Son receives the sacraments and inspires mother to complete hers

Last summer, the urge to go back to church stirred in Adrian Gonzalez, 19. His family is Catholic, but only attended Mass sporadically. While he was never baptized, the urge to fully commit to church had been growing for some time.

“I kept feeling it, but I just never got around to it,” said Gonzalez before the start of the Easter Vigil Mass on April 19 at St. Raphael the Archangel Church.

Adrian was born in Guam, where his parents, Andy and Lillian Gonzalez, were serving in the U.S. Navy before retiring in the area near Great Lakes Naval Station. There was never a good opportunity to have Adrian baptized, his parents said.

“We are both prior military and we were always on the move,” Andy Gonzalez said.

“We’ve always practiced our faith and have been active in our faith,” Lillian Gonzalez said. “In Guam, we religiously went to church, but when we came back here, we just didn’t find a church where we would go every Sunday.”

However, when Adrian expressed interest in going back to church regularly, his parents didn’t hesitate to support him and join him at Mass.

“I always tell people life gets in the way,” Andy Gonzalez said, regarding going back to church full time. “This time he brought it up and we thought, ‘We can’t fail him now.’”

The family attended Mass at churches in the area before joining St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Old Mill Creek. The traditional architecture was appealing to Adrian, and his parents liked the people they met there.

When Adrian decided he wanted to become a full member of the church and go through the OCIA program to receive baptism, first Communion and confirmation at the Easter Vigil, his parents threw their full support behind him.

Inspired by Adrian, Lillian decided it was a good time for her to finally receive confirmation, so she joined OCIA too.

Lillian Gonzalez will be confirmed on May 5 at St. Raphael and Adrian will be her sponsor.

Adrian has already received a warm welcome from parishioners, she said.

“He had to do the three scrutinies and stand up in front of the church each week and afterwards the people in the church were coming up to him and congratulating him,” she said. “It’s just the right place for us.”

There is regret for not having Adrian baptized as a baby, Andy Gonzalez said.

“We told him many times, ‘We’ve failed you for not doing this when you were born.’ But at the time when we were in Guam, it was like, who do we have here that’s in the faith?” he said.

It all worked out in the end.

“I’ve always felt that I’ve been too far from my faith until we started going back to church,” Adrian said. “Like my dad said, it’s always something we’ve planned for but it just gets pushed back and pushed back.”

Deacon Gregory Webster leads the parish OCIA program and said Adrian and Lillian’s story energized him and the other participants.

Given his youth, Adrian can inspire others to follow their own journey to the faith, he said.

“I hope by him doing it that others will come in as well,” Webster said. “I am glad that Adrian can complete the story by being his mother’s sponsor at her confirmation. It seems like a fitting end to this milestone of their faith journey.”