Every spring, high school seniors find themselves in the throes of standardized testing, college applications and wrapping up their studies.
Lyla Breto, 18, a senior at Pleasant Grove High School in Texarkana, is focusing on her future by also joining the Catholic Church. And she isn’t afraid to tell her entire school.
Growing up, religion was absent from Breto’s household.
“When I was little, I never really went to church at all. My mom, she’s one of those people who believes that you can be a Christian and still not go to church. That’s kind of where both my parents were, I guess. So they just never really took me to church.”
High school meant an opportunity to meet new people and do new things for Breto.
“As I entered high school, I started making friends with lots of new people and trying lots of new things. A lot of my friends were going to church, and I wanted to see what it was like, because I’d only gone a handful of times with my grandparents, so I didn’t really have a good recollection of it.”
She was introduced to the Catholic Church when she was 15 and dating a boy who was Catholic.
“The first time in high school that I had gone to church was with a boy I was dating at the time. He went to Sacred Heart (Church in Foreman), and he really wanted me to go with him. So I did,” she said. “It was just incredible. I was seriously just mesmerized by everything. I had gone to some churches before. None of them were Catholic churches. So I thought you sit there and they talk at you, but it was completely different in a Catholic church.”
Breto was puzzled. After moving from Pennsylvania to live with her mom following her parents’ divorce and growing up in the Protestant Bible Belt, she’d heard things about the Catholic Church. But what she saw had been different.
“All I could think was that Catholics weren’t anything like what people said they were,” she said. “People have made it out to be that Catholics were evil and this and that. But I had never seen such reverence for the Lord in my life. It was just so beautiful and so powerful, and that’s all I could think about the whole time. And I just wanted to keep going, so I did.”
Even Breto and her boyfriend broke up, she made a decision to join the Church.
“Eventually, I decided to reach out to St. Edward Church and figure out how to get into their OCIA program. I’ve been going ever since,” she said.
Breto said she’s grown a lot since then and is excited for Easter Vigil. But not everyone is as enthusiastic about her decision.
“My mom still tries to talk me out of converting,” she said. “The biggest response I got from it, not just from my family but from everybody, was that I’m just becoming Catholic to be like the boy that I was dating. I had to explain to them that it wasn’t like that, and that I really just felt drawn to the Church, and I’m glad that he was able to bring me to the Church, even if we didn’t work out.”
A lot of Breto’s friends and classmates were having a hard time reconciling who she was with who she is.
“There’s a girl who is kind of in my social circle, and I’ve been told that she says things like, ‘I don’t know why she’s trying to be Catholic when she’s done this and that in the past.’ And so I try to explain that we recognize that humans are sinful in nature and that we’ve all sinned, but that I’m actively trying to work against it.”
Breto published a column in the school newspaper about her conversion.
“I’d been so worried about the rumors I’d heard,” she wrote. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made mistakes, and I feared that my past would define how they saw me. But those worries melted away the moment I walked through the church doors. Not only was everyone welcoming and supportive, but I noticed something powerful: in every Mass, we confess that we are all sinners and ask for forgiveness.”
“This one boy texted me three pages of reasons he disagrees with the Catholic Church” after the column came out, Breto told Arkansas Catholic with a laugh. “I wonder if he just had it, or if he wrote it specifically because of my article. Either way, I’m amazed.”
St. Edward Church OCIA director Kelli Nugent has been inspired by Breto’s display of faith.
“She’s a very driven student, taking several dual-credit courses this year,” she said. “I have not encountered too many high school students pursuing entering a new faith in the midst of their senior year. I’m sure they are out there. I’ve simply not encountered them.”
Now, in addition to wrapping up her high school career and moving to Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, in the fall, Breto has a few other things to be excited about.
“There’s just so many things that are just so great about being Catholic, and I’m really excited to experiment with them all and sacraments — I’m excited for those,” she said. “Obviously, I’m excited to receive the Eucharist. I may be jumping the gun a little bit, but I’m really excited in the future to have kids and raise them Catholic — to bring more Catholics to the world.”
