Ray Edwards traveled from Gorham to Old Town to attend the baptism of their son, Holden, then a senior at the University of Maine. They and Holden’s sister, who also attended, say they came away from it thinking the same thing.
“I was happy that he got baptized. I was totally supportive, but I was like, ‘It’ll never be me,’” says Leesa Edwards, Holden’s mother.
“We left, and we were like, we would never do that,” says Raechel, Holden’s sister.
Two years later, however, Raechel and her father did do just that, while Leesa, who had previously been baptized as a Baptist, joined them in receiving the other initiation sacraments of confirmation and first Communion.
“It was amazing. I’m going to cry. Holden, he said, ‘Welcome home,’ when I got confirmed, and that was pretty much how I felt,” says Leesa.
“The night was beautiful. It was an amazing night,” says Ray.
The journey home, Leesa says, would not have happened without Holden’s steadfast belief in Catholicism and her determination to prove him wrong. Although she no longer regularly attended a Baptist church, saying she was unable to find one where she felt she belonged, she says she still held some anti-Catholic views.
“He would start talking to me about it, and I would start fighting about it. He and I are very similar. We like to be right all the time,” she says. “So, he would talk to me about something, and I'd be like, no, that's not right. And so, then I would go and research it.”
“Her job basically is as a researcher, so that comes naturally for her to research everything,” says Ray.
“So, I would research it, and I would be like, ‘Oh, he’s right.’ That happened over probably the course of a year, that he would be right about things that we would talk about. He would go into depth about it, and then I would take it with me and look it up. And that led me to reading other books, and then it was sort of like the Scott Hahn experience. I think I’m going to have to become Catholic,” Leesa says, laughing.
Leesa says she came to believe that the Catholic Church was the true Church, something Holden already believed and that Ray and Raechel would come to believe as well.
“I just had these realizations that were just bawling moments of the Holy Spirit. It was like, ‘I have been duped. I have been so wrong,’” Leesa says. “The biggest thing for me was how, as a Baptist, there was no connection between the New Testament and the Old Testament made, and there are so many. We just kind of always focused on the New Testament, New Testament, New Testament, but it fulfilled the Old Testament in so many ways. That just kind of blew my mind and was just like, wow. I just feel like there had been a veil or something in what I was taught. There was something missing. This was a fullness that I didn't have before. So, I started telling Ray about it, and then we kind of brought Raechel along.”
“I just kept hearing them talk about it,” says Raechel. “I had been on the fence, and I had said a prayer and had been like, ‘I need an answer because I’m just not sure.’ I was at the gym, and a minute later, there was a newscast on the television about something about the Catholic Church. And I was like, hmm, I think that might have been my sign. That’s not a coincidence,” says Raechel.
Holden says he didn’t actively try to bring his family into the Catholic Church; he just tried to lead by example and to answer the questions his mother had.
“I would just give her the Catholic apologist response that I learned from all the dudes that I listened to on the Internet and just basically regurgitate it back to her and let her know that was really what I felt. Then, I would just go to Mass by myself every Sunday,” he says.
Holden, who wasn’t raised in any denomination, says it’s hard to put into words what becoming a member of the Catholic Church has meant to him.
“I can’t really describe it. It was just like, yes. I’ve looked for this my whole life,” he says.
Holden’s own journey to Catholicism began the summer before his senior year. He had been a student video coach for the UMaine hockey team, but that spring, the team’s head coach, Red Gendron, passed away unexpectedly. It led Holden to decide not to continue with the team and to also begin having discussions with a friend who had converted to Catholicism the year before. His quest for understanding then led him to do some online research.
“I was reading books and listening to podcasts like The Bible in a Year by Father Mike Schmitz. I didn’t even know it was Catholic when I first started listening to it. He would do his little explanations at the end of each episode, and I was, like, he’s making a lot of sense. I realized later that he was Catholic, and then I read this book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, and from there, it was kind of a snowball,” he says.
A history buff with a particular interest in Roman history, Holden says he was struck by how the demise of the Western Roman Empire occurred at a time when the Church produced some of its greatest teachers.
“You get St. Ambrose and St. Augustine and all the other early Church Fathers who were around at the end of the Roman Empire. The City of God is written at that time. So, my interest in Rome kind of segmented with that, and then I started learning about the early Church and how the early Church was Catholic,” he says.
Holden contacted a friend, Joseph Beale, a current seminarian for the diocese, who helped him begin the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). In 2022, Holden was baptized by Father Kyle Doustou at Holy Family Church in Old Town, with Beale serving as his godfather. And although his family wasn’t immediately moved by it, Holden describes it as “awesome.”
“It was really nice, and Father Kyle is the best. My godfather was the head altar server for the Mass, so he just walked around and put his hand on my shoulder. I loved it. All my friends were there, so it was great,” he says.
Holden says becoming Catholic has changed his life.
“I don’t even feel like I’m the same person that I was before I became Catholic. I feel like a completely different person,” he says. “My outlook on life is different. It’s hard to put into words.”
Leesa agrees.
“You look at things through a different lens I think, at least that’s true for me,” Leesa says.
Similar to his daughter Raechel’s experience, Ray says it was listening to Holden and Leesa that led him to explore Catholicism.
“Just listening to their passion and the actual work they put into it, and then, the Mary thing to me makes total sense, and then the true Church: it being the first Church. It just makes sense,” he says. “It’s like it’s real. It’s the truth. And that’s what resonates with me.”
Not having much of a faith background, Ray says he approached RCIA with a desire to learn more, but he was not 100% convinced. As he continued, however, he became sure that he was on the right path.
“Just going through that was amazing. Michelle [Valcourt] and her crew were awesome. Having Father Alex [Boucher] and Father Jack [Dickinson] be part of it, that was really important to me that they would take the time and come in and sit with us and explain stuff. We asked tough questions,” says Ray.
While Leesa and Ray participated in RCIA through St. John Paul II Parish in Scarborough, Raechel participated at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, while attending Bridgewater State University. Still, she describes a similarly rewarding experience.
“I learned so much,” she says. “They, Kevin [Geraghty] especially, had so much knowledge. Any misconceptions I had, I would ask him, and the way he would explain it to me, it was like, ‘Oh, OK, wow.’ He just had so much evidence to back it up.”
Raechel says her RCIA class had 14 participants, and it became like a community.
“I really liked my church down there as well. My best friend also was Catholic, and she was also my sponsor, so that was cool,” she says.
Even though she was living in a home with five other young women who were not churchgoers, Raechel began regularly attending Mass.
“Everyone would go out on a Saturday night and sleep in, and I would not. I’d get up early, and I’d go to church,” she says. “My boyfriend, John, is Catholic, so he would come with me to church, and I think that helped, too.”
Now, she says that attending Mass is a priority.
“I started loving going to Mass. I don’t want to miss it. I feel like I don’t have the Catholic guilt where some people say, ‘Oh, I feel like I have to go.’ I want to go,” she says. “I love the music, and I love it all.”
It’s a love her family shares.
“It’s our new normal, and I don’t see it ever changing. It’s something we all enjoy,” says Leesa.
“You feel so close to God,” says Ray, who travels a lot for work but still attends Mass no matter what state or country he is in.
“The fact that you can go anywhere in the world, go to a church, and they’re reading the same Scriptures, that’s so awesome to me,” says Leesa. “There’s a connection there, like a string of all the Catholics. It’s a oneness.”
“It just feels like I’m part of a community now,” says Ray. “You just feel like you are family.”
“It’s the fullness of faith,” says Holden. “That’s the easiest and best way to describe it."
