The next two weeks I am going to be sharing with you a little about priesthood and how the Church calls us to be in communion with one another. One of the greatest blessings in my priesthood is working in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter. (WWME) I know I seem to repeat myself often in this but one of the foundational principals that we work with in WWME is that the Sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders are linked in their support and blessing of each other in growing the blessing within the lives of the priest and the husband and wife.
As a priest we are often asked how were we “called” or to tell our vocation story. This is easy enough done but for me it often misses the point because one of the great insights that I have gained in being a Marriage Encounter priest is that it is not so much “how we were called” but more importantly it is “how we are being called” in our vocation today and every day of our lives. I certainly love to share the story of God’s persistent love for me in how he continued to offer the gift of priesthood even when I was straying and living less than a saintly life but it is in the continuous call to conversion that the true and everlasting love story gracefully unfolds.
This, for me, is where the intersection of the two vocations, marriage and priesthood truly cross paths. The call to true conversion is an invitation to conform our lives to the great other, God and our spouse in each and every movement of love. This conforming can be like my morning walks. At least 90% of the time my morning walk follows a very set routine. I begin about the same time each morning, I wear the same shoes for the walk, I take the same route each and every time. It is a routine that becomes wonderful because it removes the where, how far and which way from my time of thought and prayer. But there is also a temptation: that I stop seeing, hearing and feeling the world around me. The temptation to spend too much time focussing on me and not on God’s blessings around me as I do my morning ramblings. And I do fall into this “not noticing” way too many times. Yet, there are the times when I am stopped in my tracks and see, hear or feel something different. It is here I am invited to conform myself to the other and focus away from my “self” and let the other enter into a conversation of love. When I allow this to happen my senses begin to see and notice the differences and even gaze in wonder at a house, a tree or a vista I had never noticed before even though I had walked the path a thousand times. Focussing on the now helps the walks to become an encounter with much more than just the steps, the breath and the exercise which is the real purpose for the walk.
This is also why, as I said above, we need to focus not on the “how we were” but more on the “how we are being” called in our vocation, whether it is marriage or a vocation to priesthood/consecrated religious life. The nostalgia of how I was called needs to be confronted with the cross of how I am being called in the reality a living encounter with Jesus Christ in the people I am called to serve as a priest. In the same way marriage is also a living encounter with Jesus Christ in the sacrificial love of husband and wife as they encounter the cross in the gift of self to the other. And very much like the walk, it is a continual rediscovering and opening our eyes to the other in our midst as we enter into conversations of hope, joy and a deeper understanding of the other. Our challenge is to stay attentive to the other that dwells deep within but is also apart continuously searching and re-engaging in the blessing and newness of love and life. It is the living encounter with the other’s abundance and generosity of Eucharistic love. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser O.M.I. shares with us these beautiful words about this encounter, “The Eucharist is God’s kiss. As Andre Dubus so succinctly puts it, “Without the Eucharist, God becomes a monologue.” He’s right. We need more than words, we need to be physically touched. This is what happens in the Eucharist and it is why the Eucharist, and every other Christian sacrament, always has some tangible, physical element to it––a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion in water, an anointing with oil. An embrace needs to be physical, not only something imagined.” (p 33 for “Our One Great Act of Fidelity”)
Our invitation is to live this Eucharistic embrace in our sacramental love of husband and wife, as priest and church. This is the true blessing, the true encounter with God who is love.
God bless
Fr. Mark

ps. Our next Marriage Encounter weekend is May 18-20, come and join me in this act of love.

www.sanjosewwme.org