13th Sunday 2022
1 Kings 19:16, 19-21; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9: 51-62
Forty years ago next month, I came to the end of my first posting as a priest and, a few weeks later, began my second. I had spent my first six years after ordination on the staff of the Junior Seminary at Upholland, and whilst I had serious doubts about the value of such an institution I, for the most part, greatly enjoyed my time there.
I was living in a community, as I had done for the previous eight years in a collegiate university and then a senior seminary; I had the challenge and enjoyment of working with young people; and I had opportunities for sport several times a week.
My second appointment could not have been more different. I was living with one other person, a very kind and supportive parish priest, and I was working as, effectively, a full time hospital chaplain. Instead of a settled community of young people, I had a transient population of the sick, the elderly, and the dying. My four or five days on which I could either play football or run in company with others, were replaced by a solitary run on a Sunday afternoon before I headed back to the hospital for a tea time Mass.
It was vital work. I no longer had any grounds for questioning the value of the setting in which I was occupied, but I have to admit that I was homesick for Upholland. The solitary nature of the work was a massive change from all that I had been used to, and the transition from my former clientele to the new demanded a huge mental adjustment. There were times when I would sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament with the words of today’s Gospel running in my head: “once the hand is laid on the plough, no one who looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God”. I had laid my hand on the plough, and I had to follow the furrow.
Bizarrely, my second appointment lasted only three and a half months, before I was given a third. This involved moving to London as a member of the Catholic Missionary Society, delivering parish missions in various parts of the country.
If hospital chaplaincy required time for adjustment, the CMS was, for someone of my temperament, a living hell. Knocking on the doors of total strangers fifty times a day reduced me, if not to a gibbering wreck, then at least to a deeply depressed individual. After four missions, Bishop Foley took the compassionate decision to recall me to the Diocese, and I embarked on my fourth appointment, as assistant priest at St. Mary’s Morecambe, and chaplain to Our Lady’s HS, Lancaster, a dual role which proved to be, perhaps, the happiest and most fulfilling of my life.
What, though, of laying the hand on the plough? What of following the Jesus who “set His face toward Jerusalem”, almost as if He was gritting His teeth to face the ultimate journey?
To be fair to myself, I don’t think that I had taken my hand off the plough, and if I was looking anywhere it was forward, not back. Our Lord calls us to follow Him along the road, to carry the Cross, but He did not intimate that the journey should be totally devoid of light and joy. I mention this, not to provide an Apologia for my own conduct, but to suggest that if ANYONE is in a situation which is damaging them, the Lord does not demand that they remain in it. He is critical of would-be disciples who look for excuses to delay following Him: He does not insist that their discipleship be a source of misery.
All of us are called to follow, but our following, though it may entail the Cross, is intended to fulfil our personalities, not to stunt them. We are called, not to unlimited beer and skittles, admittedly, but nonetheless to joy in the Lord.
