Holy Obedience: What are the limits?

By MARY TARDIFF

[The following is a guest post by my niece. Mary Tardiff, now 27, lives in Rhode Island.]
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Every act of obedience is an act of worship to God. I remember vividly how these words affected me. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I was standing alone in our big refectory, reading the little prayer card that had been sent by one of our federation sisters as a memento of her golden jubilee. After fifty years of religious life, she had chosen this quote to express her gratitude for the richness of her vocation.

As I studied this revelation of her heart, I realized with a jolt that I was forgetting to follow an “obedience” ( a command from my superior), that I had received just that morning, to wear my veil further back on my forehead. I preferred to wear it forward so it would not pinch my ears, but this, according to my novice mistress, looked silly. I tugged my veil back and returned to the prayer card, wondering what this jubilee sister would think of me, a year-old postulant, torn between reverence, irritation, and a desire to laugh!

I had come to the monastery the year before, brim-full of expectation, asking to be received into obedience and taught how to worship God within the monastic tradition. I loved our life with the Eucharist, and I loved my sisters. But it was a constant source of confusion for me to be given obediences that seemed pointless, cumbersome, and even damaging.

Our life was full of rules, and about a third of them made sense to me. My novice mistress taught me to mortify my eyes–an ancient monastic discipline that was supposed to help me focus on God. The result was that I was tense from the effort of trying not to look out the window, or at my sisters. She taught me to comport myself in a ladylike manner, by sitting straight and still and keeping a cheerful countenance. So I was miserable from the effort of holding my body still and thinking about my facial expression all day long. She taught me that we must be fully present–heart and soul and mind and body–at the recitation of the Divine Office. I sometimes wet myself because she would not permit me to leave for the bathroom. She made me heap up my plate at meals; she forbade me from changing my underwear every day; she read my letters to my mother and corrected me if I said anything negative. I often told her how upsetting it was for me to be micromanaged like this, but she considered complaining to be a fault, and told me to be more respectful.

I knew that my “Dear Mistress” meant no harm, but I was exhausted from so much obedience. And besides my little daily humiliations, there was a darker, heavier cloud on my horizon. I was in the beginning stages of a chronic illness that was degenerating rapidly. The commands that my superiors routinely gave me regulated every aspect of my life including, as I was beginning to discover, my ability to manage my symptoms.

Irritation was turning into fear. I had a real breakdown when Dear Mistress told me to stop gripping the pew, which I did whenever I was in choir, because I was dizzy and afraid of falling. She did not withdraw this command when I pleaded in tears, because she thought I was being overly emotional. So I was left with the religious duty to stand without support, when I was close to fainting.

Obedience, obedience, the bedrock of religious life, the virtue which Christ practiced unto death! How I wished that my heart was like the old jubilee sister’s heart, filled with gratitude and reverence, instead of this anger that galled and sickened me. I read her prayer card one more time. Then I put my face in my hands and cried like Job, to the God who always listens. O holy love, I do not understand. I do not understand.

I began devouring Church documents such as Vita Consecrata, and searching the lives of the saints, hoping for clearer teaching on obedience, aware that I might be misunderstanding my duty to my novice mistress. Ignoring some very helpful advice from Padre Pio, (“If my superiors told me to jump out of a window, I would jump!”) I began asking my superiors when a subordinate may justly disobey a command. The only answer I received, both from my readings and from my teachers, was that we must always obey unless the command is morally wrong. None of the commands that I was given were so bad that it was clear to me that I could object on the grounds of conscience. So I kept obeying.

As my illness developed, and ordinary duties became more and more burdensome, I found that I was afraid of what my mistress would tell me to do next. My friendship with her began to crumble. I had long since learned that whenever my needs caused disruption or inconvenience to the community, either she or my abbess would intervene on the community’s behalf, and my need would be dismissed as a triviality. If, after months of pleading, I received permission to have an “exception” (such as softer food that I could swallow without pain, or a pillow for my burning back), my enormous relief would turn into an obsessive fear that the exception would be taken away because my superiors would decide that it was against holy poverty or community-mindedness. I lived in a state of near-hysteria for another year, until the community voted not to receive me for investiture, and my superiors mercifully told me to go.

