Like I Never Left

After innumerable train and plane rides, walking through strange cities in the rain with luggage in tow, and meeting up with a seemingly interminable catalog of remarkable and inspiring people, I am back.  It's hardly believable that this trip of a lifetime, which has been a part of my imagination and hopes for years, has finally ended.  Laying awake at 3:30 a.m. this morning, jetlagged and racing through all the things that need to be done to re-settle myself here at the seminary, an intense feeling of gratitude washed over me--with the sort of intensity that only comes when you're alone with your thoughts in the dark.  Some days it's the sense that I need to engage in spiritual warfare and pray the Exorcism prayer of St. Leo; others, I'm just happy.  Go figure.

Laying there on my back, suddenly acutely aware of how awash with blessing and grace I've been these last weeks and months, it was hard not to believe that I'm in exactly the right place with exactly what I need to live God's will.  Part of that is probably the endorphin-like high I get when my sleep cycles are messed up, but another part is pretty sure that this little intuition is spot on.  I'm thirty years old, and set to embark on the great adventure of my vocation, and such confirmations are incredible treasures.  And it's not simply a pleasure at having seen wonderful things and been to wonderful places.  Pilgrimage was difficult, though not on the day-to-day basis; our guides and faculty took care of most everything we needed (doing laundry was the only real problem we had to deal with ourselves).  The real difficulty lay in the confrontation of realities of which I was aware but had never presented themselves as forcefully as they arise in that holy city.

Perhaps the greater challenge was, in a sense, taking a "break" from the identity of a seminarian.  It was never intentional, but it required an interior effort to continue seeing myself--ourselves--as men in preparation for priesthood.  All supports of this identity, both interior and exterior, were pulled away, and the edifice was left to stand on its own foundation.  And I don't just mean things like wearing the Roman collar or being known by others as "a seminarian"—it was more that were were not able to exercise that identity in the normal ways, through outreach and apostolates which are such an integral part of our formation at Mundelein.  As a result, questions about identity and motivation began to float to the surface.  Why am I doing this?  Am I freely choosing it or just going with the flow?  What am I giving up?  What am I gaining?  Is this really what I want?  Is it really what God wants?

There were definitely some days where I didn't know how to answer those questions.  Toss in the fact that the Holy Land isn't exactly Catholic Disneyland, and you have a recipe for frustration and confusion of all sorts.  The Church suffers from a chronic lack of growth due to the cultural and legal constraints placed on it, and the attrition that inevitably follows keeps the population at around 1.2% of the general census. Over the last fifty years, this percentage fell from 10% of the general population—meaning a net loss of over two hundred thousand. Stir in virulent and long-standing divisions within the Christian community—many of which are far beyond the lived experience of the typical Protestant-Catholic divide here in the U.S.—and what many visitors experience is not quite the overwhelming spiritual refreshment you’d expect. It feels more like a stab in the heart.

There's nothing like a trip to Rome to cure what ails you.

I was certainly encouraged and inspired by the beauty and grandeur of the churches we visited, and the relics of so many outstanding saints (we prayed before the relics of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Philip Neri, and St. Peter himself, all in one day), some well known and revered, others of which I'd never before heard.  I was bowled over by the frescoed naves bathed in light, opening up to a heavenly vision of angels and clouds and exquisitely posed figures absorbed in love and desire for the things of God, for His beauty and the peace it brings.  I received sacramental absolution on the Feast of the Chair of Peter in a small wooden confessional in the transept of St. Peter's while a soaring hymn of praise swelled to fill the towering spaces that dwarfed us.  The voices seemed to twist and dart playfully about the capacious dome, sidling down the fluted pilasters that sat on pedestals with footings the size of my room at the seminary.  Each edifice was more spectacular, more opulent, more jubilant than the last.  Inspiring as it all was, it wasn't giving the answers I was looking for.

The shadow of a hint of a clue to the answer came, as it usually does, in a far less dramatic setting. 

We were invited out to dinner by a priest who happened to be studying for his doctorate in dogmatic theology at the Angelicum.  Over delicious rigatoni and gnocchi, he related to us some of his experiences as a priest here in Rome, fully immersed in study and somewhat far removed from the daily pastoral responsibilities of a diocesan priest (a nice parallel to my own sense of having been cut off from what I'd been accustomed to doing and being as a seminarian).  He spoke to us of a series of short conversations he'd had with a young man employed in construction there at the American priests' residence in Rome, and of the reflection over his responsibilities as a priest in those conversations. 

Now, there was nothing deliberate about these encounters; he was a busy priest trying to finish his doctorate before departing the country and the Romanian fellow needed to work hard to keep his job, so there were no long soul-searching discourses being carried out.  But the attention and effort this priest was putting into these brief conversations demonstrated a deep care for the good of this young man.  It would've been easy for him to justify passing over the openings for a deeper exchange--the admissions that he'd been living with his girlfriend, for instance--and just telling himself that this wasn't the reason he'd been sent at great expense to Rome, or that it would be better to just build a relationship with the guy without launching into moralistic diatribes, or any number of perfectly reasonable trains of thought. 

But he would ask himself, what if this is the only spiritual connection this young man will ever have?  What if he's surrounded with people who will never speak to him of the grace offered to him in Christ? What if his only chance for a real encounter with Christ was to be on a scaffolding outside my window, and I missed it, or talked myself out of it, or just tried to ignore it?  If not me, a Catholic priest, then who?

