Catholic faith gives Guilford family ‘a clearer path’ and ‘real direction’
Cole and Christina May smile with their sons Harrison, front row left, Maxwell, front row right, and David, center, after being welcomed into the full communion of the Church during the April 19 Easter Vigil Mass in Yorkville at St. Martin Church of All Saints Parish. (Submitted photo)
By Natalie Hoefer
GUILFORD—It was the fall of 2023, and Christina May was bored. The house was quiet, now that all three of her and her husband Cole’s boys were in school.
So, she decided to get a part-time job.
“It was to have something outside the house, just to be social and keep myself busy,” she says.
There was a new coffee shop opening “just down the road” in Dover called Ars Café & Meeting House, a ministry of All Saints Parish in Dearborn County.
“I love to talk to people, and I just really enjoy the whole coffee culture,” says Christina.
And as a non-denominational Christian at the time, she adds, “I thought, ‘Well, they love Jesus, so it’s not that bad.’ ”
Eighteen months later, Christina, Cole and their sons David, 11, Maxwell, then age 8, and Harrison, then age 6, were welcomed into the full communion of the Church during the Easter Vigil Mass on April 19 at All Saints’ St. Martin Church in Yorkville. (Related: See our list of all new Catholics in the archdiocese)
“I didn’t take the job to try to change anyone’s faith,” Christina recalls. “But I did think, ‘I’m going to show these [barista] girls what a relationship with Jesus looks like.’
“God has a good sense of humor, that’s for sure.”
Because it was the employees’ day-in-day-out living of their Catholic faith that made Christina think, “I want that.”
‘There was no depth’
Christina was raised in California as a
non-denominational Christian.
“I always had faith in my life,” she says. “But I always felt kind of separated from it, like all these people around me seemed really connected with their faith but I didn’t, no matter how many Bible studies I was in.”
Cole, on the other hand, was raised in no faith tradition when he grew up in Guilford. He did get baptized while serving in the Air Force—although his initial “call” to faith had nothing to do with God.
“I’m not super proud to say, but in bootcamp some of us would go to [a non-denominational church service] on Sundays to not be yelled at for two hours,” he admits. “But I did start to appreciate faith and felt drawn to it. So, I chose to get baptized.”
Christina was in the Air Force, too. She and Cole met on active duty while receiving air traffic controller training in Missouri. The couple married in 2010.
With Cole’s continued service with the Air Force, a switch to the Air National Guard and work with the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) as an air traffic controller, the couple and their growing family moved frequently.
That changed after the death of Cole’s brother in 2019. With that loss and Cole’s desire to spend time with his aging grandfather, he felt a pull to settle his family in the area where he grew up.
The Mays moved to Guilford in April 2020. The FAA transferred Cole to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport as an operation supervisor. After 10 years, the family could finally lay down some roots.
Then began the search for a local faith community their family could call home.
“We went to some churches around here, and they were great at the time,” says Christina.
“But there was no depth,” Cole adds. “There wasn’t something that I could really buy into.”
Christina nods in agreement.
“We just were always kind of missing something,” she says.
“And then I started working at the coffee shop.”
‘A snowball that turns into an avalanche’
Like Christina, not all of those who work at the café are Catholic. But there was something she noticed about the Catholic baristas, all high school-aged and young adult women.
“They were never trying to shove anything down my throat,” she says.
Rather, it was how they lived, like mentioning going to adoration or making the sign of the cross before eating.
“You could tell faith was at the center of their lives,” says Christina. “I just felt like they had such a clear understanding of who they were fundamentally and what their faith meant.
“I was just so blown away and so impressed by that and thought, ‘I want that.’ ”
So, Christina started asking them questions about their Catholic faith. Then at home she would “just research more and more and more.
“And then I started thinking, ‘Why is it that one church believes that but another doesn’t? Why did Martin Luther take out those books [from the Bible]?’ And all of a sudden it’s just kind of like a snowball that turns into an avalanche.”
When Christina asked her barista friends about the Eucharist, they referred her to “John chapter six”—particularly the Bread of Life Discourse in Jn 6:22-59.
