This entry is 2 in a set of 4 that I was inspired to write during our May trip to Peoria, IL for our friend Robert's Ordination to the Priesthood. All four entries will appear over the course of this coming week.My close friends know that I went through a period of time in which I wandered from the Church and her teachings. I'm not alone - it's something that the media and statistics tell us that many, if not most, of my contemporaries have done and are doing. It started innocently enough with immersion in and exploration of what can most fairly be described as New Age philosophies and "spirituality."
My close friends also know that during that time, I was "searching" for something that I had named "?", or the "unknown", or the Spirit that ties us all to each other and that powers, drives, motivates, inspires, and gives life to each of us.
During that time, I often looked at Christians with some level of disbelief that bordered on disdain. I couldn't believe that "they had missed the boat" and were still following Christ when He had specifically told the Apostles that he must leave them and would send them a new advocate. I thought that even if the Gospel and the Story of the Lord were true, then why would the even call themselves "Christian"? I was looking for the word for that new advocate He had described. I was looking for that very advocate.
It wasn't until a lifelong friend invited me back to Mass - to a 10 P.M. Mass at SLU's St. Francis Xavier College Church, actually - that I found what I had wandered and stumbled in search of for so long.
When the priest raised the consecrated Host and the Chalice of the Precious Blood and invoked the Spirit, I realized the great gift I had been given in the Faith as a child that I had not seen before.
I had found the "?". The fullness of the Spirit was there, precisely because of the unity that existed in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that enabled the Spirit to flow forth from that loving embrace.
I share this story, because close friends also know that at that point I started to explore the possibility of a Vocation to the priesthood as a Jesuit.
I explored that until I re-met Suzanne, who I had known as a child and had seen off and on since we had both graduated from high school and went our own ways.
Through a series of signs, God made His plan of marriage and biological fatherhood apparent to me, and I chose to embrace that Vocation and have never regretted it or looked back.
This back story is important, because as we drove home from Peoria after Robert's Ordination weekend, Suzanne asked me a question that she had not before asked in our almost four years of marriage. She asked "Did this weekend make you regret not becoming a priest?"
As I discussed with Robert over lunch on the Tuesday after that weekend, that was a question that had an easy answer that was hard to put into words.
Certainly and unequivocally, I have no regrets in the Vocational path that God made apparent to me and that I chose.
Without a doubt, priests of Christ are truly called, consecrated, and set apart to be "priest forever, according to the line of Melchizadek." There is a very special and distinct reality to the Holy priesthood from all other Vocations.
But there is an equally special and distinct reality - in a completely different sense - to the Vocation of husband or wife in marriage.
I love the reality of that Vocation.
At its core, it is a loving human type of the divine communion between Father and Son, bearing forth the Spirit.
It is an objective reality that the man and the woman must fully and completely give to one another for the marriage to be true and real. The more full and complete that mutual self-giving is over time, the more full and complete the marriage.
As time wears on, it's certainly easy to erect a brick wall in the communication with one's spouse. Every time they do something that angers you in the slightest, every time they ask you to sacrifice and do something that pulls you from something that you'd rather be doing, there's a tendency to block off a little corner of your life from them and withdraw.
The image of God in the Trinity shows us another way altogether, though, and it is echoed in the reading from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians that so many couples choose for a reading at their wedding. (Love is patient... Love is kind...)
Being a priest (even without being one, I am certain) is a tough Vocation.
Being a husband or wife (being one, I am quite certain) is a tough Vocation.
Both are called to be witnesses to a world that has all but abandoned the Christian worldview of the fruitfulness and happiness of true, mutual self-giving.
As husband, I frequently have to set aside something I'd "rather" be doing or somewhere I'd "rather" be going to spend the time I should spend and do the things I should do with my wife and my sons. In making the choice to do these things, I honestly feel more grace and peace - and am filled with sometimes unexpected happiness.
As husband, it's my vocation to work to provide for my family. After all, it was Adam who God told (in the Garden, after the fall) that he would forevermore toil for his living and to provide for his wife.
As father, it's my vocation to be an image of the Heavenly Father in my household - to show loving authority, be truly just, be compassionate and forgiving, and to completely give of myself for my family.
I have no regrets. My life as a husband is my priesthood, as our Popes of late have made it very clear that all the Baptized have a very real call to Christ's royal priesthood. Not in the tangible, real, and self-sacrificial sense of a Holy Priest, but in a different, real, and self-sacrificial role in a household.
Here's the exciting part: What we brought home from Father Robert's Ordination weekend was a very real, tangible, and living reminder of the rich variety of Vocations to which God calls believers - to that of the Holy Priesthood, to other aspects of religious life, to single and chaste living, and to the marriage that completely gives to another in order to produce offspring and perpetuate humanity and God's family. Each has a richness of spirit to share with the others, and each has much to gain from the others. I am so happy to be in mine, with my wife - my life partner and best friend, and able to share in showing the Light of Christ to the world through our life in our vocation.
Yep, that's what I'd like to try to accomplish in the coming months.
Michael Halbrook lives in