Article by Phoenix writer Cristina Palmieri ’25:
On the first Sunday of March, I found myself everywhere but with God. I was organizing arrangements for the Senior Trip, stressing over college admission decisions I hadn’t even received yet, and any other thing that was on my mind. I piled clothes into my suitcase and daydreamed of what my college life would be like. Wearing whatever clothes I like, going where I wanted to when I wanted to, studying what I wanted to, or whatever else was on my college checklist. Most of all, I felt excited to not feel so trapped anymore. I wanted to shed the skin of my high school self and start anew somewhere else.
To clear my mind, I went with my friend to the eleven o’clock Mass at St. Patrick’s of Glen Cove. On my way up the hill that the church sits on, I saw many familiar faces. This isn’t a shock— as everybody I know in my town goes to either St. Patrick’s or St. Rocco’s— but seeing the people who have surrounded me my entire life all going to the same place was a comfort.
I went through the usual motions of the Mass until it came time for the Homily. Father Gabriel called all the children to the front of the church. About thirty kids walked up to the front and sat at the priest’s feet. Father Gabriel sat among the children and directed his Homily to them. He looked at them with such love and patience while they looked back in awe. In this scene of a priest so gently talking to his kids, I could see him emulating Christ.
It was at this moment I realized that all of these kids knew something that I had forgotten. This rush I had been chasing of becoming an adult buried my innocent love for my faith. The curiosity, the sweetness, the love— I forgot how it was to be first introduced to God. Suddenly, I was filled with nostalgia and wanted to go back to that innocence.
Growing up is not all that there is to life. We were not created just to get to the end, but to enjoy every step of the way. There is something so valuable about a childhood view of the world filled with wonder that is forgotten in the rush of adult life. I am not even a legal adult yet and I’ve already lost that perspective. My hope had been replaced with cynicism, my faith with skepticism. After the search for what had been missing from my faith life, I knew I had finally found it.
With an extremely ordinary Ordinary Time behind me and the season of Lent ahead of me, I decided I’d turn over a new leaf. I would search for God as that father I once saw Him as. I left Mass with a revived childlike twinkle in my eye that day, ready to discover the version of myself that I had lost.
