Homecoming
- Rommel Santos
- Oct 1, 2024
- 1 min read
The Arlington Herald (approx. June 2010). Reprinted insidecatholic.com and catholicity.com. What is the homecoming like? Why? How? After so much pain, abandonment and betrayal?
This year marks another year’s anniversary in the Victim Assistance Program of the Diocese of Arlington. I approached Pat Mudd 25 years after being sexually and emotionally abused by priests as a child and teen. I had long ago left the devout Catholic home where I was raised in a distant diocese, but a wound still hobbled the successful life I was living here.
Attending Sunday Mass forced me to revisit terrible memories. Receiving other sacraments and simple social comfort in a Catholic community were impossible. Sometimes I braved distressing flashbacks while enduring Sunday Mass just so I could partake in Communion, but inevitably I paid the price of tremulous anxiety for the rest of the day – or week.
Like many survivors, I did not forsake faith. I relied on the rosary, which my parents had habitually prayed with their children. For several years, I fasted each week in petition to Our Lady. Certain novenas, which my mother had prayed, I recited faithfully. In Adoration, I relied on the emptiness as security; no predator could approach without notice. While these precious devotions are part of the vast wealth of our faith, I was still estranged from the sacraments.
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