Eucharist brought her home

When her husband Billy Joe passed away suddenly in the middle of the night, Ilene Biberstein was brought to her knees. After her husband’s funeral, she was baptized in her own swimming pool, beginning a long faith journey that eventually brought her home to the Catholic Church.

Biberstein, who now works at Blessed John Paul II High School as an administrative assistant with Tuition Assistance, recalls how hard it was to accept that she had probably always been a Catholic at heart.

She grew up in a small town in Kansas and her Protestant parents instilled in her a very Christian upbringing. They attended the Congregational Christian Church that “laid the foundation of truth, integrity and honest dealings with other people.” Later, as a teenager, she attended the United Methodist Church. Biberstein attended services every Sunday and Sunday school until after the age of 18.

“Ironically, although my parents were not Catholic, my father used to watch Bishop Fulton Sheen on television and would comment that he thought Bishop Sheen was brilliant and that the Catholic Church was the first church,” she said.

Six months after she married, Biberstein’s husband was deployed to Vietnam. After the war she traveled with her husband wherever he was stationed. They went to Virginia, Pennsylvania and Thailand.

Throughout her travels, however, they were not active in any church. She and her husband, both Protestants, often thought about returning to their Protestant church, but never got around to it.

The church that her parents attended did not do infant baptisms, so her nephew—a Protestant minister—baptized her at the family swimming pool on the day when her husband was laid to rest.

“Now, it seems frightening to think of all the years that I had lived without being baptized. Yet, it seems as if it was done in God’s perfect timing. I always remember my husband’s birthday, and that the date sadly, is also the date of his funeral, however, since that date, it has been a wonderfully positive memory to know that the date is also the anniversary of my baptism,” Biberstein said.

“I knew that I had not sought the Lord with all of my mind, heart, soul and strength and I immediately decided that change was in order,” she said.

She became active in a local Methodist church and drove friends to retreats out of state. She also joined a neighborhood Bible study group. “I value that part of the journey,” she said.

Biberstein would often visit her son, Dr. Joseph Biberstein and his family in Florida. He had converted to Catholicism and was youth minister at a parish in Pensacola, where he had retired from the military. She attended Mass with the family and went to the youth group meetings that were “pretty awesome.”

“My spirit was being fed like never before. I asked many questions about Catholicism, and even my grandchildren were stepping up to the plate to answer many of those questions. They really know their faith,” Biberstein said.

She began praying the rosary and at the same time searched for clarity in her beliefs. She started reading books by Alan Schreck and Scott Hahn.

On a visit to New York City with a friend they went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Mass and it was at that time that she came to a full realization of the universal Church.

“Catholics everywhere heard these same readings and Gospel, and Jesus was present in every Mass,” she said.

There were many other reasons along the way that confirmed she was headed in the right direction. She was impressed by the beautiful traditions of the Catholic Church, and the Liturgical calendar, but the most significant reason for her conversion was the Eucharist.

“It wasn’t a symbol anymore. It was the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ present. This was the huge difference. I had a Eucharistic experience. It was very humbling and joyous that God would give His only Son and make that perpetual sacrifice till the end of time; and that we have eternity and salvation if we so choose. It’s mind-boggling. It’s the biggest gift on earth,” Biberstein said.

“It had been four years of research, reading, denial and coming to terms with the fact that all of the questions had been answered and the road blocks had fallen. I was going to become Catholic, and probably already was Catholic at heart. It was like many graces happened after the decision to come into the Church was made,” she said.

In 2000, her son and his wife joined a formation class in a missionary society that brought all of them to Texas.  Biberstein began taking private instruction and finally received communion in July of 2001.

“To me it’s an infusion of love that goes to my heart and from there, outward, either to heal something in me or to share as a witness to others. Magnificent and miraculous and we are to receive it, not take it. I think we can live from Eucharist to Eucharist. It sustains us and empowers us, so we don’t have to be afraid,” Biberstein said.

She was doing a volunteer administrative job for the vocations director of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLTs) and he asked her to set up offices and manage them for the seminarians that were to study in Rome. Although she loved to travel, Biberstein had never wanted to visit Italy, but God had other plans and she lived eight years in Rome and only visited her family in Texas during the summers.

She was confirmed in Subiaco, Italy, home of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica on May 18, 2002; Pope John Paul II’s birthday and Pentecost weekend.

She went on a pilgrimage to France and Poland. In France she walked in the footsteps of St. John Vianney and St. Bernadette. In Poland she walked in the footsteps of then Pope John Paul II and was at the vigil in the Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow the night it was announced that the Pope had died.

“As I sat at his funeral in St. Peter’s Square, I thought of his hand-written ordination card that stated, ‘He has done great things for me.’ I looked up to the right of the square where the mosaic of Mater Ecclesiae was looking back over at all of us – with Pope John Paul II’s coat of arms and ‘Totus Tuus’, I could not help but think that she [Mary] might just express about his life and papacy, ‘he has done great things for me’,” Biberstein said.

After much prayer, in 2009, it seemed that God was telling Biberstein that it was time to transition back to the states. She had been praying for several months and had made a decision after spending a weekend with an Italian friend. She was in a small chapel, St. Michael’s on Ischia, an island off the coast of Italy.

She was specifically praying for God’s will for her and after awhile, glanced up to see the only stained glass window that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea.

She saw, the wheat, the host, the grapes and the chalice, and beneath it in large stained glass letters were two words: “CORPUS CHRISTI.”And much like that night after the sudden death of her husband, she began her journey home.