Loved Into Life: Ted Nagy’s Story

How family, friends and an abuela brought one prodigal son back to the Church.

Long before Ted Nagy's return to the Church, his grandmother prayed fervently for him, though she wouldn’t have the chance to see her grandson come home. (Photo provided)

It was a quiet spring afternoon at Notre Dame, and Ted Nagy found himself walking by the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the university’s campus. Professor Tim O’Malley, a theology professor known for his popular course, The Nuptial Mystery, had recently invited the class to spend time perusing the beautiful basilica. With the invitation in mind, Nagy felt drawn inside — though he couldn’t exactly describe why.

It was a familiar space for Nagy, since his parents had been married there, and his uncle, Father David Scheidler, a Holy Cross priest whom he loved and looked up to, had been rector of the basilica’s crypt.

Walking the basilica's interior on that serene spring afternoon, taking in the artwork, stained glass windows and reliquaries, Nagy suddenly felt wrapped in love. It was as if his grandmother, Father Scheidler and his childhood religion teacher — all examples of faith throughout his life who had recently passed away — were by his side, reintroducing him to the faith he’d known in a space to which he’d been so intimately connected.

“It felt like the three of them were just walking around with me and reintroducing me to the faith I’d grown up with and to the Lord and holding my hand and bringing me to God,” he recalled.

Road to Despair

Though raised Catholic, at this point, Nagy had fallen away from his childhood faith and hadn’t been inside a church in some time. He’d grown frustrated by how the Catholic and conservative would commingle and even contradict.

“I wasn’t prepared to say I was an atheist, but I felt agnostic and somewhat alienated from my Catholic extended family because of our many differences in political opinions,” Nagy shared. “The way that my family conflated religion and politics made it feel like I was just a completely different thing, a black sheep, almost.”

With the new freedom afforded him heading into college, he’d stopped attending Mass and Confession. Still seeking, he turned to “that idealized idea of a party college experience.” In the process, he found himself all the more alone, alienated from family, unknown and unsupported by friends.

“My parents and I had lots of conversations about it. They were obviously disappointed that I’d left the faith, and they didn’t fully understand it. They were sad. They felt a bit helpless, I think,” Nagy remembered. “But they also knew they couldn’t force me to come back and that it had been a heavy hand that had driven me away, and that I needed to be enticed back. So we would have conversations, and they did a good job of giving me the space to come to my own conclusions, but also gave me examples of the kind of faith and virtue they wanted to see for me in my life.”

Then COVID hit.

COVID: An Unexpected Grace

It was the spring of his sophomore year, and Nagy found himself on a beach in Florida for spring break. News of the pandemic hit, and, in just a few days, his life was turned upside down. Plunged into a year of social isolation as he moved back in with his parents, with nothing but time and solitude to reflect on life, faith and friendships, he began to see just how empty he really felt.

“Even if I wasn’t ready to profess the Creed, I was aware of the toll the decisions I was making and the lifestyle I was living were taking on my soul, and the negative consequences they had on my heart,” he said.

Though socially distant from friends, classmates and university, Nagy grew all the closer with his family and siblings. The time of social isolation, with its unique challenges, ended up being a great grace as he experienced new life in his familial relationships.

“I actually see [moving back home] as a blessing because when I left for college, I was a selfish 18-year-old and wanted to get away from my family. I really only saw the ways that they were hurting me,” Nagy recalled. “When I came back to live with them a few years later, I had a new appreciation for the life that my parents had built, the beauty of our family and for the lives of my younger siblings. So, I was able to turn outwards more, pour into them and be the older brother to them that I wanted to be — and that they needed.”

“In that loneliness, that’s where God found me.”

But post-COVID, when he moved out again for his senior year into a new off-campus house, Nagy experienced a new, profound loneliness as he found himself disconnected from old friends and new roommates.

“It ended up being probably the loneliest time in my life,” he shared. “And in that loneliness, that’s where God found me.”

Nagy’s younger brother, Peter, had just begun at Notre Dame after a gap year and had already formed solid, holy friendships. So, Nagy decided to spend time with Peter and his friends.

Slowly, he grew closer to those “great friends of virtue,” spending time on the quad, juggling, throwing a frisbee or playing volleyball or Spikeball — times that would always end in prayer in a chapel, in the university’s grotto or in the Basilica. Though their hangouts seemed typical on the surface, something was different about this friend group.

“The conversations we had were a balm to my soul after such a long period of superficial conversations and feeling like nobody really cared to know who I was,” Nagy recalled. “Conversations with these new friends went deep, and they were really interested to know my experience, to love my whole person and not just appreciate some superficial aspect of what I was presenting to the world. It really was the witness of these friends, I think, that brought me back to the faith.”

