Recently I found the prayer that saved my life — my eternal life.

By one of those happy events that we think are coincidence but are due to God's providence, I heard a priest leading the people in the novena to the Infant of Prague. I was chasing my toddler son across the back of the church at the time, thinking self-righteously that I didn't deserve such disobedience, when the words of the novena made me aware of my past misdeeds and how far Jesus has led me on the spiritual path.

Let me explain.

Some years ago, when I was returning to the Church after my own personal “me decade,” I decided to take the big step into the confessional.

I had been attending Mass, absorbing the Scriptures and enjoying the homilies of my favorite priest, but, at Communion time, I felt like an orphan. I had been taught well by the Sisters of Charity in my youth, and knew that after 12 years of missing Sunday Mass and other assorted sins, I could not receive the Eucharist until I had gone to confession.

My first step, of course, was to go to a parish where none of the priests knew me. I sat in the pew near the confessional, but far enough away so that no one would think I was there for confession. The light above the priest's station was green. The lights above the adjoining cubicles blinked red and green as penitents entered and left.

Spiritual Life

Butterflies fluttered in my gut as I saw the green light flash and thought it was my turn. Waves of relief came over me as someone else rose from a pew to enter the confessional.

By an instinct of my upbringing, though, I knelt down for a final good-bye, asking God to understand, and there before me was the Infant of Prague prayer.

It was typed out unevenly on a sheet marred by ragged scissor marks — obviously a homemade job. I skimmed the lines quickly, but came to a screeching halt at the words “I am firmly resolved never to offend you again and to suffer everything rather than displease you.” The thought haunted me, and challenged my manhood: Would I rather die than offend God?

I pictured the old lady who I imagined had placed this prayer in the pews. She passed unnoticed through the bustle of Manhattan, silently fingering her rosary beads on the subway, giving a quarter to the beggar on the corner, talking to St. Jude in the darkness of the church. I had smugly dismissed her and her kind as hopelessly old-fashioned and repressed, yet now I saw her as a warrior of the interior life.

I would suffer everything rather than displease you! I said the words but didn't mean them. I would rather live on my own terms, I thought. I knew then that I needed more than ever to go to confession. I needed to learn the language of this new warfare that involved the battle for my soul, the “me” I so cherished.

When the light turned green, I entered the confessional: “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been 12 years since my last confession; these are my sins …” I thought I heard a sigh through the grille, but realized it was my own aching soul.

Every Saturday now, my wife and I bring our son to St. Mary's in New Haven, where they pray the novena. I bring Stephen James to the statue of the Infant of Prague, the little Jesus somewhat over-dressed as king. My son points to the statue as I tell him, “There's the baby Jesus who saved your daddy's life.”

Brian Caulfield writes from West Haven, Connecticut.