The day before my parents came to take me home, I remember kneeling in our beautiful smooth-wood chapel, promising my Savior that I would not complain to my family about anything that had happened to me. Two years previously, I had left everyone I had ever loved behind to follow Jesus.

Tardiff leaving for the convent with all her possessions in 2017

It was an act of love. It was magnificent. To come away from those two years with only hurt and anger was more unbearable than the physical pain of an unmanaged illness. I did not want to reject the teaching of the Church on the goodness of religious life. I did not want to continue with this monster of anger in my soul. It felt like a sin against my entire religion, because it was a rejection of something that my religion proclaims to be good.

But how could I believe that obedience is good when my experience of obedience was so ugly?

I kept my resolve of silence for three weeks, and then I broke down and told my parents everything. I cried as they hugged me and told me, “You should be angry. I’m glad you’re angry.” I was safe now. My needs were being taken seriously. The pressure to be perfect, to be cheerful and grateful and gracious, was gone. It no longer seemed like such a sin to admit that my superiors had made bad use of their authority.

But I was still confused about the question of whether I had also made bad use of my obedience. I had been taught that a superior may be wrong in commanding, but a subject is still right in obeying. But I was by no means sure that I had been right in obeying. My obedience had enabled a situation that had been good for neither me nor my novice mistress. When I remembered the fights we had whenever I asked for an exception or adjustment, over whether I really needed it–fights that ended with me on my knees confessing my fault–I wondered if our relationship would have been better if I had done the unthinkable and at least once refused to obey her. I wrote to a good priest who I knew had a deep respect for religious life, and asked for spiritual direction.

This priest told me, to my great relief, that I would have been justified in saying, “no” to my superiors when their commands began hurting my health. Then he made a distinction for me that I could hardly believe I had not made for myself.

He said that a command does not have to be “morally wrong” in the extreme sense of an intrinsic wrong in order for it to qualify as wrong. My conscience could have legitimately objected to the seemingly commonplace commands that caused me harm in my illness.

“Just eat your cake” did not register in my mind as a morally wrong command, because it was not intrinsically wrong. But the cake made me so sick that I was left crying in pain. And when I asked my teachers about difficult situations of obedience, they always gave larger-than-life examples of commands that were unmistakably wrong. Go start a war! Go murder your grandmother! If my novice mistress’ commands had been that bad, then I would have known immediately that I should not obey. But neither she nor I realized that the cake was also something that I should have refused. My poor novice mistress! She never understood why I was so angry at her.

I was happy that my spiritual director had affirmed my right, even as a religious sister, to stand up for my health. But I was still troubled by humiliating memories of being controlled in ways that did no physical damage, but nevertheless felt inappropriate. The idea that my superior had to be physically hurting me before I could say, “no” bothered me for the same reason as the idea that the command had to be unmistakably evil. If we only object to extreme forms of harm, then how will we cope with situations that are less extreme, but still harmful?

A wife whose husband commands and controls and micromanages her–but never beats her–is still an unhappy wife. And I was an unhappy postulant even before my health crisis, when my superiors broke into my personal sphere and gave commands about my hygiene, my facial expressions, my thoughts, and my letters home. I could not wash my underwear after my novice mistress told me not to, because she would have considered it an act of defiance, immaturity, and blatant irreligious disobedience. The command upset me; but how could I judge if it upset me enough that I could legitimately refuse?

This question was much harder for me to answer than the question of whether I should have refused harmful commands about my health. But I continued thinking and reading about obedience until I discovered another gem, another distinction that I wish to God I had thought of at the time. It was St. Thomas Aquinas’ idea that we are bound to obey our lawful superiors only within their lawful sphere of authority.

It occurred to me that sphere of authority, just like moral wrong, is a concept which is sometimes crystal clear, sometimes dead confusing. When we are told that it is a federal offense to disobey a flight attendant, it is clear that our obligation is to obey the flight attendant when she gives commands about airplane safety. We  are not required to obey if she tells us to stand on our heads, because her sphere of authority does not extend over such a matter. I asked myself, what was my superiors’ sphere of authority over me? What commands could they justly give, and what commands were inappropriate?

