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Faith: the greatest unsolved mystery

Nov. 21, 2012

Father Bryan Stitt
Diocesan Vocation Director

Do you remember the show that ran in the late 80’s and through the 90’s called “Unsolved Mysteries?”  It was hosted by a man with a chilling voice named Robert Stack. 

Too many nights in my childhood, I tried to go to bed after Stack left me scared to even close my eyes. 
Nevertheless it was an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” that was a turning point in my faith life.  But before we get to that, you need a little more of the background.

When I was in my senior year of high school, I had started questioning my faith.  I had grown-up Catholic.  I went to Mass with my family on Sundays.  I was educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph at St. Mary’s in Ticonderoga, and by all accounts I appeared to be a “good Catholic boy.” 

But during my days in public high school, I started connecting with people whose faith and morals were far different from how I was raised.  Case in point was one of my favorite teachers.  He didn’t teach from the book, and he didn’t teach to the test.  He didn’t need to!  He knew the material frontwards and backwards.  He loved his work so much, that he inspired us to know it and love it as well.  Through the course of my classes with him, I discovered that he was an atheist.  What’s more, he was an atheist who was a former Catholic.  What’s more, he was an atheist, who was a former Catholic, who had studied philosophy and knew things like St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for God’s existence.  I wondered how someone so smart and inspiring could not continue to follow the Catholic faith in which he had been raised. And more to the point, since I wanted to be smart and inspiring like him, I wondered if I shouldn’t believe any more either! 

Thus I began to question everything I had ever been taught about faith, morals, and religion.  That’s when Robert Stack (or more accurately the Holy Spirit) brought an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” into my family’s living room.  The subject matter for the day was not a murder case or a prison break.  Instead that night’s show was on the mystery of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I watched as the program related the story of a beautiful woman appearing to Juan Diego near Mexico City in the sixteenth century.  Then they showed how Juan Diego was asked to collect roses in his cloak as a sign for the bishop from the Blessed Mother.  I saw that when Juan Diego unfurled his cloak, he revealed not only the roses but also that miraculous image of the Virgin Mother upon the cloak.  And most important to my mind hungry for the truth of empirical and scientific data, I learned that scientists were unable to explain the creation of the image. 

I was dumbfounded.  This show that normally ran fear down my spine just gave a shot of adrenaline to my soul.  I started doing the necessary mental gymnastics: “If this is true, then there is something to Mary.” “If Mary is true, then there must be something to Jesus.” “If Jesus is true, then God’s existence, the Eucharist, the Church…It only makes sense that they are all true as well!”

I wish I could tell you that from that moment I never looked back.  But that wouldn’t be accurate.  There was more questioning; there was more searching; and there was and still are times of darkness.  But I do know that questioning my faith was good because by the grace of God, it led me to seek truth. 

My senior year inspiration from the most unlikely of sources helped me realize that my faith was not irrational, and that I would only find happiness if I pursued Truth throughout my life.  

May I conclude with one more reference to pop-culture? Comic book junkies know that Superman’s costume was of a special material that stretched as he grew.  The outfit he wore to fight for truth, justice, and the American way was the same costume that Ma Kent made for him when he was a boy - but it obviously fit him and his life in a different way as a man. 

My faith has likewise grown with me over the years.  As I have developed intellectually, physically, and emotionally over the years my faith-life has also had to develop.  But it is still the very same faith that was given when I was initiated into the Church.  And with all due respect to the Man of Steel, my faith is even more important to my identity than Superman’s red cape was to him. It may be an unsolved mystery, but it is the way that my life makes sense.

Father Bryan Stitt,  pictured with his niece Grace Cruess.

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