She came to a film and philosophy night. Popcorn in one hand and chocolate in the other. Her eyes sparkled as she talked, undeterred by her Italian accent she dived into our conversation. As an Italian, this was not simply movie night, this was  “movie night-ah” It was impossible not to enjoy the melodic addition of “ah” at the end of most every word she spoke.  Not surprisingly, we soon discovered she was a Catholic but not one of those disconnected cultural Catholics, she was very connected to her faith. Jesus was real, faith mattered, her church was very important, and a connection to God was an essential part of her life

        Friendship with our community began. We shared some meals together, more movies, more talks, more life sharing. A former Muslim in our community who crossed over into belief about three years ago spent quite a bit of time with her one afternoon when a bunch of us were hanging out for the day at a beautiful little stone beach nestled between tall mountains and the beauty of a greenish blue sliver of ocean known as Howe Sound.  As the conversation shifted to spiritual matters, baptism came up. Our former muslim friend was strongly critical of infant baptism as a way of salvation. To him the Scriptures are clear, salvation is through faith alone in Jesus, and baptism is a very important public profession of that faith, however, it in no way could possibly confer saving grace upon an infant. As they talked it became clear that Claudia didn’t know why she believed that infant baptism was a means of salvation, becoming frustrated, she blurted out that she didn’t really care about why, it was simply her tradition and she accepted it as truth, and that was that. 

    Our Persian friend, paused, then quietly said “If I had that attitude, I’d still be a muslim.”

    The following week me and Claudia were chatting some more. She said to me 

“I sense the love of Jesus in you guys, but your not Catholic, and I don’t know what to do about that!” 

    I laughed, and told her that I was glad she sensed in us the love of Jesus. As we walked down Robson street she expressed a real frustration with so much of Catholicism, but then exasperated she said, “this is the box-ah I grew up in, it’s all I know-ah!”  

    I talked to her about how the most important belief of the Christian faith is Jesus. To love and follow Jesus is the principle thing, to have all our hope placed in him and his work. 

I said, “If both of us agree on that, then that makes us brother and sister.” She smiled and affirmed her love for Jesus, I hugged her and called her sister. 

 As we continued to walk,  I told her that our job now was to try to evaluate which of our respective traditions actually might serve to pull us away from our devotion to Jesus. When we discover them, I said it will be important for us to have the courage to walk away from those traditions. I told her that it wasn’t only the Catholic church that had unhelpful traditional baggage either.

As we arrived at her street, she turned to me and with a big smile and dramatic stereo typical Italian hand gestures said

“Ah my head is so full-ah, It’s hard for me to be outside of my little box-ah”  

I smiled, “this is good to be outside your box, we will see you again soon”

And so we have, please pray for our dear sweet Italian friend-ah!