Every sphere of authority is defined by the end for which the authority is ordained. The flight attendant’s authority is there to promote the safety of the passengers; therefore her sphere of authority extends only over matters pertaining to their safety during a flight. The religious superior’s authority is there to guide the community to follow the rule. Therefore my superiors should have limited their commands to whatever was relevant to the faithful following of the rule.

But here was the source of confusion: the faithful following of the rule was a matter very much open to interpretation. An ideal can be a nebulous thing, imprecise, hard to apply with certainty to daily living. My abbess and novice mistress frequently gave commands which they thought promoted holy poverty, or discipline, or another of our ideals, but which I thought were unnecessary and overbearing. A nun’s life is already so scheduled and regulated, that the constant commands about the minutiae of our personal lives went unquestioned. Sphere of authority was never discussed, and the end result was that there was almost no area of my life that my superiors did not command and direct.

To this day, when I look back on my experience, I still have trouble distinguishing when I should have submitted to my superiors’ interpretation of the rule, and when I should have told them that their commands were inappropriate. But in the future, if I am ever in an unclear situation of obedience and unsure of the propriety of the command, I will at least know that the decision to obey or refuse belongs to my discernment and conscience. For my life ahead, I am determined to obey the precepts of the Church, the just laws of my country, and any other rules or requests that are consistent with prudence and charity; but I will never again let someone micromanage me within the context of a relationship, telling me all the while that obedience is beautiful.

I am telling my story primarily for the sake of my Christian brothers and sisters who are struggling in confused, dysfunctional, and pain-filled relationships that function under a religious expectation of obedience. I think that such dysfunction occurs particularly often within traditional-minded marriages, in which St. Paul’s exhortation, “wives obey your husbands” (Ephesians 5:22) is interpreted rigorously. To be sure, St. Paul tells husbands to love their wives as deeply as Christ loved the Church, and to use their authority to become the servant-leader of their family after the model of Christ. But St. Paul is presenting an ideal of virtue, not a guaranteed description of a particular husband’s behavior. If a husband fails to use his authority in a Christ-like way, and instead uses it selfishly at the expense of his wife, then the wife has no instruction from St. Paul on whether she is still required to obey him. She is often left thinking that if she pushes back against her husband’s treatment of her, she is pushing back against the entire force of holy scripture and tradition.

To an outsider looking into a dysfunctional relationship, it may seem clear that it is not good to hurt yourself because of another’s faulty command. But to the Christian wife or the religious sister, whose head and heart are full of half-understood ideals of obedience, submission, and sacrifice, it is not so clear.

The solution to the incongruity between the scriptural description of the beauty of obedience, and the ugly way obedience often plays itself out in human relationships, is not to reject scripture or to minimize the abuse of the subordinate. The solution is to be very clear what is meant by the virtue of obedience. Obedience as a virtue means doing the will of another when that will is consistent with prudence and charity. If we praise obedience without making this distinction clear, then those of us who are in abusive situations of obedience will be left without guidance, asking from the depths of our hearts how a sacred thing can cause so much harm.

Tardiff in 2020 with a week-old goat

I struggled for many years with the question of why the Church would uphold something as sacred that so often leads to harm. I believe the answer is that nothing hurts the human person so much as the profanation of the sacred. In our post-Vatican II era, we are familiar with this teaching in the context of human love and sexuality. The Church describes sexual union as holy; and yet so many people pursue sex in harmful ways and come away profoundly damaged. When you give the gift of your body to another, it is meant to be a total gift of self, and it is meant to be received with gratitude, humility, reverence, and a reciprocal gift of self. If your sexuality does not have this character of a gift, or if your gift is received without reverence and used to objectify you, then you and your partner will both be hurt.

The same is true for the gift of the will, which is obedience. In a personal relationship, obedience is sacred, and it must not be profaned. It is meant to be a union of your heart with the heart of the person you have chosen to obey. If your obedience does not have this character of a gift, or if your gift is received without reverence and used to command you harmfully, then you and your superior will both be hurt.

