An Open Letter Part 2: The Adventure Begins

Let’s say you’ve come to the point where you’ve said, “Okay, Lord, I’ve fallen in love with you and want to abandon everything to follow you. Now what?” Now what indeed…There are so many ways to devote yourself to God, whether in the monastery, in a parish, or on the streets. I’ve told you not to bother yourself with vocational astrology, so is that to say God doesn’t care whether you become a monk or a missionary? Not exactly…In fact, this is where the real adventure begins.

Although it’s true that you’re not locked into any particular destiny, God probably does have a plan for you. By saying yes to following Him wherever He should lead, you’ve given Him permission to use you however He in His infinite wisdom should see fit. He knows your greatest gifts and now you’ve given Him a free hand to use them to their utmost potential. He knows where you’ll thrive, where you’ll find deep peace and joy, where you’ll be able to work best for His greater glory. He wants you there. The tricky part is, it’s probably not where you’d first expect it to be.

Monks at prayer in St. Joseph's Abbey

Want evidence of that? Those who know me know that I’m naturally inclined to the contemplative life. I find my strength and peace in quiet prayer with Our Lord and when I was in high school, I used to dream about becoming a monk in St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Fast forward six years and I was entering a missionary order. Go figure.

So why does God work this way? I can only speak from my own experience, but I’ve found that just as God knew my strengths, He also knew my weaknesses. In saying yes to Him, not only had I given Him permission to use my strengths, but I also gave Him permission to strengthen my weaknesses. My vision of what God was calling me to was limited by my own current weaknesses and limitations. I was a very withdrawn and introspective kid when I was in high school, so I imagined at the time God was calling me to be a monk.

But God’s vision isn’t limited the way mine is: He sees beyond what I am to what I could become. Once I gave Him permission, He began shaping and forming me to be the person He made me to be. He challenged my weaknesses, brought me to places where I would be stretched, and helped me grow in ways I never imagined I could. In short, He brought me on a series of adventures. With each new adventure, there was a new lesson to be learned and a little bit more clarity as to what my particular mission in life would be. At any given time, I only had a snapshot of what was going on. God told me what I needed to hear at the time, but never gave away the ending. Still, the more time went on, the more I followed Him into strange places and experiences, the more my vocation came into focus.I suspect it will be the same with you.

These adventures have occupied the majority of my discernment process, so I would be remiss not to share. For now, I'll tell you about the spiritual adventure that was in store for me. There are more to come.

The First Adventure

A Spiritual Adventure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7TaY8HWYd8

The first adventure was a primarily spiritual one: it was a process of me getting to know God and in the doing so entering a mysterious world the depths of which I had never before fathomed.

Notre Dame Chapel in Alfred, ME where I first
encountered Christ in the Eucharist.

Most of you know the beginning of this story so I’ll recap it briefly. It was the Feast of Corpus Christi, but to 8th grade me, it was like any ordinary Sunday. But as I sat quietly while Fr. Ted gave his sermon, something out of the ordinary happened: I listened. He was talking about the Eucharist. He said that it wasn’t bread at all: it was Christ Himself. The same Christ who walked the earth 2000 years ago was standing right in front of me.

I was shocked. He couldn’t be serious, and yet he was. I looked over at the tabernacle, where the Blessed Sacrament that I had received so many times before was reserved. I let my doubts go, my insistence on the absurdity of it all and for the first time looked with the eyes of faith: I saw Him. The tabernacle seemed to almost glow. Waves of joy radiated from the tabernacle and burned in my heart. I was overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of what was before me and brought to tears. He was here, He was greater than anything I’d ever known and He filled me with a joy that had no comparison in this world. My life took a sharp turn at that point.

It was clear to me that the universe I lived in was a very different place than I had first thought. I thought I knew the way world worked, but it was clear to me now that the world held mysteries the likes of which I had never dreamed of. Stranger still was the fact that I wasn’t the first to discover them…I remember at one point turning to my dad and asking him, “Why didn’t you tell me Christ was present in the Eucharist?” His response was very casual: “Oh, you didn’t know that?” (To his credit, he had told me and I just hadn’t gotten it.) Ordinary Catholics like my dad knew about these things; the Church had held this treasured knowledge for over 2000 years, and I knew none of it. I had to learn more.

Truth be told, I felt a little like Indiana Jones those first few years. I knew there were mysteries and secrets about the world that had yet to be unlocked and I had the strange feeling that bygone ages were more aware of them than our current one. There were more to those old legends about mystics and miracles than met the eye and while most of those beliefs had fallen by the wayside, vestiges of them still remained. Who were those saints in the stained glass window? Why did my grandmother start sprinkling Holy Water every time it started thundering out? And where did that secret staircase in the back of the school chapel lead?

