Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Act 3

The third and last step of my discernment

12/18/2023

The third and last step of my discernment came with the insight of hindsight. Everyone has heard that hindsight is twenty-twenty. That is, after we go through an experience – say high school or college – and reflect back on it, we see with supreme clarity what we should have done at the time. I always wanted to play football in high school, but my parents said we don’t need any more medical bills. They were right, of course, but I’ve always regretted not playing wide-receiver for the Catholic High Rockets.

Stephen Covey, the widely-respected leadership expert, listed hindsight as the second of his famous “seven habits of highly effective people”. Covey explained the power of hindsight in these terms: To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you are going so that you can better understand where you are now and so the steps you take are always in the right direction…if the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster” (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, 98).

Then Covey invites his reader to do a startling “visualization experience” (p. 97), where the reader attends his or her own funeral. Covey helps the reader picture the funeral chapel, and says they will hear eulogies about themselves. Then he adds: Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about your life? What kind of husband, wife, father or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son, daughter, or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate? What kind of character would you like them to have seen in you…What kind of difference would you like to have made in their lives?” (p. 97). Covey believes that our answers to these questions will be how each person defines a truly successful life. Can you see how Covey harnesses the power of hindsight in order to help people to identify their best life?

My third step, or Act III, therefore, is an exploration of hindsight’s insights about the priesthood. That is, I intend to use hindsight to see my life sort of “bassackwards” and thus discover my own definition of a successful life. Instead of the funeral conceit, though, I would take Covey’s ladder of success and lean it against two walls, and try to imagine myself as two different eighty year-old men. One old dude would be a business man. In the other scenario – the other wall for my ladder – would be a priest. After picturing myself as these two octogenarians, I would interrogate myself: “If you had the chance to live your life over again, John, is this is way you would have lived it?” Remember Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol? In this third act, I would play the part of the Ghost of Christmas Future and also cast myself as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Now, how would I know which wall represented my best life? My heart would tell me. Either my eighty year-old heart would beat with peace and joy, suggesting this was my best life. Or, I might feel a twinge of regret or sadness, meaning my ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. St. Augustine knew we could trust our hearts to lead us to the truth when he wrote unforgettably: “For you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions, I, i). In other words, the feelings of either rest or restlessness in my eighty year-old heart would tell me which wall was my most successful life.

My first wall would be Mr. John Antony the businessman. By this point I no longer entertained the youthful ideal of the life of a poor college professor married with ten children. Rather, I imagined a picturesque distant future after a delicious Thanksgiving supper with my family. Everyone had sauntered to the front yard to enjoy the evening sun and breeze, like our first parents “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gn 3:8). I sit on the front porch swing of my capacious retirement home nestled in the woods. With the children and grandchildren gallivanting in the front yard, I reach over to hold the hand of my wife of fifty years, Sandra Bullock. Hey, this is my wall. You can place whatever bricks you want in your wall, like Pink Floyd sang.

As Sandra and I swing slowly, I muse over my life. I recall how a college professor convinced me to change majors from philosophy to finance. Oh, and did I mention I made the winning touchdown in the championship game in college catching a fifty-yard pass? I remember landing my first job in the corporate office of a world-wide retailer. A satisfied smile crosses my face thinking of the struggles, challenges, and lessons I learned about life and leadership as I climbed the company ladder and became CEO. There is a twinkle in my eye as I remember that business trip to California and meeting Sandra at a restaurant where she fell head-over-heels in love with me. Images of marriage, children, vacations, new homes, graduations, walking daughters down the aisle, grandchildren all flash before my eyes now moistening with tears. I feel the joy Jesus promised: “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap” (Lk 6:38). And suddenly the train of my memories arrives at the station of the present moment on Thanksgiving Day. I am still swinging on the front porch with Sandra, and the sun has almost set.

Then I ask my octogenarian self: “If you could live this life over again, John, is this what you would do?” Now, I admit, someone else’s heart may reply differently, but my heart answered with what St. Augustine called “restlessness.” That is, in spite of how wonderful this life had been – and surely marriage, children, and grandchildren are of inestimable worth! Still, I feel a sense of sadness and regret, as if the ladder of my life were leaning against the wrong wall. That is, with the help of hindsight I could see this was not “the best version of myself” as Mathew Kelly likes to say. But would the cleric Fr. John Antony’s life be any better? Let’s find out bassackwards.

Now I lean my ladder against the wall of “Fr. John Antony”. Oh, why don’t we say “Monsignor John Antony”? Heck, why not “Bishop Antony”? While we’re at it, let’s just make it “Archbishop Antony”! Again, my wall. Now, I picture myself as an archbishop serving as a chaplain for a cloistered monastery of Carmelite nuns. One warm afternoon I walk the monastery gardens and finger the rosary beads. My nose fills with the scents of roses and lilacs the sisters prayerfully prune. My mind not only reflects on the mysteries of the rosary, but also on the mysteries of my life: the joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious events that have punctuated my own past.

For example, I recall the luminous days of seminary studies full of philosophy and theology, studying the saints and scholars that have shaped our faith up and down the centuries. I remember the joyful day of my ordination: lying prostrate on the cold, marble Cathedral floor as a total oblation to God. I heard the bishop speak for Christ: “We choose this man, our brother, for the Order of Priesthood.” I fondly recall the parishes I served, the babies I baptized, the couples I married, the first Communions I distributed. But then I recall the sorrowful moments, too: counseling struggling couples, comforting grieving families at a funeral, anointing the sick in the hospital or in hospice. And of course, how I can never erase the glorious event of being called by the pope to become a bishop, a successor of the Apostles? St. Paul taught his protégé, St. Timothy: “This saying is sure: If anyone aspires to bishop, he desires a noble task” (1 Tm 3:10). And called again to become a “metropolitan,” the canonical term for an archbishop. To follow in the footsteps of the apostles is a glorious gift indeed. A rosary should resonate not only with the life of Jesus and Mary, but also echo our own lives.

And then I interrogate this praying prelate: “If you had a chance to live your life over, John, is this the life you would choose?” Now if I have successfully slipped my feet into the shoes of this old archbishop (who is me), I will perceive in his/my heart a visceral response. Again, someone else may feel differently, but I feel what St. Augustine called “rest”, that is, contentment and peace. I could answer without hesitation that I would live this same life a million times over. Perhaps this is what the Olympic runner Eric Liddell in the movie “Chariots of Fire” meant when he explained to his sister: “Jenny, God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” When our ladder is leaning against the right wall, we feel God’s pleasure.

Robert Frost, in his celebrated poem “The Road Not Taken”, employed hindsight to choose between two roads. He wrote:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

In other words, the best way to avoid a “sigh” in writing poems – or in making decisions – is to tap into hindsight, to begin with the end in mind, to look at your life bassackwards, and find the best version of yourself. I began this three Act play with the joke that I decided to become a priest because I could not find some beautiful girl to marry and have ten kids together. Well, I did meet a beautiful woman, marry her, and have ten kids together all in my mind, and I would still choose the priesthood. End of Act III.

Praised be Jesus Christ!