My dear brothers and sisters: whether you are a religious obeying her superior, a wife obeying her husband, or a child obeying his parents, you should know the parameters of your obedience. Whether your situation is extreme or commonplace, you should know where your duty ends. It may be your privilege to make sacrifices for a good cause, but it is never your duty to let another person hurt you needlessly. If your superior is commanding hardships that are not his to command, or that are disproportionate to the good accomplished, then it may be time to refuse for the sake of the good that your superior is forgetting. Remember that your health matters. Your dignity matters. Your friendship with your superior matters. If these values (as well as the values of sacrifice and submission) inform your conscience, then you will know when it is morally right to stand up for yourself.

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Related reading: When a Catholic Leaves Seminary or Religious Life

How I learned to stop worrying about wifely obedience and love my husband

Also recommended: Leonie’s Longing, an organization founded to help those who have left religious life (as in a convent or seminary)

Eyes on Jesus

Many years ago, I used to pick up some extra cash by doing short interviews with priests, asking for their stories about how they heard the call to enter the seminary.

This was maybe 10 years after the first news of the sex abuse scandal broke, which meant that these men were in elementary school when they first started hearing headlines about predatory priests and widespread coverups.

I am not sure how it hit all over the country, but we lived just a short jaunt down the highway from the absolute epicenter of this earthquake, and from the endless aftershocks as more and more news was revealed of how the bishops hid and lied and dissembled and suppressed the truth.

The horror and misery and shame and shock and rage of those first years is something I will never forget. I thought I knew that the Church was a human institution as well as divine, but I was not prepared for just how human it was. Just how ready some humans are to say the words of heaven, while building up hell.

So, that was the atmosphere. Those were the clouds that lay low and heavy on the ground around the words “Catholic Church.” This was what would come to mind first, and maybe only, when you thought about Catholic priests.

The job I had, interviewing priests, wasn’t the kind of job where I was supposed to ask about sex abuse, but it came up anyway, because how could it not? Many of these men told me that their mothers, in particular, were terrified about how they would be treated.

Not so long ago, being a priest in the community meant getting a certain amount of respect and deference. Suddenly, understandably, it was just the opposite. People automatically viewed priests with suspicion or even disgust. They treated them as if they were all molesters, or at very least as if they condoned and were comfortable with molestation.

And you can understand why. Listen, you can look up statistics and show that pediatricians and public school teachers and gymnastics coaches are equally or more likely to be molesters than Catholic priests. But show me the gymnastics coach who claims to act in persona Christi. The proportion of abusive priests shouldn’t be comparable to the proportion of abusers in the general population; it should be zero, throughout all of history, forever. And it’s not.

It’s not fair to individual innocent priests to be treated with contempt. But the Church as a whole has more than earned it.

So imagine being a young man at this time, and knowing that this is how people think. Imagine growing up while this is the norm, and still hearing that call to the priesthood, and still answering it. I think about this all the time, because it’s surely something that comes up for priests all the time. Any time a priest says anything in public online, you know that at least one person is going to make a pedophile comment. It doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. And still, they answer the call.

Most people don’t meet priests in person very often, and it’s only online that they make any contact. There is an exception that I think about a lot: On the feast of Corpus Christi, we make a procession out through the streets of our small city. We live in one of the two least religious states in the country, and it’s pretty rare to see any kind of religious expression in public, except for maybe the vaguest kind of nods toward crystals and nature fairies.

You certainly don’t see embroidered vestments outdoors every day, and you don’t hear a Salve Regina in the open air. But there went the monstrance, under its satin canopy, squeezing its way down the sidewalk in the midday sun. Shining.

While I tried to focus on the rosary we were praying as we walked, it was hard not to take a peek and see what effect our procession was having on people, as they tucked their feet under their cafe tables to let us pass. You could see they were wondering: Do I keep eating this taco? Do I pause? Most people averted their eyes, and most pretended they didn’t notice us. Many looked uncomfortable. A few looked glad. A few laughed.

My kids felt uncomfortable, and I told them it was okay to feel that way. It’s weird for the people on the streets to meet this way, and it’s weird for us. But I told them not to worry too much about feeling weird, because Jesus was at our head, and that is who we were following. That’s the only part that matters.

Sometimes it feels like we are following him up out of hell. Sometimes it’s a hell other people have made; sometimes it’s a hell we have built ourselves.

