Lenten Campaign 2025
This content is free of charge, as are all our articles.
Support us with a donation that is tax-deductible and enable us to continue to reach millions of readers.
“I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” These are the words that thousands of catechumens around the world are preparing to hear on Easter night when they are baptized. Throughout Lent, Aleteia is sharing with you the stories of some of these men and women, who are happy to become children of God. Read all of the testimonies here.
Assia (whose name has been changed for privacy) is a pharmacist and mother of three young children near Puy-en-Velay (France). Her life is moving at a hundred miles an hour, and as she readily acknowledges, sometimes goes in all directions.
Well, almost all directions, but the dominant direction remains the same: God.
Born in Algeria, she lived there until the age of 11.
“My parents, who were teachers, were atheists even though they came from Muslim families,“ she says. “But Islam was the ‘imposed' religion at school, around us, etc. We would fast during Ramadan so as not to attract attention.”
But when the situation in the country became threatening for the family in the early 1990s, her parents decided to leave for Marseille, France.
At secondary school there, her Muslim classmates invited her to open the Koran when she told them she was an atheist. “I asked myself a lot of questions but I didn't feel close to the teaching of the Koran, to that God,” she continues. After high school, she moved to the center of France where she studied pharmacy. There she met Thomas, who years later would become her husband and the father of their three children.
Praying to the Virgin Mary to watch over her child
“I think that the first manifestation for me of the Holy Spirit and the presence of Jesus in my life was at the birth of Sarah,” Assia says. The year was 2016. After a complicated delivery, Assia found herself alone for two hours in her room with no news of her daughter.
“My room had a direct view of the statue of the Virgin Mary, and that evening, for those two hours, I prayed to Mary to watch over my child,” she recalls. Today, Sarah is doing wonderfully. However, despite this first sign, “I put my questions aside, caught up in the whirlwind of life as a young mother,” she continues.
Then came a “second sign,” more intense, more violent. While she was alone with her three children in the car in 2021, a reckless driver crashed head-on into them. “When I saw the car coming towards us, I just had time to pray to God to protect my children. It was a cry to Him.”
In the end, they all escaped with minor injuries. ”I feel that we weren’t alone in the car that day,” Assia says. She assures us that she has always “believed in God.”
“I didn't really know who he was or how to talk to him, but he was there.”
But one day, her eldest daughter, who must have been about 8 years old at the time, saw the medal her dad had received at baptism, and asked her, “Why haven't I been baptized?”
“All of a sudden I asked myself the question again, and the pieces began to fall into place. It was quite clear. I thought back over all those years, those heartfelt prayers, those 'acts of grace' and I told myself that yes, it was there, that was the next step.”
Baptism for her children
A weekend at the home of the parents of a couple of friends who were practicing believers allowed her to ask all her questions, as well as those of her children. During the preparations for the baptism of her children in 2022, a sentence from the priest particularly resonated with her: “We only pass on to our children what we possess ourselves.”
“I realized that even though I was given the choice as a child, I was missing something. I believed in God but I knew nothing about him or what he expected of me. Through baptism, I wanted to pass on my faith to my children, the love of our Father and the values of love and peace,” she explains.
In 2023, her children were baptized and Assia chose to officially set out on her journey. This year, as her godfather and godmother won’t be there at Easter, she will exceptionally receive the sacrament of baptism in May. “On the same day as my second daughter's First Communion,” she says with delight.
“Looking back, I think it was always there like a whisper that I didn't hear,” she continues. ”I think a lot about the image of Christ knocking on the door of our heart, not forcing his way in but waiting to be invited to enter our lives. All these years, I didn’t hear his knocking, to the point where my ears went deaf to it.” And Assia concludes: “I’m glad he did not lose patience with me.”
