Most Catholics I know have an interesting story to tell
about their confirmation. The most
memorable tend to involve getting publicly stumped/ embarrassed by the
Archbishop. It really doesn’t matter how
many times you’ve memorized the 7 sacraments, when you’re standing in front of
a large crowd, and the man with the goofy hat is staring at you expectantly,
you tend to forget everything.
My personal story has to do with what I thought was the most
stressful part of receiving the sacrament: picking a confirmation saint. It’s such a toss up: do you go with the saint
that inspires you the most (what you’re supposed to do)? Or do you go with saint that has the
prettiest name (give my 8th grade self a break, alright?)…after all,
this will be announced in front of EVERYONE.
After much mental debating, I decided to start looking and hopefully
one would speak to me. It was really
important to me that whatever saint I picked, she would become my favorite. Despite
my lame jokes, I can be fairly intense at times, and this was no exception.
Perfectionism much?
I finally came across St. Juliana Falconieri in a small book
of saints that my parents had. Her story
caught my eye when I read something about her extreme modesty, to the point of
never looking upon a man or mirror in her life.
I think this spoke to hormonally charged 8th grade Katie, who
thought boys were pretty cute and was ALWAYS worried about how she looked. St. Juliana’s name wasn’t half bad either- success!
And the decision was made- St. Juliana would herein be my favorite saint.
A couple of years after I got confirmed, there began to be
some trouble in paradise. It started to
eat at me that I hadn’t picked St. Therese of Lisieux instead. Her story and practical holiness really spoke
to me, and she was, to my horror, quickly becoming my new favorite saint.
Not only that, but after I found St. Juliana in my parent’s
book, I couldn’t find her anywhere else (minus maybe 2 short articles on the
internet). Every time there is a stack
of saint cards, I look for her. Whenever
I pick up a book of saints, I check for her name in the index. And so on, and so on. But I have NEVER found
her. This only led me to further doubt
my original choice, thinking “Great, did I pick a fake saint?” Awesome.
The only way I could reconcile these doubts in my head was
to tell myself “there is a reason I chose St. Juliana. It’s not clear now, but it
will be eventually, whether it be on earth or when I meet her in Heaven.” Until then, it’s not a crisis to find a
couple different role models to follow into Heaven (there’s more than one way
to get there ?!!), and putting this stupid requirement of only having one
favorite saint is more than 8th grade kinds of stupid.
Fast forward to August of 2011. Matt and I had just moved into our urban
apartment in downtown Denver, and were looking for the closest parish to join. We looked up a list of Catholic churches, and
to our great surprise, there was a parish (which is now our parish) named “Our Lady of Mount
Carmel.” Matt and I just so happened to
have gotten married on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and
therefore, we chose her to be the patron saint of our marriage. It was fate. We planned to go to that parish
the following Sunday.
I almost started laughing in disbelief when I went inside this
beautiful Italian church for the first time.
There, on the ceiling of this church, were paintings of about 8 saints. I’ll give you one guess as to who one of these
saints was… Indeed. My “fake” confirmation saint, dearest Juliana, was perched
atop the ceiling in all her pure piety.
Up until this point, I had never even seen a picture/ depiction of
her. It took me a few months later to realize that one of the statues in the front of the church was her as well. Amazing!
 |
| The painting on the ceiling of our parish, and the statue. Ain’t she loverly? |
I just couldn’t believe it.
Besides this strong frantic urge to let Juliana know that I was sorry
for doubting her capabilities of being confirmation saint material, I was also
completely overwhelmed by the implications of this.
Here I am... in Denver... married to Matt. It all happened so quickly, that sometimes I
pinch myself and wonder how I got here.
Seeing St. Juliana on the ceiling and in the statue was so incredible in that it displayed
God’s hand in absolutely all aspects of my life. We wouldn’t have visited this church in the
first place if it wasn’t titled “Our Lady of Mount Carmel.” I wouldn’t have cared about the title if I
hadn’t gotten married to Matt on Our Lady’s feast day. The day of the wedding would have been
irrelevant if I hadn’t met Matt, and so on and so forth. And after all of this, I am RIGHT where God desires me to be. Good.to.know.
I’m struck by the ways in which my Father in Heaven is so
intimately guiding me. And not only
that, but how mysteriously beautiful is it that He allows for participation of the entire Body of Christ to join in
the rest of the Body’s salvation? In this particular case, I have every confidence that St.
Juliana has been watching over me, praying along with me for my intentions, and
working in Heaven to get me there, too.
Looking back on how frantic my 8th
grade self was to find the perfect saint, I think I can now place that sense of
importance I put on the matter. I don’t
think we can place too fine a point on how much of a role the saints play in
the salvation of souls. If God allows for the saints to help those on earth, and has this "great cloud of witnesses" cheering us on, why wouldn't we lean on them? Why wouldn't we ask the holiest and most purified of souls for their prayers? And why wouldn't we look to them to teach us how to get to Heaven, the ultimate goal?
Without a doubt, Juliana is high on my list of souls I hope
to greet in Heaven one day, simply so I can thank my dear sister for blessing
me as my confirmation saint and for helping me get to Heaven. St. Juliana, pray for us.
O faithful bride of Jesus and humble servant of Mary, Saint Juliana, thou who by practicing the most heroic virtues, especially the virtue of penance and the love of Jesus in His Sacrament didst arrive at the highest peak of Christian perfection and didst merit to be fed miraculously with the Bread of Angels in thy last agony; obtain for me the grace to live a holy life in the exercise of every Christian duty and to be able to receive at the moment of death the comfort of the holy Sacraments in order to come with thee to the blessed happiness of heaven. Amen
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