I know it’s easy to look back and pine for the days we see in old photographs, when even the old man sweeping the streets knew enough to stop and fall to his knees when the blessed sacrament went passing by. And now we’re in such disarray that half the Catholics I know can barely bring themselves to go inside a church building, because the hidden sickness is finally out in the open, and it’s too much to bear.

But one thing has not changed. Jesus is still calling men, and men are still answering. They are still following him, knowing how normalized it has become for people to treat them with contempt. Many of them are answering the call because of this, because they see the carnage and they want to accept the honor of helping us find a way out of it.

A priest was once giving me some spiritual direction. We met several times, and although we talked for hours, the only thing he said that I clearly remember is, “Eyes on Jesus. Eyes on Jesus.” What else is there to say? Where else is there to look? Who is else there to follow? Where else is there to go? You find out where Jesus is, and you go that way. 

Jesus is still calling, not only priests, but everyone. Right now. Not only on his special feast day, but every day that starts with the sun rising. Calling and shining. Come up out of hell.

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Photo of Corpus Christi procession by John Ragai via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A version of this essay was first published in The Catholic Weekly in November of 2022.

Discerning out: What happens when a Catholic leaves seminary or religious life?

Joe Heschmeyer was once so sure of his vocation to the priesthood that he forgot he was supposed to be discerning it.

Everyone around him thought he should be a priest. His mother, he discovered later, had offered him to the Lord as an infant the way Hannah did in the Old Testament. Mr. Heschmeyer wrote about his vocation frequently on his blog Shameless Popery, speaking of his ordination as if it were inevitable. Things were going so well, he lost track of the idea that he was in seminary to test and explore his vocation.

“Pretty soon after I entered [in 2011], I stopped asking God if this was what he wanted. I felt like the question had already been answered. My grades were good; I was well esteemed; everything internal to the seminary felt successful. That felt like enough validation. I forgot to ask, ‘Are we still on the same page?’” Mr. Heschmeyer said.

It was not until friends and family had already bought airplane tickets and reserved hotel rooms for his ordination to the diaconate that he began to feel some doubt. He tried to assign his misgivings to “last-minute jitters,” but a black cloud of unease hung over his head.

He described riding on a bus on the way back from a retreat.

“The archbishop has an open seat next to him. A sort of rotating spot, where you can share whatever’s on your heart. It’s usually pretty short, out of respect—a 10-minute thing. I was there for half an hour, pouring out all these difficulties,” he said. The archbishop immediately reassured him that if he had any doubts, he should take more time before making a final commitment.

“It was a tremendous load that had been lifted off my shoulders. It was an illuminating and painful experience. I realized I was happy I wasn’t getting ordained. It wasn’t what I wanted to feel, or expected to feel,” Mr. Heschmeyer said.

He decided to take time off and then consider rejoining—a plan which, according to the Rev. Matt Mason, the vocations director for the diocese of Manchester, N.H., is not uncommon. But nine days into a 10-day retreat, Heschmeyer knew for sure he was not meant to be a priest after all.

Leaving the seminary or religious life can feel like freedom followed by disorientation, or like rejection followed by clarity. For many, the experience eventually bears fruits of self-knowledge and a more profound relationship with God. But first comes suffering.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine. This article is also in the July print edition. 

Lent Movie Review Vol. 3: THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS

See previous installations of our Friday Night Lent Film Party series: I CONFESS and THE ROBE

Everyone disliked The Robe pretty thoroughly and we wanted something very different, so we went with The Trouble With Angels (1966). No one in our family had seen this one before. We streamed it through Amazon for $3.99. Warning, this post will contain a spoiler.

 

The plot: Mary, a born leader and troublemaker (Hayley Mills), and Rachel, a willing follower (June Harding), are high school girls deposited at St. Francis Academy for Girls, where they immediately begin to hatch “scathingly brilliant ideas” for how to subvert the peace and stability of the school. The imperturbable Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) is their particular nemesis whose patience is put to the test more and more.

