A Young Pilgrim: Journey

It has been a couple of weeks since writing here. It's such a paradox how those two weeks and a half seemed to have gone both so so painfully slowly and also over in a blink of an eye. There were a few posts I started writing but never quite finished, brief recounts of the small blessings encountered over those weeks. Whatever witness those events presented me in the interlude of the past post are still quite valid and still bear its distinguished imprint of God's most mysterious workings in my life. As a friend put it a few days ago, sharing with me a line her spiritual director often tells her: "I am only a spectator of God's drama between you and Him"... I often feel this blog (and the few numbered readers) is that humble spectator!

Speaking a bit more closely to the title of the post is really an opportunity to speak of the great mystery sometimes life is to me. I can't comprehend it. I can't even start to do so. My return to this city is one of those great great enigmas in my life. I couldn't understand why God wouldn't place the path, the circumstances, to allow me to remain with my parents, to allow for me to be present to my little sister right now in those crazy teenager years and the sometimes not wise ways they seek that independence/identity. I continue to lament she is growing up without me, despite my perhaps fake grandeur as to the depth of my guidance. Regardless this enigma has had a richness, a fruitfulness, in its potential to be a gift to the Beloved. It has been an opportunity to show faithfulness in a most palpable way which has drawn me to my knees time and time again. It forced me to be brave when, if left to my own attachment of comfort, I never would have done or offered.

Today I reflected ever more deeply on this particular enigma. My dad recently had a meeting with immigration and for over a month I had prayed and hoped fervently for its good outcome. Countless times at Mass or adoration I would confide to Him how much heart longed to see them all again. The immigration situation with my dad was drastically made more complex by a great injustice that has haunted us for nearly a year now. Regardless, many dear folks hoped for the best in this long long awaited meeting... meeting we were waiting for since the beginning of this whole process, some 8 or 9 years. And so my hope, my prayers turned into a frustrated answer where more uncertainty sets in as well as another 3 month wait without any sort of security or deserved outcome. Truth is, today, I can't grasp any of it. After hearing the outcome of the meeting my response to the Beloved in my crucifix was a frustrated tired whisper: "what else do you desire of me? what else?"

For tonight I continue to sit with this question....

Crucifix @ Our Lady Of Victories- my parish.

Sitting in adoration today, reflecting a bit on part of the homily the priest gave in the Mass preceding the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, I thanked God for the gift of my high school years. I thanked God not only for the gift to be alive, to have received an education (I do owe so much to St. Louis public education), but more specifically I thanked God for the goodness of those years. Even as I write this now, with barely 8 or 9 months of retrospective, I am aware that my gratitude/knowledge of these years will continue to deepen.

First of all, what do I mean by the "goodness" of those years? Well, I think a good introduction to these ¨"years" was highlighted about a year and a half ago when I visited the Dominican house of formation and a friar (now priest too) commented on a memory he had of me from my middle school years when every Sunday after Mass I`d eagerly and consistently ask apologetic-like faith questions to him and another Jesuit. He had a big smile on his face and mentioned that with such peculiar characteristic I was hard to forget. At the moment I just laughed but I was well aware that I owed much of this ¨"goodness" to God Himself and the people He placed in my path during those years.

High school was, for me, a sort of "dating" of religious life and, to my best attempt, a deepening into a transcendence, a reality, of God's existence in the world.. (in fact, here is a small excerpt from a paper I wrote freshman year about a visit to a Benedictine monastery, that expresses this raw and new "awe" well)

....They chanted with low and deep voices of comfort; quickly I became accustomed. I looked behind me and I stared attentively with awe and silence. A row of beautiful young nuns dressed in habit. A brown veil surrounded their faces while like the flicker of their own candles made their complexion flawless like those of holy saints. With a joy and equal solemnity they stood frozen in time captured in my mind by the glow of my own flickering candle.

I turned, but this time I stared at nothing. It was not an abyss but rather my mind searching within itself. I focused on a crystal window above the ruffled walls. The deep and rich chant continued with its demanding and reverent rhythm.

“♫ Evil bring death to the wicked.
Those who hate the good doomed
The Lord ransoms the souls of the servants
Those who hide in him shall not be condemned ♫”

I listened and at that time I knew I did not understand anything. Everything I knew and did and held and fought for and worried about. Everything I experienced and loved and desired was condensed, compressed in that second. It was compressed in the sound, the thickness of the chant itself. Every thought ended there and yet it emerged from it as well. I began to wonder, as that second passed and the significance expanded from that building upon a direction I didn’t know. I didn’t worry but instead I wrapped myself in every word since I knew this wouldn’t be outside, there society awaited me and this wouldn’t be, not there. Insanity, I recognized reality and I didn’t want to let it go.

For some reason unknown to me, my heart and mind, in those crazy years of high school, were captured wholly into a very honest view of the world and myself within the boundaries of maturity of a 14-18 year-old. And I emphasize (again) that how or why this was touches me deeply. I know full well my ingratitude in prayer to God for this, a grace I've yet to most responsibly penetrated. I have no idea why I wasn't absorbed in the vanities of competitive running (I am a proud graduate of my high school's Cross-Country program), or the competitive spirit of academics (although I was proud to have graduated top 10 of the nearly 500 in my class), or the demand of social activities for Student Counsel (although I deeply enjoyed my post as one of the directors)... or why in the midst of issues like homosexuality, separated parents, immigration disappointments (etc) there was always a graced constancy and hope as well as people (rather blessings!) who became loved companions in the pilgrimage of those "high school" years.

The "goodness" of those high school years perplexes me. My enthusiasm for "nun runs", my huge interest of theology/catechism, my overall blessed and holy experience of those troublesome years, makes me more aware that such "goodness" arrived directly from the goodness and great tenderness of God himself. Sure, call it a somewhat unusual public high school experience but would I have won this neat little award had it been any other way? ;-)

Before ending this little post I hope that it goes without saying that I by no means imply I was a sort sinless/flawless high schooler. God knows that couldn't be further from the truth! We all have our own "demons" to affront in our journey towards holiness and these were fully and boldly present during those years!

Anyhow here are other wonderful images that further express the "goodness" of those years:

"Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. "Ecclesiastes 11:9