“So, I went and read it,” says Christina. “I’ve read it before, but this time it was like I was seeing over and over how Jesus is repeating that he is the bread.
“I remember a pastor at one church who always said, ‘If it’s repeated [in the Bible], it’s important.’ And here is Jesus repeating it is his body and his blood. It’s not just symbolic, because it’s repeated. And if it’s repeated, it’s important.”
Christina continued to research the Catholic faith, its history and origins.
“It’s like that quote [by St. John Henry Newman], ‘To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant,’ ” she says. “I reached a point where I knew I had to be an atheist or I had to be Catholic, because there’s no in between—and I couldn’t be an atheist.”
It was a summer night in 2024. Christina and Cole were out on a rare night alone enjoying some ice cream, when she knew she had to say something to her husband: “I think I want to try to be Catholic.”
‘I want a church with roots’
Cole not only approved but joined Christina on the journey of exploring the Catholic faith. They started by going to a Sunday Mass.
“It was so reverent,” Cole recalls. “I really appreciated that and the tradition, how what they’re doing now is the same thing they’ve been doing for centuries,” versus the “flavor of the week” feel of the non-denominational churches they had attended.
“It’s like [those churches] were just evolving with the world, which is what we’re told not to do,” he says. “If I’m going to be Christian, I want a church with roots.”
The couple signed up for Order of Christian Initiation of Adults classes through All Saints “just to learn more” about Catholicism, says Christina.
And learn they did—she likened the stream of knowledge to “drinking from a fire hose.”
The content and discussions were “very educational and helpful,” says Cole. But what especially impressed him was the dedication of priests.
“The schedules that these men have taking care of one parish or multiple parishes is just—,” he says, stopping short as he shakes his head in awe. “They commit their entire lives to serving others with no breaks. It’s so commendable.”
Before long, the couple’s desire “just to learn more” became a desire to be welcomed into the full communion of the Church, along with their three boys.
Christina and Cole appreciated the reverence of the Mass from the beginning. But nothing prepared them for the beauty of the Easter Vigil liturgy.
“I cried the whole time,” says Christina. “It was just amazing, just so amazing.”
She’d “been waiting so long” to receive the Eucharist, she recalls. “The first time I got to receive it I just cried and cried.”
Cole describes the “whole Mass, every portion,” as “surreal. It was truly beautiful.”
While Christina and Cole had both been baptized, no records of the baptisms could be found. So, all five members of the family received the sacraments of initiation: baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist. And Christina and Cole had their marriage convalidated in the Church.
‘It gives us a real direction’
Life has changed for the Mays since seeking “just to learn more” about Catholicism.
Christina recalls the churches of her childhood as having “a lot of doomsday stuff, this kind of undertone of end times. So, I felt really affected by whatever was going on in the world.
“But now, I just don’t feel like I’m so emotional and devastated by any horrible thing that happens, like I don’t need to worry because God will be faithful through all of it.”
The couple’s prayer lives are different, too.
“You don’t know this,” Cole says with a shy glance at his wife, “but I pray at work before I take my shift … asking for wisdom for myself and my [air traffic] controllers as we get through our shift. I never would have done that before.”
The journey has even enriched the couple’s marriage, says Christina.
“I felt that we had a strong relationship, but we wouldn’t really talk about God that much, and now we actually do.”
Compared to life before embracing the Catholic faith, Cole says he feels “like now I’m on a clearer path, versus just kind of meandering around.”
Christina agrees.
“I feel that our faith is truly, every day, being integrated more and more into our lives,” says the former coffee barista, who now homeschools David, Maxwell and Harrison. “And like Cole said, it gives us a real direction, a true north, not just, ‘Oh, I like what the pastor said this week.’
“Because even if there was no homily, even if it’s not a pretty church, even if I don’t like the vestments or whatever—it doesn’t matter because Jesus is truly there.
“The tradition and history and sacraments—[Catholicism] truly is the fullness of faith and fullness of truth. It’s literally alive, and Jesus is literally there. And it’s just amazing.” †
