When Omar Gómez thinks about what it was that drew him to becoming Catholic, he smiles. “I feel like God was using my girlfriend as an instrument so that I would turn to the path toward God.”
That was four years ago when life looked different for Gómez. He was born into a nominally Catholic family in California that later relocated to Arizona.
“My parents were Catholics, but they didn’t go to church,” Gómez explained. He was never baptized, and the family did not attend Mass. When he was just 16 years old, Gómez’s mother died, leaving him and his seven sisters. His father died a few years later, and just like that, Gómez found himself faced with the heavy responsibilities of family life.
“I never prayed, I never asked God for things — I knew of Him and that’s it,” Gómez said. “I didn’t speak with Him.”
And then Maria Margarita Navarro, his girlfriend, came on the scene.
“I met her four years ago and she would tell me, ‘I’m going to Mass.’” She was also in the young adult group at the church and she would talk to him about it. One day, she invited him to join her.
“At first, you go and you’re looking at everyone and everyone except you knows what to do,” Gómez said of his first experience attending a Catholic Mass. “She knew all the prayers, and I didn’t know anything. It was all completely new.”
Gómez discovered something else: God isn’t just a word.
“He’s someone who can help you if you open your heart.”
Before becoming Catholic at the Easter Vigil in 2025, Gómez had come up against a harsh reality that so many others before him have discovered: Without God, without love and meaning, there’s an inescapable, aching emptiness in the human heart.
“You can be at parties or, let’s say, drinking, and in that moment you feel good, but then comes the moment where you just feel so alone,” Gómez said. “There’s an emptiness, and as soon as you’re not doing something fun, you feel alone.
“Every time I came to Mass with my girlfriend, I felt at peace. When you look at the Blessed Sacrament, you feel a peace, like you’re not alone. You feel hope. And that helped me. I said, ‘I need to know more about God.’”
It wasn’t long until Gómez began his journey toward entrance into the Catholic Church via the Order of Christian Initiation (OCIA). The months-long OCIA process prepares people to receive the sacraments of initiation and culminates in the Easter Vigil liturgy.
In Gómez’s case, he needed all three sacraments of initiation: baptism, confirmation and Communion.
Becoming Catholic has changed his life.
“Before I used to spend my days mad. I was frustrated. And now instead of being frustrated and angry, I feel like there might be difficulties but God is going to help me with them. He’s got your back.”
Life looks different in other ways, too. For one thing, there’s more discipline.
“It used to be on Sundays I would wake up and I didn’t have anything planned. Now I have more order: We have to go to Mass,” Gómez said. “It’s beautiful knowing that you’re going and you’ll be with people who want to be close to God. There’s more meaning in my life.”
When his ways began to change, Gómez’s family took notice. “It was a little difficult,” he said. At first, they teased him about going to Mass and practicing his newfound faith.
“Now they understand more.”
He’s invited them to join him for Mass. One of his older sisters began attending at another parish.
“My two younger sisters are going now, too.”
Welcoming approach
Deacon Martin Gallo, who directs OCIA and religious education at St. Augustine Parish in Phoenix, cited the community’s open, faithful approach to bringing more people into the Catholic Church. There are around 800 children in the religious education program and weddings take place every weekend from Easter through November. On average, Deacon Martin said he baptizes a whopping 40 to 100 children each month.
That’s not to say he doesn’t ask uncomfortable questions when it comes to signing up for OCIA.
“When I give them an application, I ask them, ‘Are you living with someone or are you married?’” Deacon Martin said. “I tell them, ‘In order to register for OCIA, you need to get married.’ I convince them one way or another.”
Many couples have been married civilly for years or are cohabitating, he said. If they don’t wish to marry in the Church, Deacon Martin offers them his blunt assessment:
“I tell them, ‘If your partner doesn’t want to marry you, it’s because he doesn’t love you or he’s out looking for a 25-year-old.’ That clicks with them.”
After they fill out the OCIA application, he sends them to the marriage department to start that process.
Immediately afterward, he meets with couples who have been civilly married or cohabitating and tells them they must live chastely until they receive the sacrament of matrimony. Many agree to do so, but others decide to wait and receive their first Communion at their forthcoming nuptial Mass.
He said he walks with them once they’re married, too.
“I tell them ‘In my marriage as a deacon, there are times when I fight with my wife, there are days I have problems with my kids, but that’s the beauty and the flavor of marriage: knowing how to fall but knowing how to get up. Fight before bed, but ask forgiveness and never go to bed angry.’
“I share this with them so they can see, yes, matrimony is difficult, but I tell them, ‘Let’s take the devil out of the middle of your marriage and let’s put Jesus in there.’”
Deacon Martin cites the parish’s 24-hour eucharistic adoration chapel as the fount of its sacramental fruitfulness. OCIA participants and all children attending religious education classes spend time in the chapel before the Blessed Sacrament.
Gómez, too, cites devotion to the Eucharist as central to his newfound faith. He said that he and his wife — the couple married at St. Augustine in November 2025 — will sometimes visit the chapel at night.
“Sometimes, it’s not until 10 or 11 at night, but we say, ‘Let’s go visit the Lord,’” Gómez said.
“Opening your heart there — it moves me. You feel a peace, you feel like you’re not alone, like there’s a person there Who is looking at you and has your back.”
“I’m proud of him,” Deacon Martin says of Gómez. “And he’s proud of being Catholic.”