The story is an episodic series of pranks and escapades, but it is gradually revealed that the various teaching nuns aren’t just all quirky in their own ways, but many of them have poignant, sometimes tragic pasts that led them to the convent. This is not lost on Mary, even as she continues to torment them and flout their rules. Eventually, Mary and Rachel’s mischief goes too far; but when their guardians are called in for an expulsion interview, Mother Superior discovers that Mary, too, has her reasons for being the way she is, and she has mercy on her (and sees promise in her). At the end, when the girls are graduating, Mother Superior announces that two girls will be joining the convent as novices, and one of them is Mary. Rachel is furious and feels betrayed, but Mary is at peace with her decision, and it’s clear that she can be who she is but may still have a true vocation. 

So, this is a very 1966 movie. It’s very mannered, and some stretches are tedious, and the some of the sight gags are painfully dated. There are some uncomfortable moments where the camera lingers on young girls’ thighs and bottoms for laughs. The accents are a mess, and it’s unclear exactly where the school is. There’s not a scrap of subtlety in sight.

At the same time, the movie doesn’t steal any bases. All the elements are there for the story of Mary’s gradual maturation, and Mother Superior’s growing affection, to make sense and feel real (and it is, in fact, based on a memoir, Life with Mother Superior by Jane Trahey). Haley Mills is a much better actor than I realized, and there were a few truly moving moments, as well as several funny ones. I liked that it showed true friendship between the nuns, as well. I would have liked it better if they cut about twenty minutes out, but I did like it.

Overall, recommended. The animated opening and closing credits are a lot of fun, too.

Next up: I don’t know! I’ll probably push for Babette’s Feast.  The kids somehow manage to read subtitles when they’re watching their Dragonballs, so they can’t beg off on those grounds.

Some of us also re-watched Hail, Caesar, which I appreciated even more after having seen The Robe. I love Hail Caesar so much. The Cohen brothers are upfront about not knowing what to do about God (“Divine presence to be shot,” it says on the screen of the religious epic they’re filming, to mark the place where they’ll add in God later), but it’s less nihilistic and less yearning, overall, and very sweet and very funny. Everyone is just doing their best, according to their very varied abilities. Recommended all to pieces, probably for ages 10 and up.

 

 

Do we ask priests for things only they can offer?

A priest who’s too busy to focus on the sacraments is either a priest who’s squandering his vocation, or a priest whose vocation is being squandered.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image by kisistvan77 via Pixabay (Creative Commons)

Have you ever thought of being a priest? An interview with Fr. Alan Tremblay

I’ve been interviewing pastors around the state for Parable, the magazine of the Diocese of Manchester, for a series called “Have You Ever Thought of Being a Priest?” This article was originally published in Parable. It is reprinted here in extended form.

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Fr. Alan Tremblay grew up in the small, heavily French Canadian town of Biddeford, ME, the third of four children. His family was Catholic, but no one ever talked to him about becoming a priest, and so he never even considered it until he was 19 or 20 years old. Now at 41, six years after his ordination, he’s the pastor of the Parish of the Holy Spirit and Mary, Queen of Peace, which includes churches in Keene, Troy, Winchester, and Hinsdale.

In his rare free time, Fr. Alan likes to take in a baseball game, or, true to his rural upbringing, he will occasionally go hiking, kayaking or skiing. He recently travelled to Northern Quebec to go fly fishing for brook trout with his father and nephew, and he loves to have dinner or a cookout with family or friends. I asked him:

What would be your ideal meal?

I love lamb and lobster. Lamb is definitely a favorite when it’s done well. I cook. I do Blue Apron. I just finished cooking and eating chicken tandoori with cucumber yogurt, with potatoes with poblano peppers.

Who was your hero, when you were growing up?

John Paul II and Mother Teresa were huge in my life when they were alive. I had comic books of both of them. I miss them. I look back with fondness and wish they were still around.

What attracted you to them?

It was their visibility. You could see them, hear them, watch them, get a sense of their holiness. That’s why I fell in love with them. It’s not more deep than that.

When did you first hear the call to become a priest? How did you get from there to here?

I was 19 or 20, and had never thought about it before then. I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 18. I struggled through high school, not academically but motivationally. I didn’t want to be there. I was kind of shy, and wanted to get out. College was not something hot on my list right after high school.

I moved in with my best friend, and that lifestyle was leaving me not just unsatisfied, but kind of unhappy. I never questioned the Church, but I was not as faithful as I wanted to be. This contributed to depression and unhappiness and unease with my place in life.