This priest carried something with him that didn't disappear when he was engaged in mundane tasks or urgent matters of importance—an awareness that each and every person that came into contact with him was, in some sense, his responsibility, and that responsibility trumped everything else that he was accountable for.  In the midst of crafting a dissertation of some size, and all the deadlines and pressure that accompany this enterprise (not to mention offering hospitality to the droves of pilgrims passing through Rome and eager for a local connection), this priest was recollected enough to be attentive to the movements of grace that were eager to flow through us all, but find a conduit far too infrequently. 

And there it was—the shadow of a hint of a clue to my answer.  In my loss of identity, I'd turned inward, and there wasn't much there to sustain me, or even interest me, and that was scary.  It catalyzed some unhealthy navel-gazing when the antidote was to be found in an attentive turn outward, to the other.  It was then that I realized that on this pilgrimage, and by extension, during my time in seminary, I'd managed to lose sight of the mission.  

Those years of missionary work with FOCUS all came back to me—the months of preparation, the fundraising, the Bible studies, the awkwardness and the discomfort with my situation, the fraternity, the breakthroughs, the disappointments were all sought or endured on account of the mission, the hope against hope that the casual encounter we all usually miss would be caught, and something good, something divine, would enter into the world.  For all the struggle of those years, I realized that I missed it, because it had given form and purpose to my commitments.  It was the principle and purpose of everything we were doing.  It was the reason I wanted (and still want) to be a priest.  For whatever reason, I'd lost touch with it.  The consequences, while not drastic, certainly were real. 

I'm glad we've got priests around like the one I caught up with that night.  Oremus pro invicem.

NC08 From the Inside

After four years of involvement with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, I was able to attend a conference for the first time this past weekend.

This was not for lack of opportunities—they held four conferences in the last five years (six conferences, actually, if you count the regional ones in 2006). This one was the fourth at which I was present, yet it is an understatement that as a staff member, I certainly was not in attendance at any of them. The pressures of conducting the event in collaboration with the other missionaries were too great to allow for much real receptivity to the gathering and the movements of grace throughout. Never before was I aware of the magnitude this privation.

For the first time, conference permitted me to pray. This was not a result of the way we all prayed; FOCUS has always leaned more towards styles of prayer that did not attract me. Yet this year, it did not matter. The intense devotion was plain, and anyone with sense was aware of it, could recognize it, saw it ebb at points and rise at others, the climax of which was always in the liturgy. And this time there were no talks to prepare, no events to fine-tune, no organization necessary to make sure dozens of students got where they were supposed to go, or last-minute pitches to reluctant potential staff-members. A certain unreality hung about the place. Part of that was not leaving the building for four days—though this gave me the distinct pleasure of savoring the taste of fresh air after getting nothing but the reconstituted stuff for so long. In another way, though, it was the conviction that the total submersion in this intensely planned world of talks and vendors and wall-to-wall custom carpeting was not to last, and should not last. Drink, and move on. Be about your business. The real work is yet to begin.

The family members of missionary staff were in remarkably high attendance, a first. One family I know piled five children in a van and hauled them from Nebraska. The thing is, families know when someone changes. When something different in one, all notice; if they are good changes, they are also intriguing ones. What caused this? they ask. Where did this come from? This is the child or sibling or friend I know, but there is a difference, and it is one I like. Perhaps I, too, should see the source from whence this freshness flows. I, too, will come and see.

There were students all about, and I was free to sit with those whose personal history had intersected with my own, and to hear what has become of them these last few years. Missionaries know there is no blame cast on those who do not stay in touch; that people lose track of one another pronounces no verdict on the authenticity of their friendship while it was a plain fact to both. The testament to this is the ease with which the darkened rooms of the soul are warmed by the tiny candleflame rekindled by stumbling over an old friend in the murk while shuffling about, each straining to catch the failing light in the corners of their eyes.

There is a distinct memory of a day when, in the midst of discernment over whether or not to throw in my lot with this bunch, I was intrigued by the thought of the faces of the people I would be given to know, to influence, and to be influenced by. They were all figments of my imagination then, adorned with cartoonish grins of adulation. They have since been retouched with a more realistic tone. The people with whom I was given to live and work, who once were mere guesses, are real. Some of them had changed since last I saw them, others were comfortably the same, and still others were discernible (along with another’s) in the round and fleshy bobblehead of their first or second child. Each had their own place within me, shaped me, are me. Out of their magnetism or repulsion, and that of many, many others, somehow a uniqueness is shaped. An unrepeatable instance of God’s creativity, each and all.

In the midst of all this, it was hard to decide whether the circumstances of our age that have made relocation so commonplace—even mandatory—are desirable. At what point does exposure to people from so many places and backgrounds cease to enrich? Is there a time when one loses a stable identity and learns little more than to step from one world to another, to navigate the world rather than to be a part of it? There is a certain violence to being thrust back into situations and relationships that were once terribly formative but are now more like the rings of an oak—to revisit them involves a rupture of subsequent progress. That is not to say that they are not intensely pleasurable or regrettable in any way, but simply that our here-today-gone-tomorrow world has made such situations standard. At such times, it is a source of refreshment to contemplate with anticipation the place where I will die: where I will leap from becoming into permanence, sped along by those with whom long friendships have mellowed with time.

This seems a strange way to end a post on the national conference, but really, what more was it about? What more is there to hope for than a long life filled with companions fueled by the love of Christ, perhaps some of them ignited by one’s own flame, remembered and offered as one breathes the last “Amen”?

Eternity
DanielMartinDiaz