Though initially mentored in Christianity by Pentecostals, she learned more about the faith from a Catholic priest before she eventually joined the Catholic Church.
“Of all my years of growing up, I had a lot of Catholic friends, but nobody ever shared Mass with me. They never invited me to Mass,” she said. “I was introduced to Christianity by customers at my parents’ restaurants who were Pentecostal Christians, and they invited me to their church. That’s how I first encountered Jesus in his word and through prayer and through the possibility of the Holy Spirit bringing healing, inflaming your life.”
When she faced the decision between Catholicism and Pentecostalism, the Eucharist pulled her toward the Catholic faith.
“And so at the end, then, in my prayer, I asked Jesus, ‘So had I really been given the gift of faith to believe in Jesus in the Eucharist, on the altar in the tabernacle?’ and I said ‘Yes,’” she recalled. “So, how could I walk away from the Catholic Church? Because it would be denying Jesus.”
Along the pilgrimage, Chinn said she intends “to pray and ask God’s forgiveness — the old word is ‘reparation’ — for those who do not believe in his real presence and [I am] praying for their conversion to be able to come back.”
Chinn said that since the COVID-19 pandemic she noticed that many people haven’t returned to Mass. She prays that they may “worship God as Jesus has given himself to us.”
“I find there’s a tendency, and it’s perennial, and it’s throughout all parishes, where the parents will send [their children] for the sacraments, but then they don’t practice the faith on a regular basis,” Chinn explained. “And [I pray] for them to fall in love with Jesus and holy Communion, and the Eucharist, and that Mass — that they would be consistent and constant.”
“If they only realize it makes life much more stable,” she continued. “The Lord is with them all the time — that relationship can develop.”
“I think what has struck me the most is the number of parishes that the pilgrimage [reaches]. We, at least sometimes on Sundays, go through at least three parish cities,” she said. “And then there’s Benediction. So I’ve received Benediction at least three times a day.”
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When asked what has stood out to her so far, Chinn explained that it has been the faith of the people she meets.
“I find, because I’m able to intermingle with the parishioners, they’re definitely people of faith,” she continued. “There’s an identification, even though they don’t know me, and I don’t know them. They’ve been very generous in the walk with me.”
“The basic faith of the people is still there,” Chinn said. “Even though they say Catholicism in the United States is dwindling, there is a solid portion of people who are still believers, who are willing to come out extra and then to worship God — especially Jesus in the Eucharist.”
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.
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