Through Stained Glass: A Mid-Week Reflection-Cease

cease to be a vocation

This year’s Holy Week hangover has extended into the 2nd full week of Easter. After taking the first week rather slowly at church, I’ve reentered into the pastorate full speed…and still a bit blurry.

A mentor of mine recently emailed a group of us young pastors an article encouraging us to take the necessary time to recover, regroup, and practice resurrection ourselves. Indeed, the holiest times of the church year - Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter - are often times of hurry and anxiety rather than reflection and prayer. We lose our way and forget what’s important when we place everyone else’s spiritual lives ahead of our own.

After a week that began with a bout with food poisoning during the early hours of Palm Sunday and ending with 6 services from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday worship, my body, my mind, and my spirit continues to limp into this season of light. Though I tried my best not to, during the last couple weeks of Lent I found myself putting everything on hold. This of course has lead to playing catch up and lots of frustration.

Last night during my session meeting I’ve decided I need to restructure, I need to reorganize, I need to resurrect the administrative piece of my profession. My thoughts were affirmed this morning when I read the following from Pope Francis in his memoirs titled, “Open Mind, Faithful Heart.”

“An abyss separates the priest from the religious functionary; they are qualitatively different. Sadly, however, the priest can be slowly transformed little by little, into a religious functionary. When that happens, the priesthood ceases to be a bridge, and the priest is no longer a pontifex, a builder of bridges; he ends up simply having a function to perform. He ceases to be a mediator and becomes simply an intermediary. No one chooses to be a priest; it is Jesus Christ who does the choosing.” 

Busyness can lead to anxiety which can lead to a job…and not a vocation. Ultimately, I have a choice:  I can pursue either an out of sync, overworked, long hour job or a balanced, boundary drawing, profession which includes regular recreation and rest. 

This is where I want to be. 

I imagine doing this will lead to the resurrection I preach about.

The article my mentor sent me summarizes the tension us clergy folk live in well, “Healthy ministry is grounded in finding your spiritual GPS, a spiritual center that enables you to discern the important from the unimportant, prioritize activities, balance action and contemplation, and relationships and work. Jesus regularly needed to check his spiritual GPS through times of contemplation and solitude.”

Pope Francis goes on to say a priest isn’t simply to speak about God’s presence. Rather, we must engage engage in a twofold movement of seeking to encounter God and receiving rest from God. 

Perhaps the remedy for my Holy Week Hangover isn’t catching up on all the emails I put off, but rather, it is accompanying Thoreau in the woods, away from the beep and buzz of a phone and the clicking and clacking of a keyboard and into that silent land where daydreams and creativity reside.