I combed through the Pennsylvania report yesterday. I feel like vomiting. I also found it very appropriate to hear the beginning of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as the prelude before Mass this morning.
But I am not writing to connect with my feelings about this, nor to offer commentary on the situation or the like. I am writing to pray and to connect this present moment with past moments in my journey of faith, to see what I can see. I write to understand.
I made my way into the Catholic Church in 1992 and 1993 in Milwaukee when Rembert Weakland was Archbishop. Catholics I knew had no respect for him, preferring to rearrange the letters of his Benedictine order's designating abbreviation. He eventually resigned, the day after being public accused of date rape by a man who had been part of his life decades before.
The Church in Milwaukee was a total mess when I entered, and I felt it keenly on a spiritual level. I felt the moral topsy-turvy. Learning who to trust felt like navigating through land mines. I did not believe that most priests were following Christ, and when I found one who spoke of Jesus' passion I was pleasantly surprised. My primary response was arrogant judgment and the assertion within myself that I, clearly, was far superior. Just ignore the fact that my faith, hope, and charity were as strong as a wet garbage heap. I certainly did.
And yet, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that God had called me. To be honest, the Lord bombarded me with mystical graces in those days. As I look back, I had no one else but Him, and that is not the normative path. We need other human beings. I did frequent the Carmelite shrine of Mary, Help of Christians (Holy Hill) in Hubertus. I remember a particular healing Mass, one of their monthly such Masses, at which they had, stationed around the church, teams of lay people to whom we could go to pray with. To this day, I am not sure if they were members of the local OCDS community or not. I don't remember which of my concerns I brought to this particular woman to pray over, but I remember crying copious tears, and I remember her telling me to continue to pour out my prayer to Jesus. She asked me, "Do you know where you can find Jesus?" Struggling as I was at that point to break through the entanglements of doubt and confusion and muck, while reaching out for the glory, I answered with a tremulous voice, "He's .. in my heart?" Yes, she affirmed. Jesus is with you, and lives in your heart.
I made about an 18-month sojourn until I received confirmation in 1993. And a few weeks later I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Rome with a group led by John Michael Talbot and Dan O'Neill. One such mystical experience happened during that pilgrimage at the Church of the Tomb of Lazarus. I've written about it before. But it strikes me again. I was spending time in close quarters with Catholics for the first time in my life, and I was struggling hard with how physical everyone was making their prayer. To me, God was a spiritual being, and all this claptrap of touching holy objects or holding rosaries or wearing medals -- or even, really, bothering with all these physical places around Jerusalem -- was just getting under my skin. I was beginning to fear that I had entered a completely dead church where no one knew God and the religious people were following empty rituals. One night in the Garden of Gethsemane church, as we left, the priest with us suggested we might want to touch the rock on the way out. That was the last straw. I cried out in interior anguish, "Lord, I don't want to touch some stupid rock. I want to touch You!"
The next day I prayed an agnostic's prayer about these things. I told the Lord I didn't believe any of this stuff about grace coming through stuff or places, but that if He wanted to convince me otherwise, He could be my guest.
Later we had Mass at that church commemorating the spot where dead Lazarus had been buried, but Jesus raised him to life. As that Mass progressed, God gripped my heart with such power that I was shaken to the core. I barely had the strength to join the communion procession as I sobbed violently the whole time. I was hearing these words of the gospel roar like a hurricane through my soul: "He who believes in me, though he were dead, YET SHALL HE LIVE."
And I knew that I, small created entity that I was, was receiving into my body the very life of Jesus Christ. And that I was called right into the midst of the deadness that Jesus knew completely, to bring his life to the Church, that would yet live.
It was May of 1993.
I have come face to face with the dregs of my own sin and my own utterly worthless self-righteousness. I have come to know to my core that I am loved and graced not as a reward but because of who God is: a lover and a gracer, and because of who I am: His creature, His daughter, made in His likeness and for His life. I have learned to have compassion by being shown compassion, and I have also learned the sting and the difficulty and the utter necessity-for-life of forsaking the not-God in my life.
And now, this.
I'm not going to draw any conclusions because the words aren't here yet. I'm just looking, remembering, and taking up my daily position of calling down the transforming fire of the Holy Spirit to make me like Jesus, an offering to the Father in love, trust, praise, and joy.
With groans that words cannot express.
