Although she was raised without religion, Tiffany Chen believes she always has had faith in her heart. “I knew God loved me,” she said.
Chen became Catholic during the Easter Vigil on April 4 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., receiving the sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist.
The former consultant for the federal government was among the workers who lost jobs this past year during the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) cuts. Chen, a native of Maryland who has two business degrees from the University of Maryland, is descended from grandparents who fled Communist oppression in China and immigrated to the United States.
Her father, who has a doctorate in nuclear engineering and had a consulting firm before retiring, is “a militant atheist… but I was so faithful since I was very little, but nobody taught me about faith. I just kind of always believed,” she said.
She was born with a very rare form of blood cancer, and she remembers that when she was young and being treated in the hospital, “I closed my eyes and prayed,” and her bleeding stopped. From early on, Chen said she has had “unshakable faith.”
“Every time I ever prayed, miracles happened,” she said.
While browsing in a bookstore when she was about 8, Chen picked up a book explaining the meaning of names. She was born on Jan. 7, near the feast of the Epiphany, and the listing on her name in the book explained that “girls in ancient Greece would be named Tiffany if they were born around Epiphany.” The listing went on to say that “Tiffany means Epiphany, which is the appearance of God… To me, this reaffirms I have faith in my heart,” Chen said.
Reflecting on that discovery, Chen now says that book revealed God’s plan for her.
“I’ve always been a believer since I was really young. Nobody in my family cultivated that. They wanted me to be an engineer or academic. I was so into art, religion and philosophy at a young age,” she said.
While Chen was in middle school, her father took their family to Rome in 1999. She remembers walking through the main door of St. Peter’s Basilica for the Jubilee Year. While visiting another basilica there, they got tickets to a papal audience, and Chen remembers sitting in the third or fourth row, getting a close view of Pope, now Saint, John Paul II.
“I have never fan-girled out about any celebrity in my life. I lost my mind,” Chen said, laughing at the memory.
During that visit, she also visited one of the catacombs, seeing where early Christians kept the faith alive during Roman persecution, and she felt an aura of holiness seeing their bones in the walls of those subterranean passages.
“I came back up (thinking), ‘That’s it, I’m Catholic,’” she said, remembering that at dinner that evening, she told her parents, “I’m Catholic.”
As an adult, Tiffany Chen has traveled to all seven continents. “When I travel, I try to find a Catholic church,” she said.
Last year while experiencing serious health problems and after several stays in the hospital, Chen began participating in the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults classes at a parish, but she realized that she wouldn’t have time to complete her classes before Easter. Feeling a sense of urgency, she decided to get baptized at a small Episcopal church.
But Chen added that “I’ve always known I’m Catholic… I just knew I wanted to be confirmed Catholic. I knew I wanted to join the original Church, the Church that Jesus built Himself,” and she prayed, asking God to “show me where I need to go.”
In early 2026, she walked into St. Matthew’s Cathedral after losing her government job around Christmas time. “I just got DOGE-d,” she said, explaining that she had worked for five years as a program manager for Medicare and Medicaid, helping to run IT and networking for cybersecurity for those government agencies.
Chen said that was a full circle moment for her, because in 2014 after being let go from her defense contracting position, she had gone into that cathedral. “I somehow wandered into St. Matthew’s and broke down crying in the pew (then),” she said.
In the years since, Chen thinks she walked past the cathedral “thousands of times.”
But as this new year began, after praying for God to show her where to go, she walked back into St. Matthew’s Cathedral.
“I knew I was supposed to be there the whole time, (that) this is my spiritual home,” Chen said, adding, “I felt welcome. It felt warm and kind and loving and welcoming.”
The cathedral’s beauty, she said, gave her “a sense of awe” and “the glory of God.”
Reflecting on how she returned to St. Matthew’s, Chen said, “God led me there in 2014. Twelve years later, I finally found my way home.” She told friends that “I found my way to God.”
Chen began attending OCIA classes at the cathedral, preparing to become Catholic at the Easter vigil. Those classes, she said, have been “a godsend” and “everything I prayed for. I wanted something clear in a murky world.”
After searching for God and meaning in the world, Chen said that period of preparing to receive the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist “has been like sunlight for me in my life.”
Asked what she has learned from the experiences in her spiritual journey, Chen said, “Don’t give up. Persist. God is waiting for you.”
Chen said she didn’t think her life would be different after the Easter Vigil. “It will just be made whole,” she said, adding, “This is what God has always wanted for me.”