Over time, Nagy felt his heart softened by the love these friends showed him. It made him open to the movements of the Holy Spirit, whether through the invitation of his new friend group to join them for Mass or through the invitation of his professor to visit the Basilica on campus.

After that fateful visit to Notre Dame’s Basilica on that serene spring day, Nagy felt tugged home.

“It was a week before Holy Week, so on Palm Sunday, sometime in the evening, I went to Confession with Peter,” Nagy said. “I came out in tears. I walked over to him, and he gave me the biggest hug. Then we went to Palm Sunday Mass together and did all of Holy Week, and I got to celebrate with the Church on Easter.”

Carried by Prayer

Long before his return to the Church, even as Nagy wove his way through college and searched for deeper meaning, his grandmother, Maria del Refugio León Scheidler, known to everyone as Quiquis, prayed fervently for him, though she wouldn’t have the chance to see her grandson come home.

For Nagy, though, that prayer often seemed intense, and Quiquis’ passion caused tension in their relationship.

“I know that Quiquis, who was a strong voice of faith in my family and in the lives of many people, prayed for me all the time. But we didn’t have a good relationship because every time I saw her, she would try to convert me,” Nagy said. “It never felt like she understood me or my interests. It was always like, ‘I’m going to give you something that will make you more like what I want you to be.’ So, I felt misunderstood by her, but I also knew she loved me a lot because she showed her love through service and prayer.”

In short, Nagy said, “There was never any doubt in my mind that she loved me, but I felt like she didn’t know me.”

Their relationship came to a head when she suddenly fell ill. On her deathbed, she looked Nagy in the eyes and told him to shape up, or else.

“It cut me deeply. It felt like this is the note that we’re going to end on: you’re disappointed in me, and you’re afraid for me,” Nagy shared. “It hurt that after all that conflict that we had over the years, all the times that I’d felt misunderstood by her, the last thing she was going to say to me was basically, fix yourself.”

While Quiquis did pass away shortly thereafter, their story did not end there. As Nagy grieved — at the same time as he returned to faith — he began to experience new healing.

“In her absence, I began to mend that relationship. I think we were able to understand each other better after her death,” he explained.

“She came back — she always said she was going to haunt me,” he said with a chuckle. “I felt her presence strongly in some moments during my reversion. I came to understand how much she cared for me and was fighting on my behalf. She is possibly the strongest advocate that I have in the next life.”

That realization was made all the clearer when his mother, Alicia, went to help clean out Quiquis’ house. As she did so, she found a framed photo of Nagy on Quiquis’ nightstand, right next to her bed. It was clear that Quiquis would pray over the image for him every single night, though he was but one of her 44 grandchildren.

“I felt very loved,” Nagy said, choking back emotion. “It’s a powerful thing to know that there’s somebody out there who loves you so much that, even if they can’t express it in person or in words, they devoted so much of their life to loving you and to what they believed was the most important thing, which was the salvation of your soul. That can heal a lot.”

A Man for Others

Now, years later, the Denver transplant finds himself loved back to life — and life abundantly — by his family, friends, Quiquis and others. He feels steady on the rock of his own faith, even after years of seeking.

“I’m at the point where there’s no doubt that there is a God, that he is good and that he loves me, wants to take care of me, give me the best in my life and help me grow through difficulty,” Nagy said. “At this point, I think what I’m working on is remembering to turn to him in everything.”

And he’s grateful for the journey, despite its twists and turns, ups and downs.

“Honestly, the practice of doing this [interview] fills me with so much gratitude. I feel strengthened in my faith as I trace the ways the Lord has worked in my life that seem so mysterious but fruitful,” he shared.

Today, Nagy seeks to be the kind of friend he encountered in college and the kind of intercessor his grandmother was, knowing just how transformational that prayerful friendship can be for others.

“The example of those friends in Indiana who helped bring me back to the faith is one that I try to emulate with my own friends, just walking with them, encouraging them to do good, to receive the sacraments, to have an active prayer life. We all bolster each other,” Nagy said.

As he walks alongside these friends in faith and fellowship, he encourages, challenges and suffers with others, just like his friends in Indiana did for him.

“It’s the greatest honor when people trust you and believe that you’re going to love them even if they show the part of themselves that they’re not proud of,” he added.

“One of the main things that I pray for is to be the face of God to somebody else in some little way, maybe that I don’t recognize or that they don’t recognize, but that they might feel down the road,” he concluded.