Eric Wardrum is a man with a mission. A stocky, bearded biker, he loves God, his Catholic faith and motorcycles. And he uses all three to help people, including those on the streets and the incarcerated, find their way to the Lord through Catholic Cross Bearers Motorcycle Ministry, which he is president of, and also founded.

“I get very emotional, especially when I’m talking about how God has worked in my life, because it’s just amazing. It’s amazing the things he has done. I know God because of what he’s done in my life, and it substantiates everything in the Scriptures,” Eric said.

But his life didn’t always have such direction. It took many years of strife and tragedy before he finally found redemption.

Eric had a pretty normal childhood. He was raised in a Catholic home in an affluent neighborhood and did all the “normal” things. He was baptized, made his first Communion, was an altar server and attended Catholic school for a few years.

As a teenager, “things started looking different for me,” Eric recalled. “As I looked around the church, I saw a lot of people, and I didn’t feel like their faith was lining up with the Gospel I was hearing.”

He noticed that people would talk about one couple who looked like hippies, questioning why they would come to church “looking like that.” But, as he gazed at the crucifix, he noticed that  “Jesus has long hair and a beard just like the guy has. So, what’s the problem?” Although he didn’t lose his faith in Jesus, Eric said he lost faith in the Church as the way to Jesus Christ.

“I always felt that Christ was with me, but I quit going to church. That led me down the wrong road,” he said. “I started becoming a pretty bad sinner, doing things I really shouldn’t have been doing, still thinking that God was with me all the time. And really knowing that he was there but not really following what I was supposed to do as a Catholic. My faith wasn’t lining up with what I was doing.”

He started using alcohol, marijuana and other drugs — pills and LSD — as a teenager, describing himself as “very heavy into the drug use. I always wanted to be numb. I didn’t like what was going on in the world. I was very disillusioned by the Church, disillusioned by my family. I didn’t feel like my family loved me.” He also started running away from home.

His parents were concerned but didn’t know what to do. After one episode, they turned him into the police, and at age 14, he was declared an unruly child.

“Every place the court sent me, I ran away from,” he said. “I was in the juvenile detention home in Cleveland five separate times, even arrested in some other states for stuff.”

After being placed in the juvenile justice system, Eric said he felt like no one really cared about him. “My parents say they love me, but they keep putting me down here (juvenile detention) … If you love your kid, how could you put them in that place? It was awful.”

He decided to join the military to try and turn his life around. While in the Ohio National Guard, he worked as a small arms repairman. He also enjoyed riding motorcycles.

“But I still wasn’t following God … It seems like God lets me go in my own direction until I get in trouble,” he said. “We feel like we’re abandoned by God and then we wind up in a bad place and then we think, well God, you abandoned me.”

However, he admitted God let him go through many things because he needed to grow. “I feel like that’s what happened when I was in the juvenile system. I needed to grow and I didn’t grow properly and back in the faith, so he let me go again and I wound up getting into crime.”

Eric was using drugs again, “a lot worse than before. I was doing a lot of cocaine, drinking a lot, but I was still riding a motorcycle, and everybody thought I was pretty much crazy. I found out later they were all afraid of me. I was a dangerous man because I didn’t care about myself. I didn’t care about anybody. I thought I was heading for hell, but there was a little bit of hope in me that somehow, God would save me. I didn’t know how to get out of this trap I was in, but I figured somehow God could save me.”

His rocky marriage had ended, but one night in 1986, he had an altercation with his ex-wife’s boyfriend and shot him three times, killing him. Eric was back in the justice system — this time as an adult.

It took four years before his case came to trial in 1990. He could have faced the death penalty, but he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He served 18 years, spending time in several different prisons. He finished his sentence at Grafton Correctional, a minimum security facility, and was released in 2008.

While in the Cuyahoga County Jail awaiting trial,  Eric had a conversion of faith that led him back to God and the Church.

He received a pocket Bible in jail, and although he always carried it, he never read it. One day he decided to open it and things changed.

