The Arc of Grace and the Mystery of Nazareth

Coming back to Blessed Sacrament is a chance to see the long pattern of God's grace at work in my life:

As I sat under the soaring brick arches at Mass last night, I couldn't help but think of all the turning points in my life that are associated with this old sanctuary:

1) Entering for the first time and with fear and trepidation as an undergrad at the nearby University of Washington because I was looking for a place to pray. Raised as a strict fundamentalist, I had only entered a Catholic church once before in my life - for 5 minutes out of curiosity as a child in Waveland, Mississippi. I had been terrified by the combination of darkness and burning candles and certain that all the stories I'd heard about the "Whore of Babylon" were true!

But as a college student trying to understand a conversion experience much like that of "Adam" that Fr. Mike describes, it was different. This time, I recognized a presence of God in that old church that I had not experienced elsewhere even though I had spent most of my life in Church. I was hooked by something I had no name or category for. After that, I prayed in Catholic churches where ever I was although I was a long, long way from becoming Catholic myself.

2) When my first job after college turned out to be a disaster and I was unemployed and 25 cents from homelessness (literally), I found John Henry Newman's famous quote from his Meditations in the vestibule of Blessed Sacrament. "God intends, unless I interfere with his plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness. He looks on me individually, he calls me by my name. He knows what I can do, what I can be, what is my greatest happiness and He means to give it to me. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away." Although I had no idea who Newman was and couldn't find the quote again for 6 years, the promise that "I could never be thrown away" felt like a lifeline from God.

3) I can show you the place in front of the statue of St. Catherine of Siena where it first occurred to me to pray that "if there is anything to this Catholicism, I am open, Lord". Blessed Sacrament is the place where I first encountered the beauty of the Easter Vigil and the Exultet, to which I would drag protesting Protestants to for years afterwards ("But I have a sunrise service to get up for . . .!)

4) Blessed Sacrament is also where I met Fr. Michael Sweeney and the small knot of friends who became the nucleus of the famously Nameless Lay Group. It was where I gave many of the earliest gifts discernment workshops and is the place where the Institute was birthed.

And I am not the first person to have their life changed by this glorious, graced old place. Fr. Joseph Fulton, first walked through doors as a Methodist undergraduate from Brooklyn in the 1930's. He went on to become a convert, a Dominican, provincial, Blessed Sacrament's long time pastor and in old age, one of her resident saints who enjoyed the nickname of "Fr. Love". My last memory of Fr. Fulton was watching the community gathered around him as he read Dicken's Christmas Carol aloud by candlelight.

Nor is CSI the first creative initiative birthed here. The Institute for Christian Ministries, founded by Leo Thomas, OP, another of the parish's resident saints, and his lay collaborators also began here. It is a very well developed and powerful training in healing prayer ministry that is used in dioceses around the country and elsewhere.

How is it that God has worked so powerfully in this still somewhat shabby, glowing building with its ecclectic mix of underpaid and overeducated parishioners, young adults, mystics, eccentrics, and street people? Where naked men have been known to walk casually up the aisle during the homily and where the friars and staff respond matter-of-factly when one of the mentally ill regulars tries to start a dialogue at the altar. Or the homeless show up at the Called & Gifted workshop as they did yesterday.

It is the mystery of Nazareth, I think. When next you look at the shabby, broken places in your life, think of Blessed Sacrament. What will God bring out of the shabby, broken Nazareths in our lives for others if we dare to offer them to Him?