Touched by faith: a life-changing discovery
Christians around the world anticipate the coming of Easter, but an Auburn couple says they are so looking forward to it that they are counting down the days.
“We are so excited. We’re ticking down the clock,” says Karrisah Stewart.
At the Easter Vigil, Karissah and her husband, Joseph, will be baptized and receive the sacraments of confirmation and first Eucharist at the Basilica of Ss. Peter & Paul in Lewiston. Their sons, three-year-old Benjamin and seven-month-old Abraham, will be baptized soon after that.
“We were living our lives with a huge chunk of it missing, and we didn’t even know it. Now that we have found this, I feel like it has made us whole,” says Joseph. “It has provided us with meaning, purpose, and direction.”
“It just feels right,” says Karissah. “The more we learn about the Catholic faith, the further in love with it we fall.”
Karissah and Joseph, who have been married three years, describe their journeys to the Catholic faith as parallel paths that eventually merged.
For Karissah, who had some exposure to Catholicism growing up, it began last summer when she says a powerful feeling came over her.
“I just said to Joe, ‘I don’t know why, but I have this overwhelming feeling that we need to get everybody baptized. We need to be baptized,’” says Karissah. “It was pretty powerful, and I was like, I shouldn’t ignore that because it was just out of the blue. There was nothing that I was reading beforehand that made me feel that way.”
Karissah says they didn’t discuss it much further, but a short time later, Joseph, whose parents are Protestant, began doing some online research.
“I listened to podcasts, and some of the podcasts that I listened to had some Catholic priests on them that had very interesting stories. I started to be exposed to stories of some near-death experiences and stories of people who come from the scientific community who really, through their research, began to uncover that the Catholic faith really, truly has merit,” says Joseph. “I’m an engineer by trade, so hearing that influence really started to pique my curiosity.”
It led Joseph to begin reading Scripture.
“I started with Proverbs, reading one a day and really learning that, wow, there’s wisdom in here,” he says. “I was very intrigued that this stuff had been written thousands of years ago, and yet, the wisdom that was contained within it was still very valuable to me and very applicable to modern day.”
He shared his thoughts with Karissah.
“It was kind of interesting in that we came to the faith at the exact same time, but even though we are married, we each kind of had our own separate parallel path that we were going down. She had this strong calling in her heart, and I was being exposed to this other stuff and would tell her the summaries and the highlights of it,” Joseph says.
Joseph says they initially took a
do-it-ourselves approach, but after seeing a video about baptism, he joined Karissah in believing that was what they needed to do.
“It was a Catholic priest, and he was speaking on, basically, how baptism is earmarking yourself for God,” Joseph says. “That was really powerful to me because I look at Benjamin and Abraham as children of God. So, at that moment, it really sank in for me. OK, this truly carries a lot of weight. It’s not just a symbolic thing.”
The couple began researching area churches and discovered that Prince of Peace Parish holds inquiry nights on Wednesdays at Holy Family Church in Lewiston. Although a little nervous about it, they decided to attend.
“No matter how much you believe, there is always that little leap of faith that you have to take, and I think that going on that Wednesday night was our little leap of faith. We were like, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s just do it,’” says Joseph. “I was partially worried that inquiry night was going to be pushy, like force this on us and stuff, but it was totally the opposite.”
The couple attended several inquiry nights, watched Mass online, and then began attending Mass.
“We began attending in person, and we were like, ‘OK, this is it. This is good.’ And we never really looked back,” says Joseph.
“We want to get into it more. We’re focused on knowing more about the saints, knowing more about Mother Mary,” says Karissah. “I didn’t know a lot of that stuff, and now that I do, I can’t look back. There’s no way. What I know now, I couldn’t go back.”
The couple began meeting with Tyler Nadeau, the parish’s director of evangelization and catechesis, on Sundays before Mass at the basilica.
“We would read the Gospel reading for that day and reflect on that together and say a prayer, and then he would just be there to answer any questions,” says Joseph.
