Still awestruck
Lauder, Robert E
THE LAST WORD
STILL AWESTRUCK
Robert E. Lauder
On a sunny morning in May more than thirty-five years ago I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Later that day, reflecting on this unique encounter...
...More than any other human enterprise religion calls us to be heroic...
...A person can feel lonely in a crowd...
...I still am and I still do.nd I still do...
...as a priest I celebrate mystery and try to live it out in my day-to-day existence...
...The opposite is true...
...This side of heaven there may be nothing that can more fulfill a person than such a relationship...
...Much that was firm was shaken, much that was crystal clear became cloudy, and much that was deemed immutable changed...
...It can be a powerful revelation of our need to be loved and can call us to be more loving...
...There is a dimension of self that only the Divine can enter and religious celibacy is one way of welcoming that entrance...
...Loneliness is the feeling that I don't count, that I don't matter, that I am not significant, that no one cares about me...
...In my own journey toward the priesthood I was warned there was a serious danger, loneliness...
...My life has been surrounded by love...
...Loneliness need not be a dehumanizing experience...
...To reflect radically on loneliness is to do philosophy...
...Later that day, reflecting on this unique encounter with the divine, I had an almost overwhelming sense of awe and I felt an enormous debt of gratitude to God for what had been done to me and for me...
...As a philosopher I play with mystery and try to probe it more profoundly...
...Loneliness, of course, is a feeling that has nothing to do with being alone...
...If my life is not God-centered it is not God's fault...
...It will never become part of my experience...
...Certainly if on my ordination day someone had predicted that eventually half the young men ordained with me would resign from the priesthood I would have laughed patronizingly at what I would have taken as silly seer-saying...
...Celibacy would seem to have feelings of loneliness endemic to it, but so does all human personhood on its most profound level...
...a hermit alone in the desert might not feel lonely at all...
...Religion is an adventure in love and a priest is called to be at the heart of that adventure...
...To be human is to feel lonely at least sometimes...
...Yet in evaluating my own life I must rely primarily neither on the media nor surveys but rather on my own experience...
...It is an adventure in grace...
...Some studies suggest that American priests have a poor self-image and have a serious morale problem...
...My problem is not the absence of God but rather my failures to be present...
...to freely live out the ultimate meaning of loneliness is to be religious...
...Alfred North Whitehead was correct in describing religion as an adventure...
...THE LAST WORD STILL AWESTRUCK Robert E. Lauder On a sunny morning in May more than thirty-five years ago I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest...
...Certainly the contemporary image of the priest has reached a new low...
...I was awestruck and I felt enormously grateful...
...On a sunny morning in May years ago I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest...
...There is nothing more thrilling than religion and my experience has been that there is no way of living more exciting than being a priest...
...Loneliness can be liberating...
...Being a priest is a mystery whose meaning can be explored more and more deeply but never exhausted...
...But loneliness is a two-edged sword: the feeling can lead me to conclude that as a priest I don't matter, that I don't count, or it can call me to enter more deeply into the mystery of the priesthood and identify more profoundly with my lonely crucified leader...
...Jewish philosopher Martin Buber stated it simply: "Love is the godly in existence...
...My image of a priest was that held by all Catholics, by most Christians, and by many members of other religions: being a priest was one of the great vocations among life's options...
...The description of a priest in Paul Rudnick's play-film Jeffrey is not exactly affirming: "Historically (a priest is)...somewhere between a chorus boy and a florist...
...Any absence of love in my life is not due to my celibacy but to my selfishness and self-centeredness...
...Personalist philosopher Gabriel Marcel in distinguishing between a problem and a mystery noted that while a problem is external and there for anyone to consider, a mystery is internal and personal and can only be explored from within...
...It calls us to die to self and reach out in compassion toward others...
...I believe that a lifelong marital relationship is one of life's great blessings...
...If we imagine reality as a mountain of meaning, there have been several earthquakes that have rocked the world and the church...
...It has been a long downhill slide from the clergy portrayed by Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, and Pat O'Brien to the deeply wounded clerics in the film Priest...
...My reaction would have been similar to any claims that there was a serious problem with pederasty among American priests...
...To say that since 1960 a few changes have occurred on this earth might qualify as the understatement of the century...
...To the extent that we are loving, to that extent we are open to the divine mystery...
...Feelings of loneliness probably have increased among American priests, and some of this can be attributed to the image of the priest in the media...
...To be a priest today and not see the problems surrounding priestly existence would be myopic...
...I have no doubt that there are levels of my personality that have not grown or developed because I have not had a marital relationship...
...The media in our secular humanistic culture have tended to treat religion as an inconsequential activity...
...Yet I have no regrets...
Vol. 122 • October 1995 • No. 18
