The soundtrack for todays FINAL installment: https://youtube/watch?v=z2ZBCUQieUI The coming days and weeks and months all blurred together, and they were sad days indeed. The fervent inspiration that drove my heart every day cooled, and I felt utterly broken and rejected. By the grace of God I was surrounded by wonderful friends, chief of which was the same friend who reluctantly dropped me off at the beginning of my fool’s errand. She showed me great care and devotion, sneaking into the boy’s shower room to fill my popcorn bowl with hot water so I could soak my blistered feet in an Epsom salt solution. The priest at the student center, Fr. Ken, also provided vital spiritual care at this time and he was, in so many ways, the pastor of my vocation. My friends in the peer ministry office at the Catholic student center would also prove to be invaluable in keeping my spirits up; I don’t know if ever I thanked them for their friendship during those days, but I hope that they have kept up with this series and realize how grateful I truly am. Thank you Emmy, Kate and Joel OBrien so very much. Day after day went by and, on occasion, I would see Mary on campus, but I spoke little to her. I had tried to keep in touch via email, but rarely received any reply; I eventually just let go altogether. The application packet to join the Society haunted me and, really, tempted me; there was this shadowy push in my heart to fill it out because I had nothing else left in life, but by God’s mercy I knew that to do so would be disastrous. I saw that I did not have the freedom to give myself to anyone or anything, much less give my whole life to the Jesuits. I admit, too, that I hurt some of those who were close to me, pushing them away, focused in on my own hurt and the seeming impossibility of loving or knowing joy again. Nearly three months would pass before there was a noticeable change. I was encouraged by the director of the student center choir to audition for the university chorus; he thought I might enjoy being part of a larger group and I would easily get in. It turned out that the auditions were in a couple of days, and there was no way I could learn the audition piece in time. Emailing one of the choir directors, I explained my situation and asked if I could still try out; I was told that this would be fine and I just needed to be able to sing a piece so they could hear my voice. I still remember, very clearly, walking through the halls of the fine arts center and passing Dr. Lamartine , whom I’d only met very briefly before, and she called me by name. She couldn’t have known at the time, but I felt like I had been seen for the first moment in months and from that moment she had my sincere gratitude and devotion. My audition would later be a smashing success, impressing both her and the other chorus director such that they both asked if I could be in their top two choruses, which I of course did. Those were beautiful days, being in those choirs, and I made several new friends and discovered a potential for singing that I’d never realized I possessed. Vocationally, however, things were still on the back burner; really, it had fallen behind the oven and gathered those greasy, crumb-powdered dust bunnies we know lurk back there but never move the oven in order to capture and destroy. I hadn’t forgotten about the Jesuits, and I’d told my choir teachers that I was discerning priesthood, but I was not thinking about it terribly much; I still felt far too broken. Then, about two weeks into the semester, Dr. Lamartine approached me as I sat outside the choir room, waiting to enter. She told me that she’d had a dream about me the night before and in that moment I found myself incredibly grateful that I had a full beard under which to hide my blushing face. Continuing, she described her dream, and I remember her saying that in it she kept calling me “Jesus” instead of “Jacob”, and she remarked that it didn’t seem odd to her at all; it was a very peaceful dream. With that, she unlocked the door and entered, and I was left in shocked stupor sitting on the floor. Praying about the encounter later, I was struck by the realization that this person whom I adored but, truly, knew precious little about me, yet was able to see something in me that I didn’t believe was there: she saw Christ. I took it as God’s way of telling me to trust her instinct and to see myself as ready enough to begin the application process, and so that evening I filled out everything in the form that I could and got the ball rolling. Once I’d undergone a complete physical exam, criminal background check, interviews, psych evals and all else, the application process was complete and I simply had to wait to hear back from the Society. It was in April of that year when I received the call from the Society that I’d been accepted, and I couldn’t have been happier. By this time I felt entirely free about the whole matter, and I truly felt that even were I not accepted, nothing I had suffered