Treasure Chest - Catholic Memories

Still recuperating from the effects of the flu today, I spent some time going through a treasure chest of childhood mementos my mom put together for me. I happened upon the CCD years, and put together a montage of some of these items, as well as a few things I already had on display on my bookshelf. Each item holds emotion within it, triggers flood gates of memories associated not merely with the events themselves and the time of life but with people and places I haven’t thought of in years.

The background image is the certificate awarded upon my receipt of the Blessed Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, for the very first time.

Layered on top of that is the certificate of my Confirmation in the Catholic Church.

The bottle of Holy Water from Lourdes, France pictured in the upper left corner was given to me by my grandmother, and must be at least 30 years old (if not older). It has a lot of sediment floating in it, but there is still some water in the bottle!

The gold bracelet in the upper right corner is a charm bracelet, each charm has one of the Ten Commandments engraved on it, and the final charm is one of the Holy Bible. The other one is a charm bracelet made up of holy medallions.

In the center of the main image is a set of rosary beads brought back to me from the Vatican, and a scapular given to me by my grandmother.

In the lower right corner is the pin I received when I made my first Holy Communion. The cardboard it is pinned to reads “Made in Hong Kong”. Yes, Hong Kong.

The lower left corner is an image of the prayer book I received right before the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the white scarf you see above that was made by myself to be worn at Confirmation. On the scarf is my chosen Confirmation name, that of St. Theresa, as well as the word “Wisdom”, chosen by me from a list we were given by the Church.

On the right side of the image I have placed the text “The Anointing with Chrism” from the program which was printed for my Confirmation ceremony. This text was the instruction given to us as we were about to be Confirmed in the Church. Ironically, on the day of my Confirmation I was sick, had bronchitis and a fever of 103. The hot Santa Ana winds were blowing, and all I could think about was going back home to bed.

Strikingly absent from my treasure chest is my Certificate of Baptism. Of course I know I was baptized or else the Church would never have allowed me to move through the rest of the other Sacraments, but it did make me smile for a moment…I wondered about that pesky Original Sin, whether I was really covered or not (after all, doesn’t the Certificate count as the proof?), and then remembered, oh yeah, God has HIS book where He purportedly records everything. The little Catholic girl in me crossed herself.

Still, these are treasures to me. They always have been, and they continue to be, even through the growth, at times deeply painful and profoundly emotional…I find them somehow comforting, discover a newfound appreciation for them that feels magical in a very different kind of way now, not as much based on fear and judgment (though I am still having those days), but rather valuing their history, their symbolism, what they represent in terms of contribution to my life and who I am and how I have had and still have obstacles to overcome, and more broadly speaking what they have meant as ritual and tradition for millions of others for so many years.