Every year, the Rite of Election marks an official and exciting step in the journey of converts to the Catholic faith. As they prepare for Easter, when they will receive the sacraments of initiation, catechumens and candidates are presented to their local bishop as a sign of their ‘election’ into the Catholic community.
This year, the Rite of Election will take place on Sunday 18 February at St Patrick’s Cathedral.
In the lead-up to this event, Samantha Whittaker, one of the catechumens from Werribee Parish, has generously shared her story with us—a story of discovering who God really is, and how this has awakened her life of prayer.
Discovering the God of mercy and compassion
Samantha Whittaker, 49, is married with a teenage daughter. On top of entering the Catholic Church, she is also in the process of a making the transition from a career as a mental health practitioner to becoming a baker.
She grew up in a Protestant Christian family, but the particular churches her family were part of tended to paint a negative and almost spiritually scarring image of God.
As a child, I would get up early and watch Mass for You at Home, drawn by the strange sense of peace I would always feel watching the Mass.
‘God was someone who was to be feared and obeyed,’ she explains. ‘If you said or did the wrong thing, or acted the wrong way, you were always in danger of hell. The God I knew was angry.’
However, even within this environment, Samantha recognised the ways God was reaching out to her in love.
‘As a child, I would get up early and watch Mass for You at Home, drawn by the strange sense of peace I would always feel watching the Mass—especially when the priest would hold up the host. But it was during my years at Catholic girls’ school that I really began to question my faith and beliefs and wonder if there was something more,’ she says.
A clear divergence appeared between the God she had been taught to fear and the God she was now learning about afresh in school.
‘I could not make sense of the angry and vengeful God I grew up with and the loving, compassionate Father I was beginning to learn about at school. I had questions and I was searching for answers.’
Eventually, however, as the demands of life took over, especially with school, university and becoming a mother, she let her pursuit of the truth about God fall away.
Twenty-five years later, when a close member of Samantha’s family was diagnosed with a mental illness, she found herself ‘heartbroken’ and struggling with the pain of it all. She was struggling especially with the indifference and judgment she had experienced when she sought support from her Christian community—even to the point of being blamed for the presence of mental illness in her family.
Far from being the judgmental, angry and critical God I had thought him to be, I discovered again the God of all compassion, mercy and kindness.
It was when a Catholic acquaintance told her, ‘Mental illness is no one’s fault. The Catholic Church believes in kindness and compassion, not judgment,’ that something clicked for her.
‘I remembered my own Catholic schooling, my years watching Mass for You at Home and the peace that I had found at the Catholic Church,’ she says. ‘I started to seriously look into Catholicism for answers. Far from being the judgmental, angry and critical God I had thought him to be, I discovered again the God of my childhood and teenage years—the God of all compassion, mercy and kindness.
‘And instead of the mindless, shallow, legalistic faith I had been taught that Catholicism was, I discovered a beautiful, rich and deep faith built on a solid line of apostolic succession from Christ himself, and not based on an individual interpretation of Scripture. For the first time my faith in God made sense. Catholicism made sense to me, and Protestantism did not. And with that, I came back home to the Catholic Church and have not looked back.’
Experience of RCIA and prayer
Samantha has loved the RCIA process. ‘[It] has been nothing short of amazing! RCIA has been my safe space to ask all my rather embarrassing and ignorant questions about my new Catholic faith. But as my leaders would say, there are no dumb questions.’ Sharing so much of their time and lives has helped the group become ‘friends and family’.
Discovering the Catholic faith has also awakened Samantha’s prayer life.
‘I don’t think prayer has to be complex or long—simply heartfelt. Our Father loves to talk to his children, and he loves to spend time with us. Prayer is about our love relationship with the Father and not some obligation on a to-do list.
‘For me, prayer is not about obligation,’ she says. ‘It’s about taking time to connect with my “Dad” before I start each day. If I don’t take time to do this, I simply don’t feel right.’
‘Sometimes, if I have time, this could be a full rosary and a conversation with Jesus afterward. But sometimes it might simply be a breathing prayer and a Glory Be or an Our Father.’
For Samantha, the most important thing is that prayer is sincere and from the heart.
‘I don’t think prayer has to be complex or long—simply heartfelt. Our Father loves to talk to his children, and he loves to spend time with us. RCIA has helped me to understand this, that prayer is about our love relationship with the Father and not some obligation on a to-do list that we need to cross off.’
