Prima Verba – Part 1

We all know instinctively and experientially that final words are important.

“And they lived happily ever after.”

“Rosebud.”

“And behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

But it’s often the case that first words are equally important.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“Four score and seven years ago…”

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Now, while it’s certainly not the case that all first words are created equal, it’s wise to choose all first words carefully. That’s what I’m in the process of doing right now. Choosing first words.

I couldn’t count the number of times in my two score and fourteen years that I’ve found myself regretting the fact that I hadn’t journaled about some experience, relationship, or season of life. I’m finding that memories flit away more easily than they used to, and I often wish that my younger self had planned for this contingency by writing things down. Youth is wasted on the young in more ways than one.

Adding insult to injury, I’ve been assured by my elders that, while the duration of our memories only decreases over time, the speed at which they depart from us ever increases. The gradual gives way to the immediate. So, I’m feeling the need to write some things down. But where to start? Which words to choose as my first words?

In a way, this was chosen for me.

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Three days ago (as I write this)—on Saturday, October 11, 2025—I posted something on X that ended up going viral. It had to do, in part, with my own journey into the Catholic Church. But mostly it had to do with several friends and many of their children—seventeen people in all—who were being received into the Catholic Church that night. My wife (Cami) and I were sponsoring seven of them. We were excited for all of them.

So, I thought I’d see if I could get maybe 50-100 Catholics to comment and welcome everyone home to the Church. I intended to show my friends all the well-wishes and support later on at the celebration feast after Mass.

Here’s what I said…

I posted this at about 10:00 in the morning. Afterwards, I set about taking care of all the tasks I needed to accomplish at home before leaving for the church in the mid-afternoon. I noticed once or twice that I was receiving more notices from X than usual, but this made sense to me. I had posted in a Community, Catholic Twitter, in order to increase the odds of getting those 50-100 comments. I had set it to post to my followers as well, but I knew the vast majority of interactions had to be coming from the Community post. It all made sense. Mission accomplished, I thought to myself.

Cami and I finished all our chores, got ready, and headed to the church at about 3:15. We wanted to go to Confession at 3:30, and we would be staying at the church the rest of the evening. Pictures were at 4:30, Mass was at 5:00, followed by a time of fellowship in the Gathering Space.

Now, I always turn off my phone before Mass. But with everything else going on, I had turned it off earlier than normal and had left it off longer than normal. At 6:30, I still had no idea what was going on with my post.

A meal for family and friends was to begin around 7:00, and it was just before that—around 6:45—that I finally turned my phone back on. The first thing I saw was a text from my friend, Keith.

“Your post has gone super viral!”

What?

“It got 106K views on X!”

It was about that time that we were all called to attention for the prayer for the meal. I think I probably glanced at my phone a little bit while I was waiting in the buffet line, but mostly I was talking with the people around me.

It wasn’t until I returned home around 9:30 that I finally was able to give my attention to whatever had been happening on X all afternoon and evening.

To use a highly technical term, it was absolutely bonkers. The numbers of notifications, comments, likes, reposts, and quotes were overwhelming. This isn’t the kind of thing that happens to some random guy like me, with about 4,000 followers.

But it wasn’t over.

At that point, the interactions were going up by the thousands every few minutes. And the next day, a video of the blessing of the Candidates—clipped from the Mass livestream on the church’s Facebook page—was posted by a very large X account, and it all took off again. The 50-100 Welcome Home! comments I had hoped for had become an exponentially larger number than I could even begin to discern or calculate.

Three days later (as I write this), the interactions on my original post have risen to just over 350K. Factor in that video post, and all the other reposts and quotes I’ve been tagged in, and the interactions are well over half a million.

Why is all this significant?

For two reasons.

First, the fact that Cami and I—along with two of our children, and now a bunch of our friends—came into the Catholic Church has gone from being a largely unknown and unimportant bit of news, to being a widely known and seemingly very important bit of news—overnight.

Second, while this news is now widely known, the story isn’t. Understandably, people want to hear it, and I know the Lord wants me to tell it. In truth, I assumed the time would come when I’d be given the opportunity to tell it more broadly. I have to admit, though, I thought it would be further down the road, and on a much smaller scale. I even had some of the details figured out already. I guess there’s a reason why they say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

So, anyway…

I’m thinking about first words.

How do I tell my story?

Where do I start?

What will my first words be?

And I think I’ve made a decision.

Since the timing was chosen for me by my viral post (which is really just to say the timing was chosen for me by the Lord), I’m going to start with that post. I’m going to take its key words, ideas, and phrases, and expand on them—filling out all the relevant details. These details will serve as Parts 2, 3, 4… of this series—prima verba. These will be my first words.

That will be a start anyway. We’ll see where it goes from there.

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I’d like to thank you for reading to this point. And I’d like to thank you in advance if you decide to stick around for more. I hope and pray that the story of my journey will be encouraging and helpful for you in your own journey.

Gloria in excelsis Deo

Aaron