I was watching Mother Angelica one night, and she was talking about how I was feeling. She said, “It sound like you have to go to confession!”  So I made an appointment with the parish priest. He was talking about the Life In the Spirit seminar. I had never heard of it. It was charismatic, which took some getting used to. But I was open to it. I went through the seminar, and by the end I kept hearing this question in my mind and heart: “Do you think you’re supposed to be a priest?”

It wasn’t earth-shattering; it was just a question, like Elijah and the whisper. I put it away for a while. I went to college, was in a relationship for a while. I started working, and found myself working at Catholic Medical Center [in Manchester, NH]. By then it was seven years later, and the question was still there.

I was loving my faith and practicing, wanting to serve God. The question was stronger than ever, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I applied in April, went to seminary in August. Doors flew open once I turned and looked at it seriously.

How did people respond when you told them you were entering the seminary?

It’s a funny story: I hid it from my coworkers. I was relatively new there, and it would have meant leaving. I went through months without knowing if was accepted [to the seminary] yet. Everyone thought I was looking for a new job or had an illness, because I kept missing work to do interviews.

Then there was a computer glitch to print out my bio for the diocese, and I came back to work, and it had printed while I was away. My coworkers read it and found out. They were floored. It was foreign to them, but they were supportive.

 How about your family?

My mother’s old school French Canadian. She would never have asked that of God. She couldn’t imagine something like that happening. It was overwhelming in a good way.

Did anyone respond negatively?

Only a couple of people, both Catholic, both dissenters. One was a woman I worked with who had a crush on me. She said, “What a waste.” That made me angry. The other one was an older woman who had a chip on her shoulder. She said, “Why would you want to do that?” This was post-2005.

What was the most challenging thing you faced as a priest?

Probably something that isn’t unique to the priesthood: Self doubt and insecurity. Am I up to the task? What will people think? These are temptations you have to face. There’s strength and grace that comes through walking through that. Each time, it’s like the cross, and then there’s a resurrection, life after death. It gives me strength to pray through those interior places, when I have to look to God for help.

What is the most rewarding? What’s your favorite part of being a priest?

When someone who has been hungry or longed for something for a long time breaks open and you’re there to offer that to them, or walk with them through it. People melting, and finally receiving. It’s always happening in one form or another. You walk through it with lots of people, counsel them, direct them. I’m always walking with someone, always looking for it.

When’s the last time something about the priesthood really surprised you?

Every day. People are predictable and surprising at the same time. About my priesthood: I’m noting, especially within the last couple of years, losing myself in it more and more, and finding myself. It’s so who I am, but there’s still so much to discover. It’s a mystery. The closer we get to Christ, the greater the awareness of that mystery.

What advice do you have for those contemplating the priesthood today? 

Talk to people about it. Find someone you trust, and talk about it. Because it seems so strange and foreign, we don’t necessarily see ourselves that way. There’s the obvious answers, like prayer, but I think I went through it alone a lot; and no on in my life, no priest, no family member, no one ever approached me and told me they thought I should do this. It wasn’t until I came forward.

What advice do you have for their family and friends?

It’s about being supportive without expectations. Let the person figure it out on their own, but let them know you’re there with them.

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This article was originally published in Parable, the magazine of the Diocese of Manchester. It is reprinted here in extended form.

 

We want more priests. Have we tried asking?

The one thing all these priests had in common: Someone had made the idea of being a priest seem reasonable. Someone had said, “Have you ever considered being a priest?” or “Wow, you sure look like you want to be a priest!” or “Face it. You’re gonna be a priest.” Someone had asked the question.

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly.

Image by U.S. Air Force photo/ Airman 1st Class Ashley Tank via Mountain Home Air Force Base

Is Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger worthy of the priesthood?

The great Elizabeth Scalia points out that prophets, like seminarians, tend to have something in common: they are mighty reluctant to take the job that heaven foists on them.  They may certainly feel called, but they do not feel worthy — and they do not expect to slither comfortably into their vocations.

We start with our unworthiness, and we proceed to God’s mercy. That is the only path. There is no other path.

Read the rest at the Register.