Angelus News | May 17, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 10

Then law enforcement showed up
to investigate the group’s leader for
financial fraud, he said. Disillusioned,
Cardona sought other paths to God, including
the Hare Krishnas and Russian
Orthodox Christianity. He kept moving
east — geographically and spiritually.
Enthralled by encounters with Hindu
gurus, he followed them. As a former
evangelical pastor, his testimony was
in demand. He moved to England,
becoming a globe-trotting guru who
led Christians into Hinduism. He
spent seven years in Hong Kong before
settling in India in 2013.
Five years later, he said, Jesus called
him, showing him his sins so graphically
that Cardona wept for three days
and asked God why he didn’t just let
him die.
He heard a voice in his heart reply,
“It’s because I love you.”
That is when, Cardona said, Jesus told
him to go west and serve the poor.
Back in Pennsylvania, he fell in with
missionaries who lived in a motorhome,
traveling with them across the
south. But when he was sent to meet
their leader in Australia, he realized he
had joined another corrupt ministry.
Flat broke, Cardona contacted a
former Hindu disciple in Hong Kong,
who booked him a flight to Los Angeles.
“I didn’t have a penny in any currency
and a Mexican cleaning lady gave me
bus fare to come downtown so I could
sign up for food stamps,” he said.
A street preacher directed him to the
Emmanuel Baptist Rescue Mission,
which is run by some of its residents.
Cardona served as director until his
health declined.
He began to reread the early Church
Fathers, who he had encountered decades
earlier in Russian Orthodoxy. But
this time he was drawn west. What he
read made him love and trust in Mary
and long for the Eucharist.
“I found myself awash in God’s love
and [Mary’s] sweet love and assurance.
That was when I knew I had to become
Catholic,” he said.
— Ann Rodgers
did the renunciation of sin. The west is the last place where
the light of the sun arrives, so it’s a place of darkness. So,
renouncing sin is renouncing the darkness.
Then I walked to the other side and they turned around
and faced toward the east (toward me) to profess their faith,
because east is the source of light, where the sun rises. The
rising sun symbolizes Christ rising from the dead, dispelling
the darkness of sin and death. The east is also symbolic of
paradise, where God created man and woman. The garden,
located in the east, symbolizes the Christian journey from
this world to the light of God’s kingdom.
Another detail: This year, with help from local communities
of the Neocatechumenal Way, we had an immersion
baptismal font built in front of the regular font at St. Mary’s
Cathedral here in San Francisco. On the sides there are icons
painted in the style of Kiko Argüello, a Spanish artist who
started the Neocatechumenal Way.
So, after professing their faith, the catechumens climbed
a stepladder to enter the baptismal font from the west side.
They went three steps down into the water and were immersed
three times, symbolizing the three days Christ spent
in the tomb. Then they walked three steps back up, symbolizing
their being united with Christ in his resurrection.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem spoke about these signs, telling Christians
that “when you were immersed in the water it was like
night for you and you could not see; but when you rose again
it was like coming into broad daylight. In the same instant
you died and were born again; the saving water was both your
tomb and your mother.”
You had 17 adult baptisms at this year’s vigil. For the sake
of time, why not just pour a little water on their foreheads,
if the sacrament is still valid?
Validity is a pretty low bar to determine how we celebrate
the sacraments. Think of a married couple celebrating their
wedding anniversary: You can take your wife to McDonald’s,
or you can have a special candlelight dinner. They’re both
meals, ways to mark your anniversary. But which one is really
proper to the occasion?
Baptism is the door to all of the other sacraments. Yes, it’s a
lot of heavy lifting to do a baptism by immersion — especially
with the number of adults this year — but it’s very profound.
The meaning of the sacrament is conveyed so much
more forcefully and convincingly.
A couple of my traditionally minded friends were kind of
suspicious about this idea of baptism by immersion. But what
they saw at the Easter Vigil changed their minds, because
they saw what it conveys and that it’s authentically within our
tradition. In fact, we know from his writings that this was how
baptisms were done in St. Cyril’s time.
Your diocese, like many others around the country, saw
a rise in adult baptisms this year. What do you think is
behind it?
A lot of what I hear is anecdotal, but do I know that we’ve
been emphasizing that faith has to be a personal encounter.
I recently had dinner with FOCUS missionaries serving
here at San Francisco State University. And they’ll do things
like play frisbee on the lawn and the students will come over
and talk to them, and are surprised that they are Catholic
missionaries.
I would imagine the whole COVID-19 experience was part
of it, too: People realized that we need in-person community,
that virtual doesn’t work.
I also wonder whether everything going on in society — the
dehumanization, the different ideologies, the role of social
media — kind of aggravates the sense of isolation, which
leads to depression and anxiety. People are realizing that
there must be a better way, and that it goes beyond this idea
of being spiritual but not religious: They realize spirituality
has to be within the context of a community of faith. My gut
feeling is that these things have something to do with it.
Pablo Kay is the editor-in-chief of Angelus.
May 17, 2024 • ANGELUS • 19