At Exile’s End

In the seminary our days would start at 6:30 with lauds, the morning prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours.  Essentially we would chant the Psalms together, responding, one half of the chapel to the other as a community.  Occasionally, a Psalm would really hit me emotionally and I found I could not sing.  All I could do was sit back and just let the chanting of my brothers wash over me.  One in particular brought this feeling up; Psalm 137.

Psalm 137 tells this great lament of the people of Israel during their exile from the Promised Land.  In 586 B.C., the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Temple built by Solomon, and carried many of the Jewish people away to Babylon as captives.

The psalm opens:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Zion."

The exiles are gathered along Babylon's irrigation canals and rivers. They are far from home, grieving not merely the loss of a city but what seemed to be the collapse of God's promises. Jerusalem, the Temple, the sacrifices, and the visible center of their covenant life were gone.

Sitting in my pew in that chapel it was hard not to tear up at the accumulated pain of losing home.  The heartachingly beautiful words tearing my heart just as surely as the crucifixion tore the temple veil in two.  The Psalmist asks, “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”  Indeed when all seems lost, how can we possibly sing?  What is there but to dash our instruments against the rocks?

At the time, I could sympathize with the sorrow of the Israelites, but only from a distance. Their grief was real, but it was not yet my own.  I had not lost my Jerusalem. I had not known what it was to watch a dream collapse. I had not yet found myself in a foreign land asking whether the promises I thought God had made were still intact.

And then, of course, I would understand.

Leaving the seminary was one of the most painful moments of my life.  Like ancient Israel I found it hard to sing of God’s glory.  I was no longer in the promised land; an exile now,a  stranger in a strange land.

The years that followed often felt like Babylon. Not because God had abandoned me, but because I could no longer see where He was leading me. The vocation I had pursued for so long appeared to be over. Doors closed. Plans unraveled. Questions lingered unanswered.

How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

For a long time, I did not know.

The writing helped.  It was a way to continue intellectual pursuits, yet still it felt like I was biding my time, doing something perhaps good but not what I am called to do.  But what I was called to do simply wasn’t working, and I found myself begging God in prayer for another vocation because this one was too hard, too painful.  Who could bear it?

Yet that particular prayer was never heard.  No diverging road appeared.

I tried to convince myself that enough time had passed, that it was time to move on, that perhaps I had simply been mistaken all those years ago. Yet every time I approached that conclusion, something within me resisted. The call that had led me to the seminary in the first place refused to die.

Perhaps that was the strangest part of exile. Jerusalem was gone from sight, but not from memory. The Temple lay in ruins, yet the people still faced toward it when they prayed. In much the same way, I could not forget the place from which I had come, nor the calling that had first set me on the road.

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither."

The words of the Psalm were no longer someone else's lament. They had become my own.

And yet, looking back now, I can see that God was doing His work precisely in the place I least wanted to be.

Babylon was not Jerusalem, but it was not devoid of grace. During those years I learned to pray not because I was in formation, but because prayer was all I had. I learned to serve without the title of seminarian attached to my name. I found myself spending more time in my parish, serving at the altar, bringing Communion to the sick, teaching, writing, and discovering that the call to holiness does not wait upon ordination.

Most importantly, I learned that vocation is not ultimately about a destination. It is about fidelity. The question was never whether I would become a priest. The question was whether I would continue following Christ when priesthood seemed forever out of reach.

That lesson could only be learned in exile.

And then appeared a crack in a door I was starting to think was long ago shut; Las Vegas.  

At first I scarcely dared to hope. Hope can be a dangerous thing after enough disappointments. Better, I thought, to simply walk through whatever door God chose to open and let the pieces fall where they may.

There were interviews. Questions about my past. Questions about my departure from seminary. Questions I had spent years asking myself. Nothing was guaranteed. If anything, the process seemed designed to remind me just how uncertain the future remained.

Yet something had changed.

For the first time in years I was no longer staring at a wall. There was a road before me, however narrow and winding it might prove to be. The possibility that I might once again answer the call that had never left me was no longer confined to prayer. It had become real.

After years spent by the rivers of Babylon, I found myself turning my face once more toward Jerusalem.  Perhaps the rubble of the old can be built anew.

Turns out all things can be made anew.

I sit here now after applications and interviews on the edge of another adventure, and another call; Vegas wants me to study for them at Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon.  After years of uncertainty, years of closed doors and unanswered questions, the road that had seemed lost in the wilderness suddenly lay before me once again.

The path forward is not identical to the one I left behind. Jerusalem after the exile was not the same Jerusalem that had fallen to Babylon. The city was rebuilt stone by stone. The people who returned were not the same people who had been carried away. Exile had changed them.

It changed me as well.

I leave for Oregon older than the man who first entered seminary. I carry scars I did not have before. I carry lessons I could not have learned any other way. I carry a deeper appreciation for prayer, for suffering, for perseverance, and for the simple grace of being given another chance.

Most of all, I carry gratitude.

Gratitude to the priests, friends, family members, parishioners, and brother Knights who continued to believe in me during years when I often struggled to believe in myself. Their prayers carried me farther than they know. 

Years ago, sitting in that chapel, I wondered how anyone could sing the Lord's song in a foreign land. Today I know that sometimes the answer is simply to keep singing, however weakly, until the day God brings you home.

For years I felt like one of those exiles by the rivers of Babylon, staring across a distance I could not cross and mourning a Jerusalem I feared I had lost forever. Yet God was at work even there, shaping me in ways I could not then understand.

Exile, it turns out, was not the end of the story.

And so I find myself once more on the road to Jerusalem.