A classic technique in sitcoms and movies is for the story to open at a climactic or bizarre moment, and then to rewind and use first-person narration to explain how the protagonist ended up there. The giveaway is usually a line like: “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.”
Since I entered the Dominican Order nearly six years ago, I have lived that scene—in my head, that is—quite a few times. I have looked around at my surroundings and asked myself, “How on earth did I get here?” Why am I reading aloud a sermon about Elvis at a stranger’s sickbed at a hospital in Ohio? Why am I wandering through a half-derelict park in the South Bronx trying to give away day-old donuts?
Even the everyday, ordinary dimensions of religious life have prompted the same question. Praying in our chapel in silence at 6:30 in the morning, I sometimes wonder: how did I wind up here—in Washington, DC, wearing these medieval clothes, surrounded by this eclectic collection of people?
Two days from now, my classmates and I will make our solemn profession. After several years of testing our vocation, we will finally make our consecration permanent, promising to live as Dominicans until death. By those vows, we will belong wholly and exclusively to God for the rest of our lives. Before we make our profession, we will lie prostrate on the floor of our priory chapel. The sight would make a perfect opening shot in a movie: our noses pressed to the century-old floorboards, our backs draped in the black cappa of our Order, and our arms outstretched in the shape of the cross: “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.”
What would the subsequent narration be, though? What kind of flashback could explain how I arrived at this moment? There is so much to say. I could tell you about learning to pray the Rosary on my grandma’s front porch when I was five or six years old, proudly wielding my large glow-in-the-dark beads. I could tell you about falling in love with the Eucharist and returning to Confession. I could tell you how, if I hadn’t gone to that college, studied that major, met that professor, landed that job, and moved to that neighborhood, I probably would not be a Dominican today.
Ultimately, however, the deeper and truer story is simpler. Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him” (John 6:44). To believe in God is a gift of God. To love God is a gift of God. To pray to God is a gift of God. To lay down one’s life and offer it as a living sacrifice by religious profession—this too is a gift of God.
So please pray for us. Pray that the good God who has drawn us to profess vows in the Order of Friars Preachers will give us the grace to persevere until death. Pray that when, in the course of our lives as Dominicans, we inevitably find ourselves asking again “How did I get here?” we will be given the wisdom to see God’s providence at work and trust in his power to sustain us.
✠
Photo by the Province of Saint Joseph on Flickr (used with permission)
