Called, Not Chosen

Last Friday morning, I was struck particularly by a psalm from the Office for Saint Agatha:

O God, my God, for Thee I long at break of day:
My soul thirsteth for Thee, my body longeth for Thee,
As desert, arid land: thus I appear before Thee in the sanctuary, to see Thy power and Thy glory.

For Thy mercy is better than life; my lips shall praise Thee.

Thus will I praise Thee all my life, and lift up my hands in Thy Name.

(Psalm 62)

I’d prayed it hundreds of times over the years, as it is one of the festal psalms for Lauds, but it rang particularly deep for me that morning.

When Francine and I sent in my application to be considered for the diaconate back in December, we were told that we’d know one way or the other by the end of January. In the last weeks of January, a notice was posted on the Archdiocese’s web site that said that applicants would be notified on or before Ash Wednesday.

Normally, waiting is excruciating for me, but in this I was sanguine. The decision is (and really always was) out of my hands. I commended myself to the Lord, and the psalm Friday morning brought this powerfully to mind.

Later that evening, I received a letter from Rev. Frank Schuster, Director of Deacon Formation, informing me that my application is no longer under consideration for the upcoming formation class.

Reading that letter was like a taking a punch.

Saturday I was in a fog. We ran errands, and I was constantly forgetting things and making mistakes. At one point we had to go home from the print shop because I had loaded the wrong file on my memory stick!

I wept during Adoration Saturday evening. The Mass that followed – in which I served as thurifer – was difficult to get through. Not because the Lord wasn’t there – He certainly was! – but parts of my brain kept checking out. I was just distracted and overwhelmed. I’m grateful I didn’t accidentally set anything on fire.

And then there were the constant reminders during the Mass readings.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
“Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

(full first reading is Isaiah 6:1-2A, 3-8)

I wanted to shout, “Here I am, send me!”

And of course the Gospel reading was Luke 5:1-11, the famous “fishers of men” reading.

Oy.

Please keep Father Schuster in your prayers, as well as the others involved in the formation of our deacons. Most especially, pray for the men accepted as aspirants for the diaconate in the Archdiocese of Seattle. Theirs will be a critical service to the church in the years and decades to come, and we can expect them to be tested to the limit.

In your mercy, please keep me in your prayers as well. As you might suspect, I’m still feeling rudderless and adrift. Francine has done her very best to comfort me and walk with me in this difficult part of the journey. I also had two conversations on Saturday that helped immensely – one with my pastor Fr. Nicholas Wichert and one with my friend and former pastor Fr. Jacob Maurer. Even so, it will take me some time to process this.

I can easily accept it in my head – this decision, as I’ve said, was never up to me. In my heart, however, I’m still grieving.

It’s very strange to have been on a road for a long time – six or seven years – and then to suddenly discover that perhaps this wasn’t the road you were on after all.

The Lord continues to call me to serve, and once again I’m utterly ignorant about how. I thought it was in diakonos – indeed, the problem is that I still think that – but the Church has decided otherwise. As I’ve said before, we cannot discern these things in a vacuum – that way lies madness – but we must rather discern from within the Church and according to the mind of the Church.

All I can do is take that gap between my head and my heart and offer it to the Lord in prayer.

It is also possible that the answer remains “no, not yet” rather than a simple “no”. Certainly, Fr. Schuster’s letter indicated that I was welcome to reapply for a future class.

In this, I take some comfort from Chapter LVIII of the Holy Rule:

Let easy admission not be given to one who newly cometh to change his life; but, as the Apostle saith, “Try the spirits, whether they be of God” (1 Jn 4:1). If, therefore, the newcomer keepeth on knocking, and after four or five days it is seen that he patiently beareth the harsh treatment offered him and the difficulty of admission, and that he persevereth in his request, let admission be granted him, and let him live for a few days in the apartment of the guests.

There’s an old holy card that hangs above my desk at work, a meditation by Blessed John Henry Newman, that has for many years helped me in times where I could no longer see the road ahead:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about.

Jesus, I trust in Thee!