I grew up in a devout Christian home church. We studied the Bible, prayed together, sang songs to Our Lord, and invited people into our home for meals and fellowship. All of this was to imitate my dad’s vision of the early church: small home fellowships dedicated to the practice of the charismatic gifts. Simply put, the goal my parents laid out for my siblings and me was to pray, be good to the people around us, and move where the Holy Spirit was leading Christians.

Paired with this, we were taught about what the church wasn’t supposed to be; I was always told the usual story of Catholics and how they worship Mary and don’t have the true gospel. My parents made sure to remind me of my great-grandpa, who grew up Catholic but didn’t meet Jesus until his deathbed. There were more stories, of course, but these stuck with me the most as I grew up.

The image of Catholicism was almost airtight, with only a couple of exceptions. Like most Protestants of a Calvinist orientation, my parents had a deep love for St. Augustine. And, like many Protestants of a Charismatic disposition, they loved Brother Lawrence. My dad introduced me to “The Practice of the Presence of God” because he saw Brother Lawrence’s discipline as useful for all Christians in learning to follow the command to pray at all times and have a personal relationship with Jesus. From that point on, the Carmelite lay-brother became my spiritual father.

The radical focus on the invisible side of a universal Church left my devotion to Christ sinking as I went to college. I went with a disdain for what my parents called “traditional church.” This has nothing to do with liturgy or vestments—though they do fall in the category—but every church that has only one person who speaks in a Sunday morning service. Being at school, though, meant finding friends and the need for a new church.

For almost six years, I followed Brother Lawrence and nothing changed about that in college. When trying to overcome spiritual dry spells and habitual sins, he was my antidote of choice. It wasn’t until I read him again at the end of my freshman year of college, however, that I learned that his real devotion resided with Our Lady and the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. This started a long personal study of Catholic belief that would span from the summer after my first year in college until Easter of my third year.

That summer, I decided, out of love for Brother Lawrence, to learn about his chosen devotional practices from his teachers: the Carmelites. People like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Therese of Lisieux opened my eyes to a whole world of prayer I’d never experienced. Especially with Therese, I felt like I had stumbled into a gold mine!

The problem was that Therese, as holy and beautiful as her life was, claimed Mary as her Mother. If Scripture is true when it says that good fruits come from good trees, something had to be going on with Marian devotion. My parents told me that millions of Rosaries have been prayed and never been answered. They told me that prayers to Mary were idolatrous. But I read a story of St. Therese going to a statue of Our Lady after the death of her own mother and I wept.

St. Therese had all the same problems as Brother Lawrence. On the surface, it might seem reasonable for Protestants and Catholics to look at one another and see a lot of similarities. If you look for even a moment longer, though, the anti-Catholic pundits are right. Mary is a feature of the Catholic faith, not just a fun side thing. Either Brother Lawrence and St. Therese were seriously wrong and idolatrous, or they were examples of living the true faith; one doesn’t get prayer totally right and “accidentally” have a child-like devotion to the Mother of God. If I was to follow Brother Lawrence, then I needed to have devotion to Mary.

By the end of the summer, my holy Carmelite teachers convinced me of the importance of practices like the Rosary. It’s a logical conclusion of the call in scripture to pray without ceasing. The only problem was that I didn’t have a way to bring myself to the understanding that Mary was truly my Mother.

Before school started back up, I got a rosary from an antique store near my home. I prayed the Jesus prayer with it, making sure to add one or two Hail Marys at the beginning. Praying to Mary was not something that grew exponentially in me. I sat at one or two Hail Marys a day for quite a while, to get into the presence of God.

On many nights, I would say a couple of Hail Marys and white-knuckle my rosary until I fell asleep, for fear of falling into my old, habitual sins. Our Lady became the image of chastity and freedom from sin before I was convinced of Her Immaculate Conception. This is because Mary, as Mother of God, is Mother of the Church, and she will reveal herself as such when there is any movement toward Her. I had been caught looking at pornography by my parents when I was in middle school and picked it up again in high school. There were periods of time when I would pray to Jesus that He would save me from it, and then I would amend my life for a little while. Then I would return to my vice. I remember finding a lot of peace when I got to sit and meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary instead of worrying about everything else. It became the focal point of my devotional life before I was even comfortable with all of the dogmas of Our Lady.

I knew that I needed more formation in devotion to the Rosary, though, so I picked up a copy of St. Louis de Montfort’s “Secret of the Rosary.” He described Marian apparitions, the love that Our Lady has for sinners, the fruits of meditating on the life of Christ, and the way that the Christian life needs to be a walk with Christ to the cross every day.

The Rosary became the greatest expression of the gospel that I had ever seen. I started to rely on Mary, and she began to work in my life. I learned of Her purity and Her holiness. She brought me through the hard process of leaving sin. She truly became my Mother during my sophomore year of college.

Throughout, my devotion to Our Lady grew. I found myself defending her against things that my Protestant friends would say about her. This only encouraged me to learn more of her. There was, in all of this, only a brief window of time when I drew away from her. I read a poem by George Herbert, who acknowledged the things I knew, and said they were a distraction from the work of God. However, I gave up that idea when I remembered the consolation she’d given her Son’s Little Flower, and how she had brought me to a desire for virtue and a disdain for my sin.

I met the friend who would be my sponsor in my confirmation that year as well. We would talk, and he would try to convince me of the truths of the Catholic faith, but mostly he would pray with me. In all the years of girl trouble, which every teenage boy and young man deals with, this friend gave me the best advice: if you want to know how to love well, to become a man and a good husband, love the Virgin Mary and she will shape you.

As that year came to a close, I started dating the girl who would become my wife. Very early on, we started talking about things connected to the faith, and I told her everything I believed about the Virgin. At this point, I stood loosely with the Church on all the dogmas and was convinced that my kids were going to be raised praying the Rosary. After seeing Mary as Mother of God, I knew that I needed her to be my Mother. I needed her in my home, and it was then that she desired to bring me to the home prepared by her Son.

Mary wants her children to be in the Church that reflects her own purity and preservation. I was unconvinced of the importance of the Pope for people outside of Rome until reading St. Bede’s account of the history of the English Church. I expected to become closer in communion with the Anglican church I was attending. What I found, instead, was a eulogy for Pope St. Gregory the Great. Pope Gregory had brought the faith to England, and it was said that all English Christians after him bear the seal of his apostleship. Even in leaving the Church, the English reformers who had taught me something of the love of Christ could not undo this fact. This turned my heart completely toward the Catholic Church. By Easter of my third year in college, I had made up my mind that there would be no other.

The best way of finishing the story, I think, is by saying that Our Lady had brought us to Christ that we might receive Him in the Sacraments. After all, Mary is the Mother of the Eucharist! In November of 2022, on All Saints’ Day, I was brought into the Church with my (now) wife and one of my best friends. We were confirmed and received our first Eucharist. Eight months later, my wife and I got married. Then, in May of this year, our first son was born, baptized, and consecrated to Our Lady. And in all of this, the hymn we sung was “Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All.” Mary preserved us through all of this, that we might learn to love her Son more and more. Therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.