“I like to say that we attended the Church of Abbott and Costello, because that’s what we did on Sunday mornings — watch old comedies on television,” said Percy, 42, who will be baptized, confirmed and make her first holy Communion at the Easter Vigil Mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Highland Township.
Percy did have some exposure to Catholics and Catholicism over the years. “A couple of my best friends were Catholic, and I went to Mass with their families a few times when I spent the night at their houses,” she recounted.
And her brother Charlie went to St. Mary’s Preparatory in Orchard Lake for high school, because some of his friends went there. Likewise, one of the girls she grew up with went to Mercy High School in Farmington Hills, and Percy persuaded her parents to send her there, too.
And it wasn’t like she had rejected the idea of God: “I was very spiritual, but I didn’t go to church. I wanted to take what I liked, but leave the rest; I didn’t want to get pinned down — I needed to have my own way,” she recalled.
Later, as an adult, she became involved in a 12-step program, with its emphasis on acknowledging a “higher power,” and started attending services at a Unity Church (a small denomination that draws on the Bible for its teachings on positive thinking for health and personal development).
“My whole life I knew that God was there, and I would talk to God, but I didn’t know God was there for me — and that was not because of God, but because of me,” Percy said.
“I didn’t think God wouldn’t help me, but I didn’t think that I deserved to be helped. Because of that, I felt very alone and distressed most of the time,” she said.
Percy said about two years ago, when her son, Carl, was 5 years old, she decided she didn’t want him to feel the same way she did.
“I decided to ask the most well-adjusted person I knew, how did he get that way? Well, he was a Catholic and had been raised Catholic, and I asked him, ‘What did you get out of church, when you were going as a kid and following its rules and going through the sacraments?’
“He told me, ‘I knew God had my back.’ Well, that was the missing piece for me, and I didn’t want that to be missing for my son,” Percy said.
So she decided to start attending a Catholic church, and her brother and sister-in-law — who had started going to Church of the Holy Spirit — invited her to accompany them. She and Carl began going every Sunday.
“Through that, I truly believe I was touched by the Holy Spirit. I didn’t really know anything about the Holy Spirit before that, but it was like something just came on like a light — or more like a flame,” Percy said.
Before long, she was inquiring about becoming Catholic, and then began attending RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) classes.
And her son will be coming into the Church with her at the Easter Vigil. He’s a candidate, rather than a catechumen, because he had been baptized.
Percy said being at the cathedral for the Rite of Election ceremony was “wonderful.”
“It was awesome being there with so many people, and to know they were probably feeling what I was feeling — that I was connecting to what I had been missing all along.”
