During Holy Week of 1999 I was in Philadelphia for the annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies. On the afternoon of Good Friday, instead of attending the scheduled business meeting, I decided to go to whatever church was nearest. That turned out to be Saint John the Evangelist, a Roman Catholic church, where I attended a performance of Franz Liszt's Via Crucis (The Way of the Cross).

Saint John the Evangelist was not stripped down, like some modern Catholic churches. There were grottoes and niches and altars all about. For some reason, I was taken back to my early childhood, to the experience of sitting in church when I didn't grasp the details of what was going on but was enveloped in mystery. It seemed that my brother was sitting next to me. I had the uncanny sense that he was seeing everything I saw.

Of course the Baptist sanctuaries where we sat as small boys didn't look anything like this, but it occurred to me then with a conviction I can't explain that we would have felt at home here. And for the first time, following the Stations of the Cross, I felt something more: a deep, piercingly sweet appreciation of Mary, the mother of Jesus, linked with the love my brother and I felt for our mother and at the same time suggesting the incomprehensible love of God for us. Before that time, I had understood Marian devotion intellectually, though like many Protestants I was mostly conscious of its excesses; I had never felt it.

I was taken back to that experience a few days ago when my wife Wendy and I were doing our reading from the Catholic prayer book, Magnificat, which we have been using for some time. Because we are not Catholic, there are times when we skip passages, as when we are directed to pray through ...