Making a personal pilgrimage through our geographical past
02/05/2018
After making the crossing to the other side of
the sea, Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret and tied up there.
As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him. They scurried
about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to
wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he
entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might
touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.
I was very blessed to have
Archbishop J. Peter Sartain write the Foreword to my first book. He colorfully
described the life of a priest, saying, “A priest’s life is a busy one.
Especially if he is pastor of a parish, he finds himself shifting gears all day
long. William Martin writes that begin a pastor is like being a stray dog at a
whistler’s convention” (Oh, for the Love of God, 7). That means that if I am
the stray dog, then each of you holds the whistle. One minute I am blessing
someone’s rosary, the next minute I am running to the hospital, and the next
minute, I am counseling and comforting someone who is hurting. But I have
learned that someone else has a bigger whistle than my parishioners do, and
that is the bishop. Over the course my priestly career the bishop’s whistle
made me run to Texarkana, and then to Fayetteville, then to Washington, D.C.
and finally to Fort Smith. I sure hope he stops blowing that darn whistle soon.
But when I pray, I realize that
Someone else has an even bigger whistle than the bishop, namely, God. When I
look at my life writ large over forty-eight years, I see that my moving from
place to place – from India to Arkansas – was orchestrated by God’s loving
providence. In other words, what may seem accidental and arbitrary moving from
place to place by forces out of my control was in actuality God’s whistle
teaching and guiding and loving me. Just like a dog whistle is often
imperceptible by human ears, so too, hearing God’s whistle requires ears
trained by prayer and contemplation. We
usually do not see or hear what God is doing.
Jesus’ movements from place to
place in the Holy Land can also appear accidental and arbitrary. He goes to
Galilee, he travels to Capernaum, he visits Bethany, he ends up in Jerusalem,
he dies on Golgotha. But there was nothing arbitrary about any of it. Scripture
scholars often call the path that Jesus followed in the Holy Land the “Fifth
Gospel.” Just like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the four gospels to help
us understand who Jesus is as the Messiah, so the geography of Jesus’ journey
also reveals who he is, his mission plan, and his keen sensitivity to the Holy
Spirit. Jesus was hearing God’s whistle directing him from place to place, and
that’s why our Lord spent long hours at night or early morning in prayer,
training his ears to hear that high pitch. People who make a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land and trace Jesus’ steps have read five gospels, not just four like the
rest of us.
When I prepare a funeral homily, I
meet with the family of the deceased and ask them to go through the life of
their loved one not only chronologically, but also geographically. Where was
the person born? Where did he or she grow up? Where did they attend college?
Where did they land their first job? Where did they decided to raise their
children, and finally where did they retire? It may seem all these moves were
either carefully planned or they happened quite by accident. But I believe
there’s another Agent at work in our geographical history, and that is God with
his imperceptible whistle. When we prayerfully contemplate our own journey
through life, making a sort of personal pilgrimage through our past, we begin
to hear God’s whistle and we start to see how he has led us everywhere and
taught us to be more like his Son. When you prayerfully retrace the steps of
your own geographical past, you are reading your own fifth gospel.
As you run from place to place in
your life, stop to look around and see what’s happening in your relationship
with God. More importantly, learn to listen prayerfully to a certain high pitch
whistling. You may find that you, too, are just “a stray dog at a whistle’s
convention.”
Praised be Jesus Christ!
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