Learning to Follow

Dear Friends in Christ,

We have begun our fall season this year with the big question of identity: “Who do you think you are?” Pondering over that question, we can admit that who we are, and who we think we are, are not necessarily the same thing. Indeed, our relationships, our interests and hobbies, our actions, the way we spend our time and energy - these realities and others shape who we are. And sometimes, we may not even be totally aware of how we appear different from our own mental self-image.

One of the areas of life where this misalignment may occur is in our successes, or what we perceive to be our successes. Since each of us desires to be successful and competent in our own eyes, we may not accurately represent our own wins - those life victories that contribute to our self-worth. Let me share a story with you.

Toward the end of my time at Notre Dame, many questions arose. What was the next step on my journey? One possibility was graduate school in clinical psychology, but it was a long shot to be offered a slot. The other options seemed more like a holding pattern for whatever God had in store for me. I accepted a rare opening in the prestigious program at the University of Virginia. It felt like a success and I gave myself over wholeheartedly to that program. All the while I kept asking the same larger questions that had arisen in my last year at ND: “Lord, what do You want for my life?” It's a great question - a question for everyone but especially for young people. It is a question that we do not ask once, but many times, and we must seek to hear the quiet ways the Lord speaks.

In the course of that first year, I came to understand that God really had other plans for me. He was calling me to be a priest. Becoming a priest meant putting away my dreams of a wife and a family; it meant saying goodbye to the path that I was on and beginning on a new and less familiar road. And in that pivot, I felt like a great failure. 

All the while I was seeking the will of God. And all the while, God was trying to show me His desire for me. Yet it took a year or more to really be ready to hear His gentle voice. And over the course of that time, I can honestly say that He shaped my heart as well. God converted me, in the root sense of that word; He turned me to Himself and brought me to a place where I could see and accept what He had in mind. And yet while I embraced the invitation, I also felt like a failure. That all the energy, time, and talent that I had poured into clinical psychology would not come to fruition. Admitting out loud that my long-desired path was not really the path for me, was humiliating. And I felt like a failure. Only much later did I perceive the lessons along the way.

God was teaching me, in part, how to be a disciple. Disciples follow. Disciples do not go where they want to go. Disciples follow after the Master. That reality allows Paul to say, “Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.” That is the true detachment of a follower, and that genuine detachment takes great love and trust. Paul is someone who knows he is chosen, who knows he is forgiven, who knows he is loved and therefore, he seeks to follow. Paul is willing to put away everything, even his own life, because he understands that following the Lord is the true path to fulfillment.

Lord, grant us the courage to follow where you lead!

In the footsteps,

Fr. Wilson