+JMJ+
In his
Spiritual Diary, St. Ignatius of Loyola used the word "acatamiento," which is virtually untranslatable to English, to express his "...heightened awareness of the transcendental personal presence of God. It is a felt mood of mind and heart...."*
Reflecting on the times in my own life when I have been aware of God's Presence to me, I realize how easy it is to forget such experiences as they recede into personal history. They are important, moments to be savored and treasured, and I don't want to forget them! To that end, I decided I would try, when I have time and am in the mood, to write about some of them. Therefore, this blog entry will periodically be revised as I add additional memories to it. Probably no one will ever read it but me, but that's OK!
1. September 11, 1981: God comes to me on the bus! When I first moved to Georgia in 1980, I came with a friend/roommate, who, in addition to being an alcoholic, was a very troubled person in general. I was pretty troubled myself at that time: I had gotten divorced in November 1977 after a very short and unhappy marriage, and following my bitter experience with marriage, I had arbitrarily decided to try out being a lesbian, since I felt like I didn't want to be around men again, ever! Amazing as this sounds, at that time I honestly believed that you could actually choose your sexuality, and I decided I would be gay! So, after I got divorced, Marie (she is dead now, so I will call her by her real name) had become my lesbian lover, and my "project," as I determined that I would try to fix her life and turn her into a happier, more confident and functional person.
I now see how controlling and manipulative this was, but whenever Marie wanted to do anything that seemed to me to be a positive move, I encouraged her in it. For example, she expressed interest in getting a Master's degree, but believed that she was not smart enough to do it. I, however, knew that anyone with normal intelligence and determination could get a Master's degree, and in order to make this happen for her, I signed up to take the first course in her program too, in order to ease her into it by going with her and doing the same work. When she announced that she wanted to stop smoking, I agreed to stop smoking too, because I knew that she would never be able to do it if she had to live with a smoker. Then, when she said she wanted to move to Georgia (where my parents had recently relocated), I agreed to that too--my secret motive being getting her away from her heavy-drinking friends and the gay bar scene in St. Louis.
Once we moved, she immediately got a teaching job, but in a fundamentalist Christian school. During the first or second week she was there, one of her students very aggressively recruited her to come to church with her. She was quite incensed, and told the student that she was Catholic. She really wasn't; although she had been raised Catholic, she had not actually practiced her Faith for many years. But when she came home that night and told me about this, to my great surprise, she said she wanted to go back to the Catholic Church.
As usual, I immediately agreed to accompany her, because--despite being an atheist myself--I had the culturally conditioned assumption that going to church was "a good thing," the sort of activity that normal adults participated in. It was only later that night, that I suddenly realized that this was something I just didn't think I could stomach. Being a non-believer, the thought of having to attend church and pretend to a belief I did not have, seemed intolerable to me. I did not know what to do, and I definitely did not want to disappoint her by telling her that I just couldn't do this... but I had one idea. That night, and the following night, right before going to sleep, I said, "God, if You are really there, make me believe in You, because I don't." That was the extent of my effort: two snarky attempts, and I stopped.
A couple days after this, my boss sent me to the Georgia State University Bookstore to meet with one of their Book Buyers, who had promised to donate some books to the library where I was then working. I arrived early, and while waiting for the Buyer to appear, I wandered around the store, enjoying the experience of being in a college bookstore again after so many years. I found myself near the Religion Section, and as I looked over the titles, I laughed to see all the miscellaneous stuff that such bookstores typically classify as "Religion." I noticed one book by an author I recognized, Thomas Merton. I had read his autobiography,
The Seven Storey Mountain, when I was in high school, and had liked it. Impulsively, I bought the book,
The Ascent to Truth, which is about St. John of the Cross.
I put the book in my purse and forgot about it until I was on the bus riding home from work that night. Bored, I took it out and started reading it. Although I still have this book, I have never been able to identify the sentence I read--but I read something, and all of a sudden, there was this amazing sensation of warmth that came over me, starting at my head and flowing down to my toes. I can't explain it, but I realized I was in the presence of God, and in one second, I changed from a non-believer into a believer.
Fortunately, I was near my stop, because I was about to fall apart... I stumbled off the bus to my car, threw myself into the driver's seat, and began to sob uncontrollably with pure JOY; I knew that I had finally found what I had been seeking, without knowing it--all at once, everything in my life seemed to make sense, and I was aware of being completely happy for the first time ever. When I finally composed myself, I started the car and went home. The experience was too profound to share with anyone, but I told Marie that I would call the local Catholic Church and request to begin instructions to enter the Church, which I did the next day.
