'Excited Catholic' shares her story of conversion

Williams Lake resident sought a relationship with God despite oppression and many trials

VANCOUVER

After years of knowing there was a God, but not being able to worship Him, convert Christine Mason might say she's entered the Promised Land.

Mason, who lives in Williams Lake, B.C., has a family history and conversion story that echoes the Old Testament.

Her mother, born in 1933, grew up in Egypt with her six sisters and parents. The Jewish family faced serious persecution during the Arab-Israeli wars.

"They had to go to shelters when there were air raids. They had to move several times," Mason said. "The Arabs hated the Jews, and they marked the doors of the houses with an X because they were going to burn them."

The Jewish family hid its identity. "They didn't practise their faith because they were worried about persecution."

Mason's mother and siblings attended public schools and got jobs when they were young teens to help support the family. When they fled Egypt in the 1950s, some family members landed in England, some in the United States, and some in Canada.

Mason's mother was in her early 20s when she arrived in Montreal. She met and married Mason's father, an agnostic. Her parents took Mason to Sunday school until about age 5 and never told her that her mother was Jewish.

"I wasn't raised going to church so I never had any formal religious upbringing other than whatever Bible stories I remembered from Sunday school." Despite this, "I always knew there was a God."

Once old enough to move out, Mason moved west. Her first husband was an atheist, and Mason felt oppressed by a man who wouldn't allow faith in the house.

"It was not a healthy relationship. I went along with anything he said. My faith was very private," she said. "He didn't want any religion in the house."

They divorced after 12 years of marriage, when he admitted he was homosexual. Many years later he died in a car accident.

Mason's thirst to know God grew stronger. She married a Catholic and they sometimes went to Mass together. Though she did not understand much of the Liturgy, she was often deeply moved.

"During that time, I would more often than not end up crying in Mass because I knew that God was speaking to me to give me strength, just in whatever the reading was for that day, to have hope and to carry on."

The pair faced many trials. Her husband, Paul, was in and out of court fighting to see his two children from a previous relationship, and it was trying for them and the children. He also was diagnosed with cancer and battled it for two years.

"When Paul was sick, I would pray. In his last days, he couldn't make it upstairs," so Mason would sleep on a couch downstairs next to him.

"I would lie there falling asleep, saying the Hail Mary and the Lord's Prayer and praying to God: I trust You. I trust You," she said. "That was my introduction to prayer in a more regular or formal way."

She also sought help from a priest, who became their spiritual support, bringing Paul Communion and answering questions about faith. After Paul died, Mason craved those deep conversations about God.

"We had not attended Mass regularly. He didn't teach me in those ways, but our faith was strong," she said. "I just starved for more information about Jesus and to know the Bible and to know His teachings and to learn apologetics."

Mason jumped into the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults with two feet after moving to Williams Lake. She had met and civilly married Gary, a Catholic, and wanted to be baptized and married in the Church.

"She already was, in a sense, Catholic in her heart," said Father Derrick Cameron, the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Williams Lake. He taught RCIA.

"She was just like a sponge. She just soaked it up," he said. "She has the personality that she's all in or all out, and she was definitely all in."

She was baptized and formally received into the Church at Easter in 2014. Since then Mason has been very active in her local Catholic Women's League and her parish's refugee sponsorship committee. She even changed her email address to "excited to be Catholic."

Mason also drives 40 minutes each way to attend Mass on weekdays and continues to deepen her faith. "I listen to tapes and CDs and webinars and I have constantly got something going to try and learn more."

She is learning the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, and recently, after finding out her mother was Jewish, she learned the Shema, a Jewish prayer taken from the book of Deuteronomy, in Hebrew.

"I love knowing it," especially with "the whole link to being a biological Jew."

"I love it. I love being that. I love being Catholic. I love knowing that I get to be with Jesus every day and every time I'm at Mass."

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