By Christina Hanna Paul –
I was born and raised Catholic. Sunday Mass, the Rosary, Catechesis, I had it all inbuilt from childhood. I was the girl in the friend group who still went to Mass on Sundays, who kept a rosary on her bedside table, who set up a little altar in every flat she ever lived in. My friends called me the religious one. I believed them. But the truth was I had no idea who Jesus actually was. I knew the motions. I did not know the heart.
A few years ago, a darkness settled over me. Eight months of it. Constant tears, physical pain from the weight of it, sleepless nights, and a desperate restlessness that made even the distractions feel like burdens. I was searching for something to hold onto and finding nothing.
Then I came across a sister, a woman who had devoted her life to religious life, speaking about the Rosary and Our Lady in a way I had genuinely never heard before. Something about her broke through. Maybe it was because I was desperate enough to actually listen. I remember sitting there thinking, I have recited these prayers my whole life. Why does this sound so completely different?
I picked up the Rosary and prayed it for twenty consecutive days. Those were the most honest prayers I had ever offered. Two in the morning, rosary beads in hand, eyes full of tears. I meant every single word.
And then one day the weight was just not there anymore. I cannot explain it any other way. It was gone. I could breathe again. That one month of wilderness had been God clearing everything away so He could finally speak. And He did. Through Scripture, through homilies I had never known existed, through voices like Fr Mike Schmitz and Bishop Robert Barron that opened up an entire world of Catholic teaching I had somehow never encountered in a lifetime of practising the faith.
The thirst that started there never stopped. I just kept wanting more. And I kept sharing what I was finding with my sisters, with friends, with anyone who seemed to be searching for the same things. Two years of this. Two years of scrambling through tabs, hunting for links, piecing things together from different corners of the internet, wishing there was one place I could point people to and say, ” Start here”.
In 2025, I was given the grace of a pilgrimage to the major basilicas in Rome during the Jubilee Year. Standing in those spaces, something settled in me. All of this reading, all of this searching, all of this wanting to share what I had found, I had to do something with it. God had not brought me across all of this content for no reason.
After praying a novena to Saint Anthony, I began building Vine & The Branch. Seventeen topics, the Rosary, Holy Mass, the Eucharist, the sacraments, Marian devotion, Bible study, testimonials, Advent, Lent, and more, structured the way my own faith journey actually worked. One curiosity leading to the next. Because that is exactly how the Holy Spirit moves.
My baptismal name is Hanna. It means grace in Hebrew. I could not think of a better name for something that exists entirely because of it.
If you are Catholic and new to faith, returning after a long absence, or simply wanting to go deeper, this space was built for you. You do not have to go through rabbit holes or spend hours searching. This is just a head start. The rest is between you and the Holy Spirit. He will do what only He can do.
Vine & The Branch is a free Catholic digital resource at vineandthebranch.in.
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Hanna (Christina Hanna Paul) is a Kerala-based Catholic laywoman who has spent several years in the technology sector and felt called to build something for the faith after encountering Jesus in a deeply personal way. She is the founder of Vine & The Branch, a free Catholic digital resource built for anyone beginning, returning to, or deepening their faith. She writes from personal experience of what it means to find Jesus for the first time, even after a lifetime of going to Mass.