MADISON — “It was a joyful, joyful night. A joyful morning.”

Belle Goebel spoke these words, referring to the Easter Vigil, when she entered the Catholic Church. At 93 years old, she was Baptized during the Easter Vigil Mass on April 4 at St. Maria Goretti Church in Madison, part of Divine Mercy Parish.

Belle has a lot of practice listening to the voice of God.

“When there is a serious time in my life, of course, I read the Gospels,” Belle said.

She reflected on the passage where Jesus asks the disciples about His identity.

“[Jesus] asks, ‘What are people saying? Who do people say I am?’ And you know what He gets back? A word salad!

“‘Well, some people say, but some people say, but other people say, but then there are other . . . ’ And He doesn’t like that, a very persistent, direct young man, and He says, ‘Wait a minute, who do you say I am?’

“In 93 years, He’s had time to ask that question a lot of times. So when we stood by the font, I recognized what the [bishop and priests] were asking, like Jesus, and I answered, ‘My Lord and my God.’”

Families of faith

She’s long considered joining the Catholic Church.

“It was something I have wanted to do, I have contemplated for a long time

. . . all my life. I come from two traditions in which the Holy Spirit is extremely important.”

Belle comes from a family with two faith traditions — Quakerism on her mother’s side, and Irish Catholicism on her father’s.

Her ancestors were part of the Underground Railroad, and her Quaker grandfather, Charles Osborn, ran the first abolitionist newspaper in the Middle Border States.

She has visited Cass County in Michigan, where the family orchard was, and she remembers seeing slaver wagons at the bottom of the local lake.

They had been pushed into it by the town’s abolitionists when the slavers tried to recapture fugitive slaves in the area.

Belle herself was not baptized with water as a child.

“The old, old way the Quakers used to be, you were baptized when you knew you were called to preach, you were called by the Holy Spirit. And I was about nine. You were baptized at that time by the Holy Spirit. Quakerism has always relied very heavily on the natural mystic . . . They don’t do a formal ceremony.”

“It is something that happens between you and God,” Belle reflected, “As it is for every man, true baptism . . . How many times in my life has the Lord asked, ‘Who do you say that I am?’”

When she was 10, her family attended a Baptist church that did offer baptism with water.

“They believed in water. Lots of water. In fact, by the altar, they had a great big tank of galvanized iron. And I observed that it would hold a lot of water. And the Reverend tripped every time he went up the steps.”

As a child, the idea of letting a rather clumsy minister dunk her in an enormous tank of water wasn’t appealing at all.

“Jesus and John are tall, hardy young men. They didn’t trip a lot,” said Belle, thinking back with humor to her younger self’s impressions.

“I would risk it in the Jordan with Jesus and John, but not maybe with the Reverend.”

Teaching for God

Belle’s tried throughout her life to answer God’s call — and it came in several ways. She was a wife and mother, and loved being both.

She was also called to teach. She remembers when her son was in high school, and told her that Latin was going to be taken out of the Catholic school, because there weren’t enough Sisters to teach it.

Knowing she could do something about that, she heard an invitation from God in the situation.

She went to talk to the Sister who was the principal.

Belle told her, “‘It’s wrong that these Catholic children will not be able to understand the Mass. It’s beautiful, the words are beautiful, the Latin is beautiful. Would you keep it, if someone would offer to teach it for you?’”

The principal didn’t want to omit it from the curriculum, but they couldn’t pay a lay teacher’s salary.

“And I said, ‘What if I would teach it for what they pay you, Sister?’ And she said, ‘Do you know what they pay me?’ And I said, ‘Yes. That’ll be just fine.’”

So she volunteered at Edgewood High School, teaching there for 17 years. She became close to the Sisters. “They were my faith community.”

Belle herself had first seen Latin in her grandfather’s prayer book.

“You can learn quite a bit from a prayer book, because on one side is the original Latin and on the other side is English. And it was beautiful. And I determined that as soon as they had it in school, I would learn to read it.”

She got her chance to study Latin in high school.

“I loved it so much that I did the first year in half a year, and we demanded that I have an exam so that I could skip Latin II, and needless to say, the public school had fits, but they couldn’t really say no, and I aced it.”

She also won a scholarship with her Latin skills — a contest where she was only really worried about the Catholic schools.

“I was not concerned about the public schools; they were absolutely pitiful, but as soon as the Jesuits, as soon as I beat the boys in the Jesuit high school . . . the Benedictines, too . . . Then I knew I had it.”

Belle’s passion for classical languages continued into college, where she earned a master’s degree in Greek.

But she never went on to get a Ph.D. — she wanted to teach younger students, not college age.

She wanted to introduce students to the classical languages.

“Learning a language opens the door to a different age, to meeting people, to understanding that people are the same. They were the same. It was just as hard to be a Christian 2,000 years ago. There was just as active, just as cruel, just as crude a secular world then, that you had to find a way to live a Christian life in. It wasn’t easier then. It isn’t meant to be easier.”

Entering the Church

Her study of languages became a critical part of her reading of the Gospels, and eventually an impetus for formally entering the Catholic Church.

She had been praying over the Gospels and reading them in Greek, and it became plain to her that Jesus, in the Gospels, asked for Baptism with water.

“He said that clearly. I’ve tried to do what He has made clear in my life and with my life, what He wanted. And when I knew that He wanted Baptism, I could do that, for my Lord and my God. I was very happy to give Him what He asked for, and very grateful for the loving kindness, the family in God I found here.”  

Having lost her husband this year after more than 70 years of marriage, the loving concern of those around her has profoundly impacted her. “Such a welcoming, loving group of people . . . I was looking for a faith community. I found a faith family.”  

In addition to a life of faith and academics, Belle is an artist. She worked in watercolor and has won awards and had her work in galleries and shows in the Madison area and beyond.

She sees a response to God’s invitation in that as well.

“God made a beautiful world. If I can show its beauty, if I can show what I saw beautiful in any place, it glorifies the Maker of that beauty. What else can I say? Modern art glorifies the artist, if anything. But to glorify God’s earth, God’s beauty, the country I’ve walked over, ridden over, slept on the ground in, it glorifies God. I’m just saying again . . . ‘My Lord and my God.’”

Some of her art originated on a trip to Ireland. She explored the country her family had come from, and it was beautiful.

However, she was greatly frustrated, and now looking back is greatly amused, by the effort it took to get an Irish boiled potato. All the restaurants kept offering her french fries. But she got her boiled pratie eventually.

At 93, she’s joyful and enthusiastic about life, surrounded by her immediate family, who love her immensely. She’s grateful for where God has led her.  

And she remains open to whatever else He may ask.

“Wherever He calls me . . . Whatever I have the strength to do.”

After a pause, she added humorously, “With a cane.”