A Daughter of the Hebrews Turns to Jesus 2
Part 2: Booth. Second of a Series on my Conversation to Catholicism. You can read the series on my blog, Make Orwell Fiction Again, at johannaneuman.substack.com
Like many families, mine is a mix of races and religions.
My Jewish sister married a Catholic man, who already four children, all Christian. So they became grandchildren to Evelyn and Seymour, children to my sister. And soon, these four children married and had children — six so far. Thanks to my sister, they are all familiar with Jewish traditions. I think Hanukkah is their favorite holiday. What child wouldn’t like the flickering lights of the Menorah, the festive songs, the smell of potato latkes and of course a gift on all eight nights! To them, I am Aunt Jo.
At 38, I married an older man who already had two children and two grandsons who took to calling me Mama Jo. After the divorce, Stephen, 6 when I first met him, stayed close to me, and later he married Danna, born in China. Their two children share this heritage. Jeffrey’s two children brought still more diversity to our blended family — his daughter Bari married a Greek from Canada, his son Jay a Brazilian-American.
This happy confluence of family, faith and heritage is to me a blessing.
But in the fall of 2021, my niece Claire’s youngest child Booth, then six, was diagnosed with leukemia. At the time, he had a mop of blond curls and a fondness for fire trucks. On hearing the news, I burst into tears. I decided that if I wanted to pray for Booth, and I did, I should do it in his faith. I asked a Catholic friend, Alison, which saint to pray to — the Catholics had so many. She suggested I attend mass on All Saints Day, so I could pray to all of them. November 1, 2021 was the first time I walked in the door at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Delray Beach, Florida, to pray for Booth.
From the beginning, I loved the mass. The pageantry, the ceremony, the music, the readings — it was all familiar. Later I reasoned that Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish and that his church had imported several traditions of the Jewish religion, adding some new ones from the Last Supper. That day, I was charmed by the children’s theatrical roles, like actors in a school play. It was all new to me, but somehow it all felt familiar.
A year later — with Booth in the second of four years of chemotherapy and other treatments for childhood leukemia — I enrolled in RCIA classes — Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults — at St. Vincent’s Ferrer. Deacon Greg Osgood led us through readings in the Bible. Coming from a long line of Protestant clergy in New England, Deacon Greg had converted to Catholicism after marrying a Catholic girl. Later, after a career in business, he went into the seminary. I had no idea that a man who was married with two daughters could still become a Deacon. But it comforted me. He had lived among us, in the secular world, and had converted as we hoped to.
I don’t remember much about those early classes because shortly afterward, in November 2022, my beloved Jeffrey was diagnosed with MDS, a form of leukemia, and we began treatments at Sylvester Cancer Center in Miami. I told Deacon Greg that I had to drop out, that my husband needed me at his side for all the traumas to come. He said he understood, but asked me to keep him posted about how Jeffrey was doing. In the spring, when things turned dire for Jeffrey, I wrote to Deacon Greg. He knew we were Jewish, but it didn’t matter to him. He held a prayer service for Jeffrey at St. Vincent’s, and this touched me greatly. A group of strangers, who had never met Jeffrey or me, prayed for him. It is one of the things I most appreciate about the Catholics — they have prayer circles, which multiple the love, summoning all the saints and the Holy Trinity in the call for health. During the eight weeks that Jeffrey was hospitalized, I visited the hospital chapel and asked to speak to hospital chaplains.
Whenever I was away from the hospital, I attended mass in Delray Beach. During that summer, services were held in the St. Vincent School gym, because the chapel was undergoing a renovation. There was something intimate about the site — people sitting on bleachers, ducking basketball hoops, avoiding a water leak. I marveled at their loyalty, in summer, in a gymnasium, bringing their babies, persevering as Catholics. I cried a lot sitting in that gym. That’s where I came when Jeffrey was fighting to live, and when he was in hospice.
That June, after a proud fight and a risky blood transplant, Jeffrey died.
After Jeffrey died, I cried for six months. Every day. Buckets of tears. He was the love of my life. We had been together for 20 years. He was only 72, and I grieved the time stolen from us. I went to Mass every Sunday, and every Sunday I walked up for communion crossing my arms on opposite shoulders to signal to the priest or deacon or a nun at the head of the line that I was not eligible for the Eucharist. Instead, they offered me a blessing, and this was so poignant for me that I often cried.
After Jeffrey died, Deacon Greg told me the whole church staff was praying for Jeffrey’s soul, and for me. More tears. In July, I held a Celebration of Life for Jeffrey at our home in Delray Beach. Deacon Greg and the church publicist, Angelica Aguilera, now my godmother, came. I was touched. Booth was still fighting — there is a four-year course of chemo for young male leukemia patients. It gave me something to cheer.
That fall, after the big chapel reopened, I re-enrolled in RCIA classes. I still wasn’t sure of my faith, but I knew that St. Vincent’s brought me comfort, at a time when I needed the sense of being hugged, by Jeffrey’s spirit, or by community.
I struggled at first. I enjoyed Bishop Barron’s YouTube sessions on the Mass. I binge-watched Jordan Peterson’s 17-part series on Exodus, during which a round table of great minds sat around a table deconstructing every line in that book of Old Testament. So that’s what a Bat Mitzvah speech should sound like, I thought.
But I was still looking on from afar, not yet a believer. I accepted Jesus as a valiant character, someone who like Moses was leading his people to a new way of living, a new way of understanding the universe. I grasped early that while the God of the Old Testament was vengeful — banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, flooding the people of Nineveh, preaching an eye for an eye — Jesus, bringing the word of the God of the New Testament, was all about turning the other cheek, helping the poor and the hungry, the disabled and the discarded, living by love.
My problem was a struggle over believing in Jesus as a deity. As my father had told me when I was a young girl, we all have a bit of God in us, our conscience, but none of us is a God. In fact this is why the Jewish High Priests urged the crucifixion of Jesus, because he had claimed to be the Messiah. Here was the real leap of faith for me. James, a colleague in our class, suggested I read a little book, More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. The book framed the question this way — either Jesus was crazy, or lying, or who he said he was — the Son of God. I was charmed but not convinced.
Finally, in January of this year I asked Deacon Greg if I could study on my own. We all learn differently — some verbally, some visually. I have always loved the written word. So we commenced a private tutorial — I would read deeply, then come share my reactions and insights with him from time to time. Like his father, Jeffrey’s son Jay is in the blue collar trades, with the ability to distill into one pithy sentence the essence of a problem. When I told him of my plan, Jay looked dubious that reading would lead me to accept Lord Jesus. After all, he said, “Maybe a leap of faith is just a leap of faith.”
Or maybe it just needed time.
To be continued.
Such a beautiful tale of your journey and the path that brought you here!
I love how aware you are of yourself and analyzing why you are feeling and acting as you are. Then, you go a step further and convey your insights to others and do so with the ease of your storytelling.
—A fan