Benjamin Steele will be baptized and his fiancee, Karla Gutierrez,
will be confirmed at St. Mary’s Church in Walnut Creek during
the Easter Vigil.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BENJAMIN
STEELE |
By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer
Benjamin Steele’s parents would love to be able
to attend the baptism of their son during Easter Vigil services at St.
Mary’s Church in Walnut Creek on March 22. But they have a good
reason for not being there.
Chris and Eileen Steele will be completing their own Rite of Christian
Initiation journey, many miles away in Montana. They will be receiving
the sacrament of Confirmation during Easter Vigil services there.
However, Benjamin Steele will have loving support from his fiancée
Karla Gutierrez, an RCIA journeyer who will be confirmed at St. Mary’s
that night. Steele and Gutierrez are among 11 in this year’s class
— seven catechumens (persons being baptized) and four candidates
(already baptized persons being confirmed), said Deacon Antonio Reyes.
Last September, when Benjamin Steele decided to join an RCIA to become
a Catholic, his mom and dad wondered if the time had come for them to
return to the Church they had left behind years before. During one particularly
memorable phone call, dad and son pondered whether all three of them should
participate in RCIA. They decided “yes.”
As a small boy, Steele used to attend Mass with his mom and dad at the
local parish church in Flat Head Valley, a small community near Kalispell,
Montana. But as the family grew to include three more children, life became
too busy for weekend church, Steele said. However, he and his siblings
grew up hearing their parents read to them from the Bible, Steele recalled.
These Scripture sessions might have planted the seeds for young Steele’s
entry into the Church, he surmises. “When I was in college, I started
craving some kind of a journey with God.”
But it wasn’t until he graduated from Montana Technical College
in Butte, Montana, joined an engineering company and was transferred to
northern California, that Steele began paying deeper attention to the
possibility of a spiritual quest.
When he moved to the East Bay, he and his fiancée began visiting
different Catholic churches. “Karla found St. Mary’s for us.
It’s her mom’s parish,” he said.
Coming to St. Mary’s “just felt right,” said Steele,
adding that the homilies he heard drew him in. “I wanted to learn
more about the Catholic faith.”
After seven months of RCIA sessions, Steele is still learning. He continues
to grapple with basic questions, but “now I know I’m not alone
in this thing. Others are asking the same questions.”
Catholicism’s demands can be “very tough,” he concedes,
but “I love the way of life a person should try to live. The rules
are like a steady backbone. They give you a base line to go by.”
Although his parents won’t be there for his baptism on Holy Saturday,
there will be a double reason for celebrating later this year –
Aug. 22, when Steele and Gutierrez get married in St. Therese’s
Church in South Lake Tahoe, their second parish home.
They spend as much as time as they can visiting the area. “It reminds
me of Montana with its lakes, mountains and woods,” explained Steele.
Steele and Gutierrez, both 27, met during his senior year in college when
the engineering firm he was interning for sent him to Walnut Creek, where
Gutierrez, a dental hygienist, lives.
In parishes throughout the Oakland Diocese, a total of 607 individuals
will be welcomed into the Church during the Easter Vigil. Adult catechumens
who will be baptized number 214, with 313 baptized individuals entering
into full communion with the Church. Eighty children who have completed
their catechumenate will also join the Church, said Dennis Purificacion,
associate director for the diocesan department for evangelization and
catechesis.
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