You Can Get Here From There (Part 1)

Note:  I have been examining and assessing my spiritual life, growth, and development for some time now in preparation to enter discernment for the formation for the diaconate.  As part of this self examination, I was asked to write a spiritual autobiography of sorts.  This will be published in digestible bits.  I have decided to share this ever expanding text for two reasons:  One, to show people that wherever you are in life, a path to the Lord and His Church is right in front of you, and, two, to illicit prayers for my discernment.  

They say that hindsight is 20/20.  Well, if that were true, we would all learn so clearly from our experiences and mistakes that there would be little need for ongoing growth, learning, formation.  Hindsight is more 50/50:  Sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don’t.

I was born into a Catholic family.  My mother was a cradle Catholic.  A prized picture I possess is one where my mother is standing in front of a shrine to Mary in front of our church, St. Vincent dePaul in Mays Landing.  It was the day of her first Holy Communion.  She was standing by the shrine, hands steepled, draped with a rosary. There is a picture somewhere buried beneath a child’s career of school pictures and other keepsakes of me standing near that very same shrine in front of that very same church on the day of my first Holy Communion.  As a child, knowing that I was at the same place, doing the same thing as my mother did when she had been my age, gave me a strong feeling of belonging, of legacy.  I believed this was my church because it had been my mother’s church.

My father was raised Methodist.  He converted to Catholicism in his early twenties when he was in the army.  Exactly why he converted was never shared with us kids. Perhaps it was to marry my mother.  Maybe there was something else entirely.  Whatever it was, his heart was moved enough to accept the open arms of the Church. There are family stories about how angry my paternal grandmother was when she learned of my father’s conversion.  As the story goes, my grandmother did not talk to my father for quite some time.  My grandfather, on the other hand, had been much more understanding and helped to smooth things over.

As a child, our family made Mass most weeks.  There were some Sundays when only my mother, my two brothers, and I would attend Mass.  Dad was often working on a project around the house.  When I was very young, I can remember my father working a second job at a sawmill on weekends that kept him away from attending Mass with the family.  Though, as I got older -- later elementary and middle school -- my father was with us at Mass more and more.

I remember when I was in my early teens, my father and I would go out into the woods and cut down dead-standing trees to burn in our Franklin Stove.  He and I would often hit the early 7:00 a.m. Mass before heading out into the woods.  I remember my father saying how much he liked the early Mass because it was right to the point, ie. no music.  He also like when Father O'Sullivan celebrated Mass because his fast pace and short homily.  Remembering this now, I can see how my father may have viewed going to church as a perfunctory obligation.  And perhaps his minimal involvement may not have been the best example for a child growing up in the Faith, but I treasure this memory, my father and me sitting in church together, and the fact that my father would take me to Mass taught me that, at the very least, you go to church.

And that’s what church was to me, something you just did because it is what you do.  But I had learned there was a price to pay.  Since I attended public school, that price was very high.  It was called CCD.