Snooping around the back of the chapel only got me so far. I discovered a reliquary and a bunch of old altars, but none of that told me what they were for. I needed to do some reading up on these things, but where to look? My theology textbook was no help. I mean, pictures of smiling children are great and all, but generically stating over and over again that Jesus loves me wasn’t helping me unlock these mysteries any faster. But the old books took a different approach. What I was looking for couldn't be found in the new glossy paged textbooks but in the old dusty books that no one touched anymore. At Cheverus, those old dusty books were kept in the Jesuit residence...

The Vatican Library: the reason I studied Latin...

The Jesuit residence had been converted to classrooms about fifteen years before I got to Cheverus, but the library remained fully stocked with religious books of all sorts. There was just one problem: students weren’t allowed to take books out of there and the vast majority of the time the door was locked. All except for Key Club meetings…Key Club meetings were held in the Jesuit library. From the time when Mr. Westley finished the meeting to the time when I had to be out (lest I look conspicuous), I had about ten minutes to scan titles and peruse books as fast as I could. While I opened to a lot of random pages in the Summa, and looked at a lot of Latin texts, it didn’t solve my problem. Catholic Encyclopedia, Mother Teresa and the Catechism of the Catholic Church soon became my spiritual and theological staples.

A word to the wise: the Catechism is a great tool. Refer to it often. But I learned by trial and error that it is best not to cross reference it while your theology teacher is lecturing...

It was an intense year. I was constantly peppering my teachers with questions and objections about the faith. I began taking Latin not even knowing where the language came from but only knowing the Church wrote a lot of stuff in it. The more I learned about the Church, the more fascinated I became. It was true: all the mysteries I was bumping into by accident, the Church had known about long ago. She knew Christ was truly present in the Eucharist and even had an ancient practice of adoring Jesus exposed in a thing called a monstrance. She knew that God spoke through prayer (although I had never heard much about it) and could guide me on how to discern the voice of God from my own. She knew that by abandoning myself in faith, the obstacles would be removed and I could see and hear Our Lord. All of her teachings came not from her, but from Christ Himself; I knew that because she was confirming everything I had just seen for myself.

The Cheverus High School chapel where I spent
so many free periods.

Spiritually, I kept digging deeper. You couldn’t keep me away from the Cheverus chapel if you tried. Every morning I would go in there before school and pray the rosary. The rosary was another one of those mysteries I wanted to unlock. I didn't understand it, but I knew Our Lady had appeared at Fatima and asked us to say the rosary every day. Why I still wasn't sure, but I thought maybe I'd understand better if I learned it in Latin. Once I was done with the rosary, I would simply kneel there and talk to Christ present in the Eucharist about my day, my life, His will for me. With all those questions, He was giving me a lot of answers.

Over the years my prayer life evolved. I knew Christ better than I used to and I'd found there was much more to Him than I first thought. By the time I entered college, I had experienced His love and consolation, yes, but also His challenge and rebuke. I knew that He loved me too much to leave me as I was. The rosary, which had begun as rote prayer, had become richer. I’d begun to delve into the mysteries of Christ’s life and they became alive to me. I was drawn particularly by the Sorrowful Mysteries. I came to understand why Christ suffered on the cross, how it was in reparation for each one of my sins that He suffered, and how the depth of His suffering reflected the amazing depths of His love. It taught me something about the horror of sin, but also about what it means to love until it hurts.

St. Joseph, patron of the dying

The mystery kept growing. I was a freshman in college and a lot happened. I stood by my 90 year old distant cousin as she died. I believed in Heaven, I believed in the intercession of the saints, but they were always abstract thoughts for me. No longer. I saw what a change came over her in her last days. Suddenly she could hear me and she was practically deaf before. Suddenly she seemed to know things about me that I didn’t know about myself. Just as I was about to ask out the girl of my dreams, she grabbed my hand, ask me to pray for her, and told me, “You’ll make a good priest.” She passed away with me by her side just as the relationship drama was beginning. I learned through the mess that followed that the devil was real (he so cleverly set me up so as to have to choose between God and the feelings of a person I cared for), but I also discovered that when I asked my cousin for prayers in Heaven, they were very directly answered. Heaven was no joke and the intercession of saints was real.

More things have followed since. Retreats and pilgrimages have brought me to encounters with God and His saints that ten years ago I would never have thought possible. With each new mystery, comes a new problem to be unraveled. Some of this I did by reading the lives of the saints. Others I did through philosophy, trying to learn how to rebuild my worldview (which prior to had been so secular) so that God and the miracles I had come to see were so real were integrated in it. Still others I delved into by talking with spiritual directors, vocations directors, and good friends. What’s important is that through this great adventure, I came to know God better and to fall in love with Him more deeply. And that's the defining feature of a religious vocation: an all consuming love of God.

Thus concludes one chapter of this grand adventure. Tomorrow I’ll take you to inner city schools and Calcutta streets. The adventure continues...