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this realization. Yet there was a time in my early youth when I confessed to being very confused about who this God was. I recall studying the Baltimore Catechism with Sister Anthony—this is a crisp memory—and discovering that the more I studied it the more confused I became. The Baltimore Catechism, which has since been dropped, was an extremely technical and doctrinaire introduction to Catholicism, required reading for all young American Catholics since 1885. In question-and-answer format, it spelled out the teachings of the Church, from “What befell Adam and Eve because of their sin?” to “How should we keep the holy days of obligation?”
    But I found it maddeningly elliptical. Consider this passage:
    1. Q. Who made the world?
    A. God made the world.
    2. Q. Who is God?
    A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.
    3. Q. What is man?
    A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.
    4. Q. Is this likeness in the body or in the soul?
    A. This likeness is chiefly in the soul.
    5. Q. How is the soul like to God?
    A. The soul is like God because it is a spirit that will never die, and has understanding and free will.
    6. Q. Why did God make you?
    A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
    â€œSister Anthony,” I finally admitted, “I’ve read and prayed on it, but I’m having trouble figuring out who God is, how to picture him. And if I can’t picture him, I can’t know him—can’t know who I’m praying to.”
    The sister was kind. “God,” she said, “is love.” It was the first time I had heard that straightforward description. “You can’t see your mother’s love, but you know it’s there, don’t you?” I nodded. “You know it’s there because you can feel it, isn’t that right?” It was. “Same thing with God. You feel His presence. That’s your knowledge.”
    As a youth, I could indeed feel God all around me, in the lives of my parents and grandparents, especially my maternal grandmother. And I felt it most when I was able to be present in the moment, sitting quietly in our backyard or basking in the ordinary banter that filled our home. Later I would lose track of this sensation, and with it my relationship to God—especially once I entered politics. But at least back then, I felt a unifying purpose and mission through the Church. I found God in all things, as St. Ignatius Loyola suggested, and this gave me great strength and comfort.
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    THE DAY OF MY FIRST CONFESSION, I PUT ON A PAIR OF CHARCOAL gray slacks, a white short-sleeved shirt, and a green tartan clip-on tie. I felt as though I stood just this side of adulthood. It was a somber milestone. Confession is the first sacrament we got to participate in fully. We had our own lines to say, some in Latin, and for months the Sisters had schooled us in our perfect recitations.
    This was a day of wild anxiety for me—for all of us, I think. We were all seven years old; it was a good bet that none of us had yet committed a mortal sin. Not going to church on Sunday was the only one that loomed over our heads, and I personally knew not one kid in the second grade who had ever missed a Sunday Mass. That left us to plumb the venial sins, our misdemeanors. I gave my conscience a strict and thoroughgoing review, but in theend all I had was a list of minor behavioral infractions and a handful of unworthy thoughts. But frankly, I had no idea how many were genuine sins.
    The Sisters had been specific in their trainings. This would be a time of transformation for us. Inside that musty enclosure, speaking anonymously to an unseen voice as though to God himself, we would have our first opportunity to become sinless again, to wipe our slates clean. But there were many rules. Be succinct, they’d said.