I Believed My Mother

Why would someone choose to sacrifice opportunities in order to protect their Catholic faith?

In this deeply personal episode, Marcy Youngster shares the story of how her faith was planted, protected, and passed down through the powerful example of her parents and grandmother—ordinary people who quietly lived the Catholic faith with conviction.

From her baptism as an infant in the historic St. Louis Cathedral to the lessons she absorbed from a mother who believed the Catholic faith was life’s greatest treasure, Marcy reflects on the influences that shaped her soul and the choices she made to safeguard that gift.

At the heart of her story are five simple questions from the Baltimore Catechism that reveal humanity’s deepest purpose:
 Who made you?
 Why did God make you?
 And what must we do to reach Heaven?

In a time when many Catholics have drifted away from the practice of their faith, Marcy shares why these truths still matter—and why she now feels called to gently but powerfully  draw souls back to the Church, the sacraments, and the life of grace.

This episode is both a personal testimony and an invitation: to rediscover the beauty of the Catholic faith and the path to eternal happiness.

Subscribe and join the movement to "love your faith, live your faith, learn your faith, spread your faith — and most importantly, be your faith!!!"

Questions or reflections?
Reach Marcy at marcy@marcyyoungster.com

www.MarcyYoungster.com

Thank you for listening to The Catholic Whisperer™ with Marcy Youngster.

If this episode blessed you, please  follow the show and leave a review. It helps more souls discover the beauty of the Catholic faith.

You can connect with Marcy or share questions at
 marcy@marcyyoungster.com

For more information about Marcy and future episodes, visit:
 www.MarcyYoungster.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Catholic Whisperer Podcast. Coming to you from Tampa, Florida, I am your host, Marcy Youngster. Cradle Catholic, mother of ten children, via a blended Catholic marriage. I'm a lifelong entrepreneur and creator of the Queen of Your Ship program for women. I bring to you stories of faith, inspiration, and hope. My desire is to ignite and reignite faith in every one of my listeners. If you were baptized, you have inherited Christ's mission of priest, prophet, and king. Please subscribe and listen to my future episodes as I explain how I translate this calling into my daily life as a Catholic woman today. If you're anything like me, you grew up just living your life, listening to your parents or not, and following the rules laid out for you or not. For some reason, I believed my parents when they taught me about God and Mary and the Saints and the Catholic Church. My parents and grandmother were stable Catholic influences from as far back as I can remember. My mother was tall, strict, beautiful, and authoritarian. She was also filled with faith, honesty, integrity, and fairness. She was willing to lay down her comfortable lifestyle, to live her principles, and even to move our family to the country when I was a child, when the city became too dangerous. I admired my mother implicitly. For some reason, I understood when she told me what was right and what was wrong. I believed her wholeheartedly. When she taught me to dress modestly and why, I believed her. When she taught me that I must be willing to be a quote-unquote sign of contradiction, as Jesus was, I believed her. And when she taught me that my Catholic faith was my greatest gift and I must never ever lose it, I believed her. Because she not only talked the talk, she walked the walk. And I knew I could trust her intelligence, her guidance, her explanations of the Catholic faith. I could trust my mother because everything she said and did added up to being the truth. So I followed her guidance. I dress modestly, I've always lived as a quote-unquote sign of contradiction, and I have never, ever lost my very precious Catholic faith. I owe so much to my mother and to my father and to my maternal grandmother, each of them in their own unique ways, live the gospel, live the Catholic faith, and received the sacraments every single week. Never once do I know of an instance where they miss Mass on a Sunday or a holy day of obligation unless they were sick. So they handed the faith to me, the torch of the faith, to me. And that flame has been burning brightly in my soul since I was just 27 days old. Because I was 27 days old when I was taken to the famous St. Louis Cathedral and baptized by Father McNicholis, who would one day become Bishop McNicholas. The Catholic Church has gone through some very turbulent times since I was a child. I realize that. Why? Because at the time, so many who went into college as practicing Catholics graduated and had lost their Catholic faith. Somehow the world, the flesh, and the devil had captured their minds, hearts, bodies, and habits, and they had abandoned the practice of the faith. This means they lost sanctifying grace. Now, I had learned in my child's catechism that to lose sanctifying grace is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. Why? Because to lose sanctifying grace, which is lost by deliberately committing one or more very grave mortal sins, means that Jesus is banished from your soul. The blessed Trinity leave, and your soul is dark and black with deadly sin. And if you die like this in this state, it means you will be condemned to hell forever. Now, I was not willing to risk losing my faith by going to college when I had so many tangible examples of this tragedy happening to so many people. I would rather sacrifice going to college and keep my faith intact. God would provide, right? Now I do know many have gone to college and have not lost their faith. But I also know many, many who have. And I wasn't willing to take the chance. So my point with this podcast is to share that thanks to my parents and grandmother, the roots of my own Catholic faith were nurtured, protected, and fed. My dad's parents were also wonderful Catholics, but I never had the grace to know them. So I feel my calling, or actually one aspect of my calling from God, is to attract back Catholics. Who, number one, may have lost their faith due to ignorance, not knowing the faith. Two, abandoned their faith because they didn't want to obey the commandments. They preferred to live a sinful lifestyle. Or three, they were baptized, but they were never properly taught what it means to be Catholic. They may never have been taught how important it is for their happiness here on earth, but more importantly, how to persevere in the practice of the faith until death so as to merit everlasting happiness with God in heaven. People have a crisis of lack of faith. And this, my friends, literally makes me cry. It makes me anguish. It makes me beseech God every morning, every day, and every night to bring back souls to his Catholic faith, to the practice of receiving the sacraments, of living in the state of sanctifying grace. Now, the first five questions in my childhood catechism perfectly sum up and explain my life mission statement. And I'm going to share them with you because they sum up everything I want to live and be known for. So these foundational truths from the catechism introduce right up front three things. Our creator, our purpose, and the path to true happiness. Actually, I would call it the ultimate golden brick road. So here are the five questions. Number one, who made you? God made me is the answer. Number two, who is God? God is the supreme being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence. Number three, why did God make us? God made us to show forth his goodness and to share with us his everlasting happiness in heaven. Question number four. What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven? Answer. To gain the happiness of heaven, we must know, love, and serve God in this world. And question number five. From whom do we learn to know, love, and serve God? Answer. We learn to know, love, and serve God from Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who teaches us through the Catholic Church. So my life purpose is to live as a holy, faith-filled Catholic, and to share what I have been given and entrusted with to as many people as I can, to as many who are open to hearing the truth. I live this faith in my own feminine way. In a future episode, I will share how I live and how I have been able to never ever, ever consider living the Catholic Church. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at Marcy at MarcyYoungster.com. I look forward to producing another episode for you soon. Thank you for listening to the Catholic Whisperer Podcast. I hope you will subscribe and share this episode with your friends. Please email me any comments or questions at Marcy M A R C Y at MarcyYoungster.com. Until next time, I hope you will love your faith, live your faith, learn your faith, spread your faith, and most importantly, be your faith. Thank you again.