Letter from Lily Mar

By sharing the diverse experiences of faith from members of her bi-racial family, letter writer Lily Mar underscores the dangers of nationalism and the need for Catholics to remain steadfast in placing their faith and the Church before their nationality. When these priorities are flipped, as Lily illustrates, members of the body of Christ who don’t share the same nationality suffer and end up being treated as outsiders to the Church, as if they don’t belong. In the spirit of the mission of The Catholic Woman, Lily’s story serves as a bold witness to the protective nature of the feminine genius, as she looks out for those who are wrongfully been treated as outsiders to the Church. May we always remain in a receptive, Christ-like disposition toward the Other.

Hello Friend,

Growing up, most of my Catholic experiences were with groups of people who looked like me and talked like me. I attended Spanish masses often, my youth groups were mostly Hispanic, and the Catholic school I attended was a mostly Hispanic and Black Community.

I also grew up with rich witnesses of the faith in my family: my Abuelita Petra (my paternal grandmother) lived most of her life abstaining from receiving the Eucharist. When my Abuelito Pertronilo married her, he didn’t want to get married in the Catholic church, so for forty plus years, she walked to daily mass, she went to confession, she prayed, but she did not receive the Holy Eucharist. You might say, “wow” or you might say, “well that’s what you are supposed to do,” and I agree to both. Before my Abuelito died, he fulfilled her wish of marrying in the Catholic church. They were married in the hospital, she wore a white embroidered dress, we got her a bouquet to toss, they exchanged all the Mexican wedding traditions, like the lasso and the coins. The next day early in the morning she attended Mass at the hospital and received Jesus for the first time in so many years. Can you imagine the joy!

The diverse witnesses to the faith in my life only grew when I was married. My husband's family is made up of Chinese immigrants. I never had the honor of meeting my parents-in-law because they are both deceased. They were married in a Catholic church in China! Let that sink in. My in-laws were married in a communist country that is overtly hostile to Catholicism. They raised their children Catholic and my husband, Tom, was an altar boy when his grandmother was baptized into the Catholic faith. Can you imagine the courage my in-laws had? Tom, my husband, was so moved by his Catholic faith that after his college years, he entered the Dominican Seminary in the Western Province. It’s there where he developed a love for the Church Doctors, especially St. Thomas Aquinas (in fact, our son Simon’s middle name is Aquinas). Tom and I met while I worked at the Newman Center at my university and now we live in an authentic adobe brick home in the Southwest and we are trying to raise our children with the many wonderful ways that our parents raised us.

All of this has left me with a rich admiration for the universality of our Church! I love that we can celebrate the mass in any part of the world and the same miracle of our Lord is there, it’s one of the most beautiful things of our faith.

At any given moment anywhere in the world, there is Catholic Mass being celebrated, adoration going on, or someone just simply praying in thanksgiving, desperation, or for a miracle. We should feel just as connected to all our Catholic brothers and sisters as we feel during the communion of saints. It’s really an incredible and powerful unity that our church provides for us in keeping traditions and consistently reminding all the faithful that there is a kingdom of heaven waiting for us.

As much joy as my heritage has brought to my experience of the faith, my experience as a person of color within the Catholic Church in America has not always been so positive. And despite my knowledge of the vastness and connectedness of our Catholic faith, I have often felt like an outsider.

Handwritten quote from the writer. (Photo by Chelsey Shortman.)

When I first stepped outside of my Spanish masses and into mostly was English-speaking parishes, I started to feel the isolation. When I first heard the song “God Bless America” as a closing hymn, I was very confused by its presence in the mass. It seemed as if the pride of a national identity, of being an American, was eclipsing the beauty of the Catholic mass. Even more disheartening, it seemed that issues that were particularly relevant to my life as a person of color - such as immigration and racism - were generally avoided altogether. It can feel so alienating to see the faith, in Her universality, become entangled with a national identity that seems to exclude me and so many others, like me or my family.

Despite this, when I look back at the stories within our family, my Abuelita worshipping in Mass in Mexico and my in-laws worshipping in Mass in China, I am still filled with wonder about the universality of our faith. I love to share those two family stories because it was never about them being Mexican Catholics or Chinese Catholics: they were just Catholics. Sure, there were (at times, significant) cultural differences, but their Catholicism was not reduced to, or conflated with, a national identity. It was simply about how much they loved the Church and everything else flowed from there! These two stories are exactly what we want to teach our six children. In my Abuelita’s story, we want to teach them the conviction of doing what is right and not giving up in our faith or faulting it for having teachings that are sometimes hard to practice. In my in-laws' story, we want them to learn how to courageously love in our faith, to - gasp - go counter to the country and love the faith so profoundly! Conviction and courage to love and practice our faith within our universal church. We want our kids to be called to practice the faith first before “practicing” a national identity. And this is our hope for the future of the American Catholic Church, as well.

As a Catholic, an American, and a part of a bi-racial family I would love for you to open your heart to our family’s stories and see if they inspire you to think differently about the way we approach our Catholic faith. Let us remind each other of what unites us: the Holy Eucharist. We should love our faith above all else, and then of course we can love our culture and our history and even the places where we were born, immigrated from, or settled. Our national identity is a part of us, yes, but it’s not what makes us whole. That wholeness we can only find in the sacraments.

With an Open Heart,

Lily

Photo of Lily

About the Writer: Lily is an unpredictable wife and a mama of six beautiful children who are part Chinese and part Mexican. Her friends joke that they must have the best dinners at their house, they do! Cooking together is their family hobby, you can catch them learning how to make homemade ravioli or mashing beans for burritos or making Chinese sweet breads that you usually only find at a Dim Sum restaurant. She lives in the Southwest in an authentic adobe home made out of mud. She takes pride in bringing the faith into her home in the artwork and niches. Lastly, a mama to extraordinary son Felix who has Down Syndrome who is excellent at blowing kisses and melting the hearts of many.