“I just started reading it,” he said. “It was as though the Scriptures were coming alive and speaking to me. I felt like I really needed Jesus. I loved what I was reading … I was a rebel and Jesus was a rebel. I hadn’t noticed before what a rebel he was. Nobody liked him … and that was me. I read it and I was like, ‘Wow.’”

After that, Eric started attending Christian services, Catholic Masses and Protestant ecumenical services. He said prayers but didn’t feel like he was forgiven until one day, a priest was hearing confessions at the jail.

“Something was burning in my heart. I had this feeling like I had to go to confession, but I was arguing with myself. I always want to say it was the good guy on my right shoulder and the bad guy on my left. The good guy was telling me to go to confession. The bad guy was saying, ‘There’s no hope for you. You’ve done everything wrong.’”

He finally decided to go to confession for the first time in many years, something he said changed his life.

“I didn’t even know where to start,” he said. The priest asked him what the worst thing was that he’d done, the one thing he didn’t think he’d be forgiven for. “I said, ‘I committed murder.’”

The priest assured him God had forgiven him and that he needed to forgive himself. Eric said the priest reminded him that some of the most famous people in the Bible — King David, St. Paul and Moses — also murdered someone. Yet, despite their sins, God still used them for great things.

“God can use you, too. You just need to forgive yourself,” the priest told him. He received absolution and said it “felt like a ton of bricks was lifted off my back. I felt like a newborn baby.”

His penance was to read the First Epistle of John, which talks about God’s love and how we respond to it. That got him thinking about what he could do when he was released from prison.

He loved riding motorcycles and a friend kept his bike while he was incarcerated. But Eric told the priest he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to ride anymore because he had come back to the faith. The priest assured him it was OK to ride, but not to resume his previous bad actions.

Eric learned about a Christian motorcycle association. After his 2008 release from Grafton, he spent some time with the group, but it wasn’t  a good fit.

“I had heard this voice inside my head saying, ‘Why don’t you start something for Catholics?’ It gnawed at me for a while,” he said. He prayed about it, listened to God’s voice and said, “God placed it upon my heart to start the Catholic Cross Bearers.”

So, in November 2008,  he launched the group,  which currently has about  120 active members.

“We’re a very mixed group of people,” he said, noting members include those with criminal records like himself, as well as police officers and retired law enforcement. He said they meet people where they are. He said some bikers are “hardcore people,” and the fact that he has a criminal record gives him “some street cred.” Some bikers won’t go into a church, but Eric said he can go to them.

“It’s very humbling for me to see how God has called all people together for this common purpose,” he added.

Catholic Cross Bearers wear embroidered purple patches on their back. Their mission is “to provide a Catholic evangelistic presence in the motorcycling world and to all those who are in the streets or imprisoned; and to provide a riding group for Catholic Christian men and women for fellowship and ministry.”

A member must be:

• A baptized Catholic Christian who rides a street-legal motorcycle or the spouse of a riding member.

• Obedient to the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Bible and the Catholic Church. 

• Obedient to the pope and to the bishops of the Catholic Church.

• Active in the life of the Catholic Church (regular Mass attendance).

• Dedicated to the mission of the Catholic Cross Bearers Motorcycle Ministry and striving to be holy — set apart for God.

Now, Eric likes to pray while riding his bike, which is his favorite way to travel. “I’m kind of within myself while on a motorcycle, so I pray a lot and think about a lot of things,” including his relationship with God, he said.

“I like to connect my riding and my faith. I do feel that God has brought me full circle, bringing me back to the Church. That’s a humbling thing. After all the bad things I’ve done, he still forgives me,” said Eric, getting emotional. “Every time you go to confession, you’re a new person. You start all over again. God is working with every one of us. It’s very humbling, but very joyful, too,” he said.

“What I want is for people to see in the ministry that there’s mercy in God, that God loves each and every one of us. No matter what your situation is in life, God loves you and he desires that everybody be saved.”