Its Yellowed Pages Speak from Years Ago
I wasn’t looking for it.
It turned up the way old things often do—quietly, without announcement. A small catechism that once belonged to my father. Its cover was worn thin, the edges softened by time and hands. A child’s pencil doodle on the inside cover.
The pages had that particular yellow discolor acquired only after decades of being used, or just sitting on a shelf somewhere.
I held it for a moment.
Why did this matter so much to him?
Why does it matter to me now?
My initial emotional response was nostalgia mixed with distance. It was like picking up a fallen leaf in late autumn. Long separated from the tree, yet still bearing its pattern. Still telling a story.
When I was young, I would have dismissed this book without hesitation. Christianity itself struck me as foolish, old-fashioned, a relic from a world that had moved on. Faith, I believed, was a limitation—a set of rules designed to hem in joy, to restrain curiosity, to keep life small.
“That’s for young children and old people,” my younger voice would have said. “Irrelevant to a full life.”
Nothing to Get Dressed Up For
Freedom, as I understood it then, meant few boundaries. No fences. No narrow paths. Just open space and motion. I wanted to run downhill fast and call it flight.
Christianity felt like a fence I was meant to climb over, not a shelter I was meant to enter.
But slowly the façade began to crumble.
I remember one Sunday in college, eating an early brunch in the cafeteria. A small group of students entered together, walking in a line. Some of the girls wore dresses. One guy sported a long dark tie…all of it was a stark contrast to the casual jeans and t-shirt attire of most students, including me.
Without saying a word, they had broken the quiet rhythm of the morning. It was obvious where they had come from at this Catholic college: morning Mass. Although a Catholic, I had not been attending Mass.
I watched them pass by and a thought surfaced: I have nothing to get dressed up for.
In fact, my days had begun to blur together. Sunday was no different from any other day. There was no celebration to mark the week, no moment that lifted one day above the rest.
I now know that the thought hadn’t originated with me.
Somewhere deep, beyond intention or argument, a seed had been planted.
A Patient Teacher
Aging, as it turns out, is a patient teacher. It doesn’t argue. It simply keeps showing up.
With the passing of years, any vain pursuits in life that once seemed important slowly lose their urgency. New ones take their place—not louder, but authentic.
What is most important?
What am I becoming?
Like winter revealing the true shape of trees, age strips away some of the illusions. Motion without direction no longer feels cool. The wayward journey gives way to emptiness.
When faith found me again, it didn’t arrive with drama. No thunder, no sudden clarity. It came quietly, almost shyly, as recognition.
Christianity isn’t what I thought it was.
I began to see that the faith wasn’t primarily about rules. It was about union with persons, and with the Supreme Being. Not control, but companionship. Not restriction, but truth.
It was like realizing that the river I had resisted was there all along, flowing beneath the ice, waiting for the thaw.
And then there was friendship.
Not just friendship with God—though that alone would have been enough—but friendship with others, made possible by something shared, drawn from the “living water” that Jesus spoke of when talking with the woman at the well.
Years ago, while visiting the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, I paused amidst its polished marble walls and towering mosaics. In a small chapel within the building was an old woman, calmly sitting in the pew. She was staring at a stack of holy cards held in her wrinkled hands. She flipped the cards slowly, one by one, no doubt silently saying the prayer on each card.
The thought occurred to me, “that is true connection.”
That was a stark contrast with my attitude for years about the old ladies, hunched over, coming to church every week, or even every day. It dawned on me that they are the ones, with their prayers, keeping our crazy world in balance.
Belonging More
What if faith isn’t about just believing, but being drawn toward the giver of all good things?
I opened my father’s catechism again, this time slowly.
The answers I once dismissed as simplistic no longer seemed small. They seemed distilled. Like truths refined by repetition and trust.
Old maps, I realized, don’t stop being useful just because they’re old. They can still get you home.
Aging brings with it a strange and unexpected gift: hindsight and reflection. The ability to see things whole. To recognize that what endures does so for a reason.
I closed the catechism and held it for a moment longer.
There was no need to argue about what the old book stood for, no need to defend it. It had already done its work simply by being there.
Truth is a bit like an old tree. Still standing. Still sheltering. Not flashy. Not loud. But deeply, stubbornly alive.
And sometimes, if we’re quiet enough, we can hear it speak back.