My Spiritual Autobiography - Part V

This series is running longer than I thought it would - I guess there is more to this story than I initially realized!

When I returned from Israel I had a strong sense of wanting to "do something" for the Lord. My focus shifted from trying to break with vices to trying to do something for the kingdom. I call this the beginning of the "vocational" part of my life in the sense that it seemed that God was calling me to serve him. And this is where I expect the remainder of the my life to be lived out.

As a Roman Catholic, when one comes to the realization that God may be calling them to serve Him there is always a question of discernment. Is this a call to religious life (priest, monk, etc.) or a call to marriage? I was blessed, in particular, in the young adults group by being able to talk to a lot of people who viewed marriage as a vocation. Too often it seemed to me that the "popular" Catholic wisdom was more of an "either/or" mindset. Either you have a vocation or you get married. But the people I was hanging out with spoke differently. They viewed it more as "both/and" - as in both the priesthood and the married life as vocations. The difference is only in scope. The priestly vocation is broad - you come into contact with many lives. The marriage vocation is more narrow - your primary focus is on your family.

I had a lot of people telling me that I should be a priest. In retrospect, this is a funny thing to say - if I have trouble discerning my own vocation, how can I discern someone elses? In the end I made my decision based on pride. I mean I looked into my heart and recognized that I was very proud (not in a good way) and that this was a weakness. I reasoned that the authority and respect given to priests was something that would be very difficult for me to handle - I would constantly be tempted to pride. I reasoned that the better place for me was in marriage - it's tough to get into too much trouble pride-wise changing diapers. I'm not saying this is the best way to discern you vocation, or even that I was right in my thinking, I'm just relating what I actually did at the time.

Things moved fast at that point. At one young adults group meeting shortly thereafter a woman caught my eye and I thought "Boy, she's a tall, good looking woman". I initially thought she was dating someone else, so I didn't give it much of a second thought. Turns out I was wrong. We cleared up the confusion and began dating. This was a woman about whom I really felt she was like bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. In particular, I perceived in her a certain "poverty of spirit" that I had been looking for without even knowing it. We dated for six months and I proposed marriage in the chapel of Our Lady of Good Counsel in the crypt church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (whew!) in Washington D.C. She said yes! And on May 5th, 2001 she walked down the aisle at Nativity of Our Lord Church in St. Paul to take my arm. As I "waited in the wings" just before her big trip down the aisle, my friend Dan led all of the groomsmen in prayer. The prayer of Mary, the mother of Jesus came silently to my heart, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my savior, for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is His name." In his homily during the wedding mass, Fr. Joseph reminded us that "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad" hearkening back to a song we sang at the beginning of each day while on pilgrimmage in Israel. As we made our way from the church to the reception hall, I remember having a sense of awe of where God had taken me in what was a relatively short period of time. A special memory from the reception came near the end when Cathy, I and our families got out on the dance floor together for the song "We are Family" - a lot of loose threads were tied together in that moment.

The first year of marriage passed quickly. In June Fr. Joseph was sent to Rome to study. That fall came the infamous September 11th terrorist attack. The day or two before, Cathy and I had just taken a pregnancy test and the result was positive. As I stared in disbelief at the TV screens watching the towers fall in New York City, I also received a telephone call from Cathy - we were miscarrying. I was emotionally numb. Nobody expects to miscarry.

In January we made a trip of a lifetime to Rome to see Fr. Joseph. The trip was full of many sights and experiences. The highlight was when we got to meet Pope John Paul II. Waiting in the large auditorium for him to arrive was something like the experience I had when I got to see Michael Jordan play at the NBA All-Star game when it was here in Minneapolis. At one point they draw a huge curtain closed at the back of the hall and you realize that the next guy through that curtain is the Vicar of Jesus Christ on this earth. The "servant of the servants of the Lord". The most photographed human being in the history of the race. We stood in a long line to recieve his Apostolic blessing and had all of five seconds in front of him. I said "We love you Holy Father. Thank you for your ministry." He nodded his head, gave us the blessing and we were gone. What none of us knew at the time was that his blessing extended to one more person - Baby Clyde #2 - all of about six weeks old in the womb.