Cristina Bernal still remembers the moment that changed her music career. It came, she said, when she was a teenager.
“I was in the room with my producer — my producer who I had known for a very long time,” the 33-year-old singer told Our Sunday Visitor. “He turned around in his chair, and he said to me, ‘You’re going to have to start sleeping with producers and writers once you get signed.'”
Bernal, 18 years old at the time and known as Cristina Ballestero, was preparing to sign a big deal with an overseas record company. She was in the studio with her producer to finish the single that would sign her.
“You know me, I’m not going to do that,” she told him as she felt her heart drop. “He said, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s going to happen,’ and he turned around and just kept working on the song.”
At that point, Bernal already had a promising future in the entertainment industry. At the age of 15, she had signed a record deal with Universal Blackground Records as part of the dance-pop group L.A.X. Gurlz. Among other successes, the group’s single, “Forget You,” premiered on MTV, played on Radio Disney and made Billboard’s 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time list.
Her plan at 18 was to perform abroad, like Adele or One Direction, and return to the United States as a star.
The interaction with her producer left her in shock: Bernal exited the studio that day anxious and uncertain about her future. Music was her identity, her life. She didn’t feel at peace again until, during her interior struggle, she encountered God in a new way.
A new path forward
Bernal spoke about her story with Our Sunday Visitor as an artist with Novum Records, which calls itself “the world’s biggest Catholic record label.” She came to the record label in 2022 after pursuing an independent music career in which she wrote and produced her own work, including her 2021 single, “T H A N K F U L.”
Along the way, after stepping away from another record deal in 2011, she felt called to lead worship and serve communities nationwide at conferences, retreats and parish missions while continuing to create music.
She does this today with Novum Records, where she focuses on worship, liturgical and contemporary Christian music. Bernal also belongs to Novum Collective, a band of Novum Records artists, and is preparing to release a new album with music for the Mass in August.
A look back
While Bernal lives in San Antonio today with her husband and two young sons, she is originally from Anaheim, California. She grew up performing everywhere, from county fairs to musical theater shows, she said. Her first big performance came during kindergarten in front of 500 people at her Catholic school’s talent show.
She embraced pop music, first listening to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and, then, Kelly Clarkson and Celine Dion. She attended “Hollywood Pop Academy,” a school that taught her the skills of how to be a pop star, where she connected with the producer who put together her group, L.A.X. Gurlz. The group signed with Universal Blackground Records for a couple of years until they had a falling out, Bernal said, disbanding in 2009.
Afterward, she returned to normal high school life and prepared to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at her church. In the process of getting confirmed, her youth minister convinced her to join the worship band. At first, she resisted.
“I didn’t have this personal relationship with him,” she said of God. “It just felt … like this is what I’m supposed to do, I show up here, I do this, and that’s it.”
A lesson in vulnerability
During her time in the worship band, Bernal experienced a moment that continues to affect her music today. It came during Eucharistic adoration.
“I had remembered my youth minister during band practice say, ‘OK, you guys sound good, but now I want you to think about the words while you’re singing,'” Bernal said. “I got through the first line and then I just stopped singing and I just broke down crying.”
At the time, she felt embarrassed. But her youth minister encouraged her, calling it a beautiful moment.
“You, in that moment, in your vulnerability with God, gave permission to the other people in the room to give themselves to the Lord in that way too,” he told her.
She still remembers the song that made her stop singing: “Savior, Please” by Josh Wilson. She stopped as she got to the chorus: “I try to be so tough / But I’m just not strong enough / I can’t do this alone, God I need you / To hold on to me.”
“That moment has really impacted me in that it’s really important that when I’m worshipping and when I’m praying, when I’m leading music … that I’m honest and I’m vulnerable with the Lord,” she said.
The presence of God
After high school, Bernal continued to pursue her dream of becoming a pop star. As she polished the single that would sign her with the overseas record company, something else happened that made her pause. Her younger sister Lillian, who was 10 at the time, heard the song.
“I had started to sing worse and worse music,” Bernal said. The single “wasn’t anything that you wouldn’t hear on the radio,” with inappropriate innuendo in its chorus.
“She said, ‘Ew. Are you singing that?'” Bernal recalled.
Though she tried to laugh off Lillian’s remark, as they drove home, “everything that my conscience had tried to suppress was shooting like fire in my brain.” Looking back, she realizes the Holy Spirit was working through her sister.
An encounter with the Holy Spirit
A few days later, Bernal had a rehearsal in Los Angeles. She remembers looking at her best friend and saying, “You know what? … Maybe it’s not that weird … People do this all the time.”
At that point, she had a broken relationship with God and spent time partying and dating men she should have avoided. Still, she said she was shocked by the words that came out of her mouth.
By the time Bernal and her friend returned home, it was the middle of the night. Bernal felt overwhelmed by her anxiety for the future and thinking about what she should do when she spotted the moon piercing through the pitch-black night. She put on a song that she used to sing in adoration: “From the Inside Out” by Hillsong. As she continued to look at the moon, she suddenly felt at peace. She didn’t know why, but she started talking to it. Then she opened her hands and realized that her face, arms and hands felt warm and tingly.
“I believe I was baptized in the Holy Spirit that night, through the Blessed Mother,” she said.
A talk with God
The next morning, Bernal went to a chapel and knelt before God.
“I told him, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, I can’t believe you’re putting me in this situation,” she said. “I don’t want to sleep with these producers, I don’t want to do those things, I want to be a good example for women. … I want to spread goodness and beauty in the world.'”
Then she gave herself to God.
“What am I supposed to do, what do you want me to do?'” she asked God, before falling silent for 40 minutes. In that space, she said, “the Lord was just overflowing me with peace and just embracing me.”
“It was like — without hearing it audibly — he was saying, ‘I need you to come be with me, I want you to come be with me,'” she said. “When I felt that and I knew that, I said, ‘I’m going to do it … I’m in.'”
A new day
That encounter inspired her to delve into her faith and led her to where she is today: creating and performing music for God, including music for the Mass.
“I’m honored because there’s no higher privilege than to sing at the Mass,” she said, “where heaven meets earth.”
While some people have a calling to perform and even evangelize in the secular music industry, Bernal said she feels called to serve the Church.
“If, when people come home, nobody’s there to embrace them or to pray with them — people who are called and anointed in that way — then what are we doing?” she asked. “I feel like that’s really where the Lord wants me.”
