A spiritual autobiographical reflection on priesthood

Spiritual autobiography of priesthood

November 2022

From the time I first began to imagine myself as an ordained priest, sometime in my early 20’s, the worker priests in France were models of what I thought my ministry could be. A ministry aimed at the poor and the outcast, those who could least afford it, seemed most attractive to me. I was inspired by the stories I read about the emerging ministry with those who are dying, hospice as it emerged first in England. Such were the dreams of ministry I thought and talked about.

My earliest memory of the Episcopal Church was of my uncle’s music ministry in Quincy, Illinois. He was the organist for the Cathedral there. I was proud that I had family connections with this grand church, “grand” at least to my 10 year old eyes. But along with that is the earliest memory I have of Episcopal preaching. The priest spent the whole sermon explaining why the church flag in front of the narthex stood one step higher than the American flag. I thought it was a stupid sermon at the time and I was not yet a teenager.

It was stupid I thought even then, because I yearned to experience and to know the sacred, within my own life and experience. What flag stood where was not pertinent to my longing. At an earlier age I had had glimpses of the sacred in the stories and prayers of my grandmother, a Methodist Sunday school teacher. Finally when I was a teenager, my mother began to take us to an Episcopal church in our hometown. There I was completely captivated by two things: 1) real candles on and around the altar, and 2) everyone drinking real wine from a common cup. The priest said in the very words, that Christ was present. And I experienced it that way. The sacred in my own life and experience. Later I would find a rich mentoring guide in the life and witness of Brother Charles de Foucauld. His vision of life was contemplative and sacramental. The sacred was met in the material of everyday life. His goal was not conversion but living love. Such conversion as there might be was to be facilitated through the witness of one’s life.

In my later 20’s, I was off to seminary. There it seemed to me that a way of fulfilling the kind of ministry I had imagined was by being bi-vocational. The second vocation that seemed most natural and which was a natural fit for me, was teaching. By the time I had been ordained for 20 plus years, I began to realize that my life was really unfolding according to what I had imagined so many years before. I had ministered at the smallest congregation in the diocese of northern Indiana, and I made it work by teaching at Saint Joseph’s College. I didn't accomplish it in a tidy orderly manner. It was messy and I brought to the plan lots of brokenness, but I never lost sight of the desire to be an agent of bringing some bit of grace into the world.

My first position after ordination, as an assistant Rector, taught me several things, mostly about myself, that became important touchstones for the rest of my ministry.

One came through a little sign that was given to me by my Rector-boss. It read: “If you think you are important, stick your finger into a glass of water and pull it out. See what impression you leave.” As I relate the story it seems that it gives the impression that it's a pretty harsh statement to a newly ordained person, struggling to identify how to go about doing his vocation. Perhaps so, but it is also a lesson in memento mori. The Commendation anthem gives me chicken skin every time I hear it:

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The second thing I learned I didn't recognize at the time. It was only after I left that position, and looked back, that I realized I had learned an enormous amount about how to do ministry from the Rector. There was no question in my mind that he was a man with considerable flaws. And yet he had been an agent of Grace for me. That meant of course that there was hope for myself at being a minister of the grace of Christ.

Eventually I found myself as Vicar of the smallest church in the diocese while also teaching on the faculty at Saint Joseph’s College. The bishop had given me the specific charge of raising up a person in that small congregation who could be ordained priest to serve there. In the search for ways of discerning such a person, I learned something extraordinary. I began a small group that met weekly, following the guidelines of the so-called African Bible study method. We would read the gospel of the upcoming Sunday and then around the room we would share our responses to the prompts. My impression then is supported by my experience throughout the next 30 years: virtually invariably God is present in tangible ways in such gatherings.

Out of that group a person was called to be ordained and to serve the congregation. Tellingly, it was not the person that I expected. I felt a tinge of pride and gladness when that person became the first woman ordained in the diocese of northern Indiana. She went on to urge and lead that small congregation to found a mission offshoot. The smallest church of the Diocese became a leader and model for planting new ministries.

When I became Rector of a parish, Saint Andrew’s by the Lake, there were some new insights to be had. It was during this time that the church began to take seriously the problem of child abuse. The principle that the church was to be a place where everyone could feel safe was moved to the top of my concerns.

There was a clear charge and expectation that the congregation needed to grow. Nothing new there, and it seems to be an almost universal characteristic of congregations in the Episcopal Church. It seemed to me then that the world we live in and the church within it were changing so rapidly that the need was great that we find new ways to be church. There are many within the church for whom the principle that there be no change is held to be almost an orthodoxy. I wonder whether the ideal of ministry is too often success rather than faithfulness and love.

I know for myself that I find satisfaction in a statement one of my daughters made to me. She was complaining, but for me it was a positive observation. She said, “The way you can tell a preacher’s kid is that they know the names of all the homeless people you pass on the street.”

At one time I felt confident about what needed to be renewed in the church. Contemporary vs. traditional liturgy? What kind of music? I read and listened to all kinds of diagnoses. I paid attention to churches that grew and tried to find characteristics there to implement in my own church. I would ask clergy what it was that they did to lead their growing church? I can't identify a consistent answer. In retirement I am more aware of the larger perspective of the life of the Christian church. Archbishop Ramsey was reported to have said at one point that he was utterly convinced that in the end of time Christ would prevail as Lord of Lords. Whether there would also be an Anglican Church, he was much less certain about. And for some he was Mr. Anglican Church.

Success as well as failure can be found in any church. Inclusivity would seem to be an essential and fundamental principle for the church. I lament, however, that in seeking inclusivity, our church seems unable to prevent the schisms that continue in our time. How do we measure success? Attendance? Finances? Lives changed toward love?

Certain things endure.

• Listening to what the Spirit has to say
• African Bible study and lectio divina
• Centering prayer
• Taize inspired worship

In a class on homiletics at seminary, the teacher told us that:

everyone knows at most 3 or 4 things. Everything they preach will be a variation of those 3 or 4 things.

I count that statement to be among the most important things anyone told me about ordained ministry. Ever since, I have tried to be clear in my own mind and heart about the things that I truly “know.” I seek to preach from those things. They include:

1. All is grace
2. The goal of life is to be grateful in the end
3. We more often than not experience God’s presence in surprise
4. Truth is paradoxical

You can test that claim by considering my sermons of the last few years. They are published at: https://sermons-fr-hathaway.blogspot.com/

There you will find a concern to reveal the sacred in our midst. You will find a repeated attempt to convey the urgency of the times we live in. In the last couple of years, at a little church in North Carolina, an important new insight has come to me. It seems to me that one of the most important signs of a healthy church is laughter. It is on a par with not taking oneself too seriously -- I think it was G.K. Chesterton who said that that was what enabled angels to fly. In heaven, I believe, the angels will play hammered dulcimers. There will be much singing and story-telling. And there will be laughter.