Becoming Catholic Like Anticipating Christmas, Soldier Says
By Terry McGuire
TACOMA, Wash.-- As she prepares to enter the church on Easter at Sacred Heart Church in Tacoma, Wash., Jessica Monique Olivas feels like a child during Advent.
It's like anticipating Christmas, said the 21.year.old solider stationed at nearby Fort Lewis. "You're anxious, and you can't wait."
Her baptism will conclude a journey that began surreptitiously when she was a girl growing up in her native Tucson, Ariz.
Though her mother was raised Catholic and had gone through the Catholic school system in Mexico, her father belonged to a Pentecostal denomination and didn't want his family to have anything to do with the Catholic Church, Olivas said.
But on special occasions .. such as Easter or Palm Sunday .. she'd slip off to Mass with her grandmother.
"It wasn't so much about being with her, because I was with my grandmother every weekend or during the week," Olivas said. "It was just something about being in the churches. I can't really describe it. It was a presence. I just felt something calling me to be there."
Olivas tried as a girl to adapt to her father's church, "but it never really clicked." She'd attend the services at his insistence but would always feel uncomfortable and out of place.
"They were speaking things (in tongues) and I couldn't understand it. It was like, 'I can't hear what you're hearing,'" she recalled.
She said her father once grounded her for wearing a shirt borrowed from a friend that bore the likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Another time he yelled when she and her aunt made the sign of the cross after watching a religious movie on TV. "He said, 'You just can't do that.'"
Freedom to pursue the religion of her choice came when she turned 18 and enlisted in the Army. Korea was her first duty station. Right next door to her barracks stood a base chapel.
"I started going to daily Mass, and then I started going to Sunday Mass," she said. The Catholic chaplain invited her to the Monday night scripture study where they'd go over the previous Sunday's readings. She joined a group of soldiers who would spend every other Saturday traveling to the mountains to help the local Catholic community build their church.
She later married a fellow soldier, Juan, and they began attending the Spanish.language Masses at Sacred Heart when they were assigned to Fort Lewis. She felt welcomed in the community.
"One day after Mass, I talked to Father Vincent (Pastro, the pastor) and told him I wanted to be a Catholic, and he told me about the RCIA program," Olivas said.
The program was already under way, so Olivas had to wait a year. In the interim, she was deployed to Iraq, where she drove a truck transporting ammunition and supplies from Kuwait to Iraq. After a month, however, respiratory problems, possibly caused by a sand.related bacteria, forced her early return to the states.
She began in the RCIA program last September, her husband accompanying her to all the Tuesday night classes that he could.
"It's like a whole refresher course for me," said Juan, 23.
The RCIA has been refreshing for Jessica, too. She's now able to put substance behind those devotions and customs she witnessed as a girl, such as learning how to pray the rosary, and learning the liturgical seasons and their meanings.
She senses now why her grandmother and great.grandmother were so strong in their Catholic faith. The latter suffered the loss of her husband and oldest son in the span of two days.
"Her faith has really pulled her through a lot of things," Olivas said, "and I've always admired that about her."
Reflecting on her own childhood, Olivas remembers how tough it was for her parents not to share the same faith. The two are no longer together, she said, and her mother, who's coming from the Southwest for Olivas' baptism, has returned to the Catholic faith.
The fact that she and Juan share the same faith "has made our marriage so much easier," Olivas said. "It helps having God more in our house."
As for their future children, Olivas looks forward to the day when she can tell them about signing the Book of the Elect . as she did last month with Seattle Archbishop Alexander J. Brunett at St. James Cathedral in Seattle.
"That was a nice (moment)," she said. "I felt like I was just that much closer."
She hopes she can even show her kids her name in the book and describe the feeling. "It just felt like something I've been waiting for, for a long time."
Terry McGuire writes for
The Catholic Northwest Progress in Seattle.