I met with Fr. Frederick Flaherty, M.S., the pastor, the following week. RCIA barely existed back then, and this was a small parish, so he taught me one-on-one. I soaked up everything I learned like a greedy sponge: I loved EVERYTHING about the Catholic Faith, and I begged him to move up my First Communion and Confirmation, because I wanted to receive the Eucharist desperately. He did escalate it slightly, and I was received into the Church on December 5, 1981.
I will reserve for the next story, another miracle God gave me in answer to prayer, which released me from my immoral relationship, which, of course, I had to leave behind when I accepted the truths of Catholicism. It's so amazing, though, to contemplate the fact that He was able to use an objectively sinful relationship to bring me to Him! It is so absolutely true that He can use anything at all for the good of those who love Him.
2. January 1982: God sends me a priest
Marie and I started attending Mass weekly once I began instructions. We also found a group for gay Catholics called Dignity, which met in Atlanta, and we frequently attended their meetings. The priest who was leading that group, Fr. Henry Gracz, told me that it was OK to be actively gay and Catholic, and since I was quite naive at that time, I believed him--a priest would never tell you anything that wasn't true, right?
Thus, when it was time to make my General Confession prior to being received as a Catholic, I did not include any mention of my relationship to Fr. Flaherty. However, once I actually
became a Catholic, I started to question the validity of what Fr. Gracz had told me. I had just finished a pretty comprehensive course on Church teachings, and I knew what was taught about sexual expression outside of marriage. As time went on, I began to feel more and more uncomfortable, and began to avoid sex with Marie, although--since it was actually pretty rare--she didn't seem to notice. However, I could not bear to admit to Fr. Flaherty that I had not been totally honest with him, because we had started to become close friends and I valued the relationship I had with him very much.
The same week I was received into the Church, I had begun attending Daily Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Atlanta, which was right down the street from where I worked. I also became very devoted to prayer, and since I was able to find an isolated place to go in my workplace, I quickly got into the habit of using most of my lunch hour for spiritual reading and prayer. Anyway, about a month after I had become Catholic, early in January 1982, I began praying that God would send me a priest I did not know, so I could confess my sin, be absolved, and end the physical part of my relationship with Marie. By that time, I had begun to accept the fact that I was not gay anyway, and although I felt I really did love her, I was strongly driven to conform completely to Church teaching.
After about a week of making this special request to God, Atlanta was hit with an historic blizzard on
January 12, 1982. Although our office closed early that day, it was not early enough, and I stood at my usual bus stop for about two hours before the MARTA buses finally stopped running altogether. My car was parked far away in College Park, and I had no way to get home. Fortunately, anticipating the predicted weather, I had dressed very warmly--however, I had no idea what to do. I wandered around the streets of downtown Atlanta with a lot of other bewildered people for hours, each of us asking others what to do, but no one had any answers. I remember going to an ATM and getting some cash out, thinking that I might end up in a hotel, although I knew I couldn't afford it. There was a Kroger store downtown at that time, and I bought a loaf of bread and some bologna!
Finally, I remembered the Central Presbyterian Night Shelter for the homeless, which was only a few blocks from where I worked. I had been planning to volunteer there, but had not yet gotten around to it. I arrived just in time to be ushered in, along with a big line of homeless men waiting to spend the night there. As soon as I got inside, the handful of volunteers who'd made it that night recognized that I, wearing my London Fog raincoat, was not a homeless person! Since most of the scheduled staff had not been able to get there because of the weather, they asked me to help make sandwiches and get the men settled for the night. I gave them my bread and bologna, and got started. The person in charge introduced himself as Father North--and I realized immediately that here was the priest I had asked God to send me! When I got a chance, I quietly told him that I was a Catholic, and would he mind hearing my Confession later that night, when things quieted down. About 2:00am, he invited me to sit with him, I confessed and he absolved me--although he also said that it wasn't a huge sin to be gay and Catholic!
I was absolutely in a state of profound joy--euphoria, really--having this heavy burden on my conscience lifted, and I spent the rest of the night talking to the men who couldn't sleep. All of us had to clear out at dawn, and I will never forget how I felt coming out into the bright sunlight on all that ice and snow, feeling as though I was deeply changed, and that life would never be the same again.
The buses had started running again, and I quickly got on one. It was amazing to see thousands of cars abandoned all along the interstate from the night before. Although my car was covered when I got to the Park 'n Ride, I was able to clear it off and get it started, and I made it home very slowly, without incident. I was floating on a cloud, but of course I could not tell Marie what had just happened to me. It was not very long after that, perhaps a month or so, when I began to have the first thoughts that perhaps--unbelievable as it seemed--I might possibly have a vocation to religious life.