would have been wasted. But accepted I was, and after first emailing Mary—as I’d promised myself she would be the first to know, either way—and with an excited Kyle Digmann (now Fr. Digmann) and Lindsay Hudak looking over my shoulder as I did so, I ran down to the basement of the student center to tell my friends. The remaining month of school was a joyful flurry of giving away all my possessions, saying goodbyes, and readying myself for entry into the novitiate. I entered on August 26, 2006 in St. Paul, Minnesota, still very naïve and, I soon discovered, incredibly ignorant of my faith and of God. But my conviction was firm: God wanted me to be there, and so I trusted that, even if I didn’t understand and felt, as compared to my novice brothers, that I absolutely did not belong. During the Spiritual Exercises—a 30-day silent retreat—that dormant wound I’d inflicted upon myself regarding Mary flared up again, and I found I still desired very much to be a father and a husband; why would God ask me to toss that aside? I was angry and frustrated with God but, recognizing how it was distracting me from the retreat, I sought the help of my new saint-friend Gemma (see this previous post for more details: https://facebook/permalink.php?story_fbid=1475905722659435&id=100007200646988&pnref=story) in putting it aside and letting God take care of it. I told God that if we really needed to deal with the matter again, the ball was in His court; I didn’t consider it again for the rest of the retreat. Meanwhile novitiate soared by and, before I knew it, it was the summer of my final year, at the end of which I would make my First Vows. I was excited to take vows and so was everyone else yet, I realized, I had completely neglected to ask God if HE wanted me to take vows. During my eight day retreat I asked God to confirm that it was His will that I take vows, and I left it in His hands. Sometime in the middle of that retreat I was asked by my spiritual director to contemplate the journey of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, and it was during this time of prayer that I received the grace I had asked for. I saw the connection between Mary and the Church, and once I made that a hundred other things came together simultaneously, and I realized that I was very much like Joseph: being approached by God—in my case, Christ—who loved me and trusted me. Christ recognized my desire for a bride and was offering me His Bride, the Church; likewise He saw my desire to be a father, and He was offering me the numberless children of the Church who would, one day, call me “father.” Yet, like Joseph, my bride and my children were not “mine” but rather they were God’s; He was graciously allowing me to stand in His place, to share in the life and love He had for both, and He desired me to serve Him by serving them. That is when I realized that, all along, God was leading me to understand that my desire to be a father and husband was a gift He had given me, all in the hope that in following that desire I would find Him and entrust its fulfillment to His providence: who but He would know how to fulfill a desire that He Himself placed in me? Whenever I set about to fulfill it according to how I thought best, I failed and suffered, not because He punished me but because I lacked the ability and, frankly, imagination required to fulfill the deepest desire of my heart. Patiently, over the course of my life, God taught me how to trust Him, deepened that desire such that I couldn’t possibly hope to fulfill it without Him and there in that retreat He showed me not only how He proposed to satisfy my heart, but also that He and I did not want different things for my life, but rather the same thing; it is just that I’d never imagined that a priest could also be a husband and father. It was with tremendous joy that I professed my vows of poverty, chastity and obedience on August 16th of 2008 and since that day I have never once doubted that decision. In spite of every trial and frustration the joy has never fully subsided, and my desire to serve Christ’s Church and all her people increases with each passing year. I encourage each of you to take time, as often as possible, to reflect on what are the deepest desires of your own heart and to find a way to entrust those desires entirely to God’s providence. It is there that you will begin not only to hear His call for you—the very essence of vocation—but the knowledge of how you might best answer that call will begin to coalesce in your heart. For those of you who have already entered into your vocation—priesthood, religious life, marriage—take time to reflect on how you arrived where you are; what is your vocation story? If someone asked you why you made the choice you have, what would you say? God bless each and every one of you, and thank you for your kind attention this week. Pray for vocations!
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:26:25 +0000
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