That Darn Tree

Those who have heard me speak locally on the Sacraments and sacramental signs - either at a Koinonia or at a confirmation prep night - have heard the story of how I was led away from the Church and from Christianity for a period of my life.

It basically follows the typical cradle-Catholic-leaves-then-reverts formula.

When I was a young man, I worked for 10 summers of my life at our council's boy scout camp. One spring, while working with several fellow staffers at a spring weekend campout, I saw a close friend and fellow staffer sitting, motionless, on a bench in front of the main lodge, focused on a tree across the main parade field and the creek just beyond it. He didn't move for the longest time, and I eventually approached him and asked what he was doing.

He expressed that he was watching the tree's energy. A rather strong conversation ensued, and he pointed me to a book: The Celestine Prophecy. I read the book, and it led me down a long trail of "New Age" spirituality and away from the Church for many years.

That tree became emblematic of my search for the "Spirit" in the world around me.

During that time, I even became downright virulent with Christian friends trying to defend their faith. In some ways, I was a modern day, pre-conversion Saint Paul.

It was about this time of year a few years back that another friend invited me back to church at 10 PM Mass at SLU on a cold winter night. That's when, for the first time in my adult life, I truly believed and saw Christ's presence in the assembly... in the priest... in the Holy Eucharist.

It's part of why this time of year is now one of my favorite... for the natural beauty of fall, but also for the beauty of the liturgies - the readings and prayers - of this end time of the liturgical year, talking of faith and Sainthood and the end times... and reaching its apex next weekend with my favorite feast day, the end of the liturgical year, on the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King.

In honor of the journey and the grace, I share the timeless words of St. Augustine, from his Confessions, on his return to faith:

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.

O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: "I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me".

Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.
 
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!  You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

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