The Religion of My Childhood

I grew up in a casual Catholic family with a younger brother and an older sister. We all went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 8th grade. But as a child I never really paid much attention to all the rituals and beliefs. I remember being taught certain things to memorize, like the seven deadly sins, the seven virtues, etc., but I never really gave any weight to them - just memorized words. I do remember even at a very young age feeling that out of respect I should do what was expected during mass. So I did all the things - sang the songs, responded when we were supposed to respond, went up for communion, etc. More than anything I think I was doing those things out of respect. Generally during mass, while someone was talking I would zone out. None of it meant anything to me, save one thing. When they would talk about Jesus's life I would be interested. The man seemed very interesting to me. I didn't want to hear what other people thought about him, or what other people thought about what he said; I wanted to here about what he actually did and said in his life.

Sometime around the age of 10 I was in Movie Gallery with the whole family after eating chinese. My parents were letting us choose whatever movie we wanted. After walking around for a while I went to my dad with Franco Zeffirelli's masterpiece Jesus of Nazareth. Of course this was back in the day of VHS, so the six-hour installment was on, I think, 3 tapes... which I carried up to him. My dad kind of smiled and looked amused, but I don't think anything surprised either of my parents much at this point. So he rented it for me.

I ended up watching the entire six-hour mini-series by myself. I remember this feeling of thinking how awesome Jesus was. I felt like he was everything a man should be. I looked at him in reverence like he was the cool older brother. He wasn't afraid, but he wasn't proud either. He was strong, but not hard. He was confident, but not arrogant. He was gentle, but not weak. He was the perfect embodiment of what real manliness was about - an inner strength unmatched in all of the world, a strength that was untouchable by anything on earth. No man or beast could truly injure this man. Even on the way to the cross, having been abused beyond anything we can imagine, even then, he still held all the power. As mankind thought they were winning, they were in fact only making fools of themselves at the expense of someone who did nothing wrong to them. And in not raising a hand against them, he overcame them. Even in crying out to God while on the cross, Jesus still was all the man anyone could ever be.

Through most of those younger years, I would model myself after this Jesus of Nazareth, and I would put all my problems on his shoulders, knowing that he would hear me and help me, and hoping somewhere in there that he would one day make a real man out of me too.

I remember at some point in middle school when my friends started this thing where they'd punch each other in the chest or on the shoulder for no reason. And the person who was hit would of course immediately hit back, but when someone would hit me I wouldn't even have the urge to respond. It seemed just as natural to me to do nothing. It wasn't something fained; I just didn't feel the need to respond in any way.

Of course, 8th grade came, and so did the hormones. I started sagging my pants very low, below my navel rather than above. I started wearing boxers instead of briefs. I started rebelling. And I began hitting back. The conviction was still there - the faith, the reverence, the brotherhood. But the hormones were coming strong. I used Saint Augustine's story to justify to myself the rebellion. He was bad until a later age when he gave himself back to spiritual purposes, why couldn't I be bad until a later age then?