By: Jay Sorgi
Some journeys to a faith in Christ never leave the place where you live. Others, like Matt Isola’s, cross oceans to deliver you to God.
Isola will be fully initiated into the Church during this year’s Easter Vigil at the Catholic Community of Pleasanton. He grew up in Fremont and was never baptized in any Christian faith tradition.
“I remember my dad telling me about the decision he made to not baptize me and my brother. From what I remember him saying, it was a pretty tough decision for him because he knew his dad, who was very Catholic, probably would have wanted us to be baptized,” he said.
“When I was just a little kid, I remember being kind of sad. Not super sad, but just a little pang of feeling kind of left out.”
Yet Isola said that nonetheless he had powerful moments of recognition of the faith.
“I started to play basketball in CYO. We prayed the Our Father before every game. That’s where I learned the Our Father,” he said.
“We went on a trip to Italy, a family trip, and we went to the Vatican. That speaks for itself. I was obsessed with the architecture, specifically the cathedrals. I was obsessed. I wanted to learn the history of it, and it was the most beautiful place I’d ever been. It still to this day felt the most supernatural.”
College led Isola, now 31, to the University of Colorado, a place where he saw competing spiritual traditions.
A powerful God moment came to him in meeting his now-wife Meryl, who grew up in an atheist family, in an anthropology class during his senior year at Colorado.
“The love that I had for her, who she was as a person, like how perfect she was for me specifically, there had to be some type of ‘placement’ that wasn’t a chance,” he shared.
“It literally made me think there has to be a God because she just showed up in my life and was like the most perfect thing, like a light.”
He started a deeper exploration after moving back to California, saying a Biblical podcast series “broke the lid off” for me in a movement toward Christ.
But Isola said the two biggest touchstones of his faith journey came on a trip with Meryl to Malaysia in 2022, a time of disillusionment for him after COVID affected his career.
The first involved what he described as a scary incident in his hotel during the middle of the night.
“It was like a blur. I remember not knowing where my room was. I remember briefly being in the stairwell. I must have probably gone down the elevator, ended up in the stairwell. I remember being very confused, like I didn’t know where my room was,” he said.
“It was absolutely not sleepwalking. I don’t know what it is. I still to this day don’t know what it is. But it was very, very terrifying. I woke up the next day super terrified, a super unsettling feeling. Worst feeling I’ve ever had, probably.”
Isola said that day, he decided to download and read the Bible on his phone. His flight back home confirmed his journey to Christ.
“The woman that I’m sitting next to had no carry-on luggage, nothing except for a tattered Bible that was in her seat back pocket. I was like, ‘Hey, I just started reading the Bible yesterday.’ She said, ‘Oh, my gosh! That’s why I’m on this flight…I wasn’t even supposed to be on this airline. God put me here to meet you.’”
Isola said the sparkle she had in her eye offered a true love and joy.
“Super selfless…we spent the whole flight just talking about the Bible, talking about God, talking about how unlikely it was that we ended up sitting next to each other,” he said.
Matt and Meryl experienced and discerned various denominations, and had been conversing with the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA) program director Matt Gray at St. Augustine.
“We just really both felt this draw to the Catholic Church. The first time we went to a Mass, I remember we both just started crying when the Liturgy of the Eucharist happened,” Isola said.
“One day I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to commit.’”
He said the OCIA process leading to his celebration of the sacraments of initiation have given him wisdom.
“Every time there’s a homily, or every time we study something on Monday nights, it feels like it answers a lot of those questions that I didn’t even really know I had from when I was younger,” he said.
Meryl, who had been baptized despite growing up in an atheist house, will be fully received into the Catholic Church with Matt.
“I feel like I have built my house on a rock,” he said.
“I just feel so grateful that things are just calm and that I’m excited for the future and my wife being right there with me the whole time, encouraging me and following me.”