Baptism into the Church will be homecoming for Elect

Friday, Apr. 07, 2017

BOUNTIFUL — A 39-year search for a faith and a place to belong ended last year, when Ty Oakey “came home” to Saint Olaf Parish in Bountiful.

His homecoming was both literal and figurative: As a child he attended Mass about once a month at St. Olaf with his grandparents, who were regular parishioners. However, although his father was Catholic and his mother was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oakey never was baptized in either faith. As an adult, he began searching for a faith home, exploring Buddhism, various Christian denominations, and even read up on the prophet Mohammed. 

“I’ve always been a spiritual person but not a religious person,” he said. “There was a while where my outlook was, ‘I don’t have to worship the Lord in some building that man made. God’s cathedral is the wilderness.’” An avid fisherman, his opinion at that point was that if he was on a boat in the water on Sunday, that qualified as worship. Still, “It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t satisfying to me,” he said.  

Then, a year ago, he drove his grandmother, Mary Affleck, to St. Olaf’s and attended Mass for seven weeks in a row. 

“I felt like I had come home,” he said. 

He missed the eighth Sunday because of work, “and the whole week, nothing was as sweet, nothing was as smooth as the weeks that I did make it to Mass. … Not just on Sunday, but it touched every aspect. My whole outlook has changed,” he said, adding that even his co-workers noticed the difference and asked if he was all right. “That was when the snowball started rolling downhill.”

He enquired of Father Rene Rodillas, the pastor of St. Olaf, about becoming Catholic. Walking out afterward, he had a rush of emotion, he said. “I had to pull over and take it all in … just this overwhelming emotion and feeling of ‘just right. This is where I should have been this whole time.’” 

Oakey had a couple of individual inquiry sessions with Deacon Scott Dodge, and when the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults classes began that fall, he was the first to sign up.

Two aspects of the class he particularly enjoyed were learning about the faith and the different perspectives brought by the discussion leaders, he said.

Having an RCIA team, rather than just one or two individuals, is important for just that reason, Deacon Dodge said; they bring different perspectives and experiences for people to consider and explore.

“I think it’s important up front for people to hear each other’s stories,” Deacon Dodge said. “I think it’s important for people who are working in the RCIA ministry to hear the stories of the people they are working with.”

Oakey’s story includes a stretch of time when he abused illegal substances, he said, and a marriage that broke up more than a year ago, leaving him with sole custody of his 2-year-old son. Although he’s been clean and sober for 12 years, and he volunteers to lead Narcotics Anonymous classes at the Davis County jail, he knows that his background and his many tattoos can cause people to judge him, he said.

However, at St. Olaf, “here is the closest thing I’ve found to the fellowship of NA,” he said. “In the fellowship of NA, it’s always been ‘we don’t care about your past, as long as you’re here and you want to better your life,’ … and I get the same feeling here. There’s no judgement here, it’s just acceptance, which is very hard to find anywhere. As soon as you walk in the door, that’s what you get. There’s special people here. And it’s just made it that much easier to need to be here – not just want to be here but need to be here.”

His next tattoo will be of St. Michael, whom he has chosen as his patron saint, although he also has an affinity for St. Jude and St. Christopher, he said.

“To me, St. Jude is the patron saint of NA,” he said, and he wore a St. Christopher medal for many years. In the end, though, Oakey settled on St. Michael “because I feel like for most of my life, until I found home, it has been conflict and war.” 

With Easter Sunday just a few weeks away, Oakey says he’s looking forward to being cleansed. 

“I feel like this whole last year has been being cleansed, body and soul,” he said. Just before the Rite of Initiation, he had his teeth replaced, which he views as a cleansing of the body. Also, for the past year he has been cleansing his mind through prayer, “and this will be the last step of that, cleansing my soul. It’s just that rebirth into my new life. … This will be me walking into my new days now, on Easter Sunday.”