That led Karissah and Joseph to participate in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA), an educational and discernment process through which the Church welcomes new members.
“Learning everything now as an adult and being exposed to it for the first time as an adult, you see it through a different lens than someone who has been raised Catholic. So that’s been a really profound experience,” says Joseph. “Having said that, everybody has gone through very tough times, and we are not excluded, and you can’t help but look back and go, ‘How would things have been different maybe if I had been exposed to it earlier?’ Then, on the flip side, I also feel that maybe we’re meant to go through this journey together.”
To help Joseph and Karissah on their journey, Tyler reached out to another young couple already active in the parish, Jonathan and Emily Carter from Auburn. The Carters also have young children. In fact, their son Benedict and the Stewarts’ son Benjamin were born just one week apart.
“Jonathan and Emily are great. I go to the library every Wednesday with Benjamin and Abraham, and she is there, and then, on Friday, she has a moms’ group,” says Karissah. “All our kids play together, and it’s just nice. It’s nice to have familiar people in faith who are doing the same thing for their children that you’re doing. They give us guidance when we have questions, but it’s also like a friendship is forming.”
“It’s very relational,” says Jonathan. “It’s all about just building up a relationship and then getting to know them, being some people to accompany them on their journey, not to teach them per se.”
Emily and Jonathan emphasize that they, too, are still journeying and admit they were a little wary at first, not wishing to be held up as the model Catholic family.
“I was nervous about that, but it doesn’t feel that way,” says Emily. “We’ve had them over a couple times for dinner and to hang out, which has been nice to just try to get to know them. And then I started a moms’ group with some other Catholic moms, so Karissah has been coming to that to start to kind of introduce her to other people. And Jonathan had Joe over when he did a guys’ night, so just kind of trying to help them meet people because it can be overwhelming coming to this. You know, the basilica is a huge church with lots of people.”
“We’re just trying to help them integrate and meet the community,” says Jonathan.
Emily and Jonathan say that’s something they sought to do when they moved to Auburn from southern Maine three years ago and joined Prince of Peace Parish.
“Part of it comes down to the difficulty of the secular world that we live in and what that presents when you are looking to raise a family. The role models and the friendships that we want our children to develop, we want those to be quality, Catholic role models and friendships,” says Jonathan. “We believe that the Catholic faith is the true faith. It’s the truth, and it’s the fullness of the truth, and if you believe that, you have to live that, right? It can’t be any other way.”
Emily and Jonathan say they have tried to share with Karissah and Joseph some ways to incorporate faith into their home lives.
“[Karissah] and I have talked a lot about what I do with the kids and books and starting to do family prayer and things like that,” says Emily. “A lot of what they’re getting in classes is amazing, you know the truth of our faith, but it has to connect to what they’re doing at home.”
Thanks to meeting Jonathan and Emily and other people at the parish, Karissah says she now feels like she has a circle of faith around her.
“To have people in faith who are with us as friends has been so rewarding,” she says. “I feel like I found such a strong community.”
Although their journey is by no means complete, Karissah and Joseph say it has already made a significant difference in their lives.
“It’s touched our lives in every way,” says Joseph. “From a family standpoint, it has improved our mental health. It has improved our marriage, our relationship. It’s improved our relationship with our children. It’s given us a better sense of direction for how we want to raise our children. It’s given us a stronger sense of direction for our future goals. It’s allowed us to identify what we need to sacrifice and how we need to change today to live better for tomorrow.”
“I agree with Joe,” says Karissah. “I don’t want to say it’s a magic pill, but it has helped my mental health. It helped with any kind of struggles that I’ve had, any kind of trauma. Anything that I have felt like I’ve done wrong, I pray on it because I know someone is listening. God is listening. Jesus Christ is listening. Mary is listening.”
“It really has changed our lives,” says Joseph. “I don’t feel like I look at the world the same way anymore.”
