The Peace Which Passes all Understanding

Magnificat Magazine has a lovely introduction to today's psalm for Morning prayer: By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. (Is. 30: 15b) God in his power is refuge and strength; God in his mercy is the river that refreshes the soul; God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace. And then comes Psalm 42 which begins with words I remember from childhood: "God is for us a refuge and strength." I don't think I truly understood those words until one memorable day a few years back, when I sat on a bench at a neighborhood playground. Annie was still young and so we were making regular visits, often lengthy ones. I had my Magnificat Magazine with me and was taking the opportunity to pray while enjoying a particularly mellow spring day, which probably means that it was sometime in March or April. I began to feel a presence, like a sweet breeze, the gentlest of encounters which did nothing but fill my heart with joy. All at once I was praying to Someone and Someone was listening. I could hardly tear myself away from the beauty of the encounter. It was an encounter with the person of Jesus, an encounter from which has flowered a whole new understanding of the spiritual world in which reside the angels,the saints and the living Christ. I had already been received as a Catholic when this event occurred, and indeed had been a baptized Christian since infancy and a staunch believer for most of that time. So it cannot be that this was my first real experience of faith, or that any doctrinal convictions changed. But some perceptions did change, not as dramatically as they did for Saul of Tarsus, but dramatic enough for this former protestant. You cannot encounter the living Jesus as I did on that blessed day without your horizons widening and your faith deepening. I suppose it was fundamentally a call to relationship, which means it was a call to prayer. In that sense it was a call to vocation, as Paul was called to his vocation to preach to and teach the gentiles. I cannot say I experienced that kind of call to ministry as a protestant, though I was a pastor for a number of years. I would not ever deny that many of my protestant colleagues in ministry did in fact experience that very kind of call. But my call to ministry in those days was more of an ecclesial one, an intentional decision on my part in concert with the decision of my sponsoring congregation to consider together the fitness of such a path. After years of study, practical experience and an examination of sorts by the governing body of the church's regional overseers, and then the offer of a pastorate, I was given the credentials to be a pastor, which meant that as far as my church and the state authorities were concerned I could preach, teach, perform weddings and funerals and celebrate Holy Communion. I was licensed to do a certain kind of job, and yes, it was probably more than that. It was a ministry in some sense which Catholics would recognize, though it was in no sense the role of priest because I was not ordained to be a Catholic priest. And however similar the job descriptions might sound, without the transforming element of true ordination by a bishop, sacramental ministry cannot be exercised or indeed most likely be fully fathomed by the non- ordained. Did I pray in those days? Yes, of course, though never with the sense that I do now, that I am praying to the One whom I encountered on that playground one spring! My prayer now truly is vocation, it has purpose and meaning, defined as it is by certain key thoughts and phrases: "for healing, yet not my will but thine be done"; "that suffering might be removed, yet let the suffering be joined with the suffering Jesus on the cross"; "for contrition and the right reception of absolution"; "for dying to the self that the soul might live." These are words which seek out life with Jesus Christ, life in and through him. They go beyond mere petitions and extend most intimately to life with the triune God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Above all, my prayer now rests on the sure understanding that the peace which passes all understanding resides in the midst of life with the triune God, that that peace is a part of every breath taken, every word uttered, every gesture that is made in and through Jesus. So it is that I have left behind a former life as a pastor, a life that had its own richness, challenges, heartaches, its salary and retirement account. I found instead a vocation to prayer, a vocation that is offered to every lay Catholic who desires a joy-filled life with God. It is far more beautiful than the creaturely call I followed earlier, though I say that with a pang, as I know and love many fine pastors. Yet it is true. Perhaps in some ways they know that call as I did not then know it. But having received it, I cannot ever mourn the truth that women are not ordained in the Catholic Church. How can I be sad or frustrated or angry at the call which has breathed life eternal into my soul and entrusted to me a richness beyond any treasure I could have imagined? What is more precious than the call to approach Jesus on the cross with one's heartaches and unite them to his suffering? What is more worthy and filled with dignity than the call to leave behind the old tattered self so that a new self can be reborn,a self which seeks virtue for its own sake and for the sake of God? "God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gathers us into his peace." "Be still and know that I am God." Deo, dicamus gratias!