Coming Home from the CHNetwork Conference

Deep in History, Deep in Scripture, Deep in Christ: Coming Home Network Conference 2006!

Can't believe I actually drove the pained and suffering body to Worthington, OH. A gorgeous day, Friday, driving through the stark Midwest countryside, two-lane roads, farms and farm towns, reminders of God's grandeur spent, like shook foil.

I love the humility of this countryside in November, of this area in any season. And northern Ohio produced roads upon which I had never traversed. So, a new adventure for one with, truly, debilitating pain, exacerbated by sitting. And my soul sang in the freedom to be able to drive, alone, and with thoughts connecting my soul with the Creator of thought.

Prior to departure, I attended our Serra Club Mass and lunch. The priest guest gave a homily, not atypical for his homilies, on "balance." He is big on "balance." I told him I could not stay for his talk after lunch due to going to a convert conference which would undoubtedly be filled with frenzied, fanatic, exuberant converts.

What I found was an immense swarm of on-fire Catholics. Seems like the bulk of people I met were cradle Catholics. By the second day I began running into converts, too. It was glorious to be with people from all over the country: souls aflame with love of Christ, love of the Church, lovable and loving Catholics: cradle, revert, convert.

Speakers of note, notables from the Catholic world, spoke zealously and in truth about the history of the English Reformation and the ensuing counter reformation. We heard from The Most Reverend Bishop Fredrick Campbell, Marcus Grodi, Dwight Longenecker, Msgr. Frank Lane, Fr. Charles O'Connor, Joanna Bogle, Dr. Paul Thigpen, Joseph Pierce, Dr. Scott Hahn--and on Sunday would be slated Fr. Ray Ryland.

Packed into a conference room, packed into the lobby, packed into elevators, packed into restrooms, packed into dining rooms; the place was packed with in-love-with-the-Lord Catholics, and not-in-name only. How I wish the world could fathom it!

How I wish I could have endured it to the end. But the pain clicked in, pain of body and mind and soul. I comprehend the bodily pain, from whence it comes. But I was not expecting the women from an eastern state who spoke of St. Luke's Institute and the travesty of their psychological-over-spiritual bent. I had come to the conference, in part, to escape the anguish of what could be deemed a failure in outcome of my recent, lengthy assignment on behalf of a priest with problems. My sentiments of St. Luke's tore open with hearing of similar, grave disappointments mentioned by these others who shared grievous similarities in outcomes.

Then, in the morning, I awoke with the urge to go home, to return from whence I came, while I had the energy to do so. Why the verge of tears? Why, amidst the throngs of like-spirited people, did my soul experience an even greater sensation of isolation?

The Mass inflamed my body, mind, heart and soul. Fr. O'Connor's homily lifted us to heights far beyond the realm of what I'd heard the day before, from the local priest whose theme is typically control and balance, of tucking us under the polyester blanket of restraint and mediocrity. Rather, Fr. O'Connor--and all the speakers of the CHN Conference challenged us to stretch to the heights to which God calls all souls! We heard about the real life people of the English Reformation, nearly five hundred years ago, and the fervor, zeal, the faith and reason, of their lives offered in sacrifice for the Catholic Faith.

We heard about saints. There is little of "balance" in saints, for they are the souls who counter-balance the mediocre.

But, I could not manage the conference to the end. The engulfing sense of isolation rose in my soul, and the ontological aloneness which I have been sensing for some months (years, perhaps?) became so acute that the only remedy was to pack and plan for an early evening departure. I rued not being able to stay for Fr. O'Connor's talk that night, but a contemplative soul experiencing severe ontological aloneness must know when to return to the cave.

It had nothing to do with the calibre and zest of the Coming Home Network Conference. It more had to do with something God desires for my spiritual growth. As I read in Archbishop Luis Martinez's book, after my return to solitude, one must only rise by going down. God reaches us in our lowliness. That is, those who strive for the heights.

In my case, although I love people and so want to be active, I am not called to the active life. God alone knows that in me there must be exacted a severance, a deep, wounding sacrifice, and that is the point of the sense of isolation, of ontological aloneness. Never has it been so keen as when amidst the crowd of glowing, bubbling apostolics! I was an island amidst their glorious sea of firey souls! This served to increase the cauterizing pain of my loneliness.

Alone with God, however. And an unexpected phone call just as I neared the city I've come vaguely to call "home". Fr. F. called, and we talked. I tried to explain some of the massive experience of isolation, the cause of my bailing out early. Perhaps, I said, it was due to the comprehension that the interior life exacts a sacrifice opposite of what the mind desires, and it has something to do with what the spiritual masters wrote and lived: dying to self, emptying out, being in nothingness and nothing in beingness. God alone, solus Deus.

At a helpers luncheon, at the conference, I conversed with a man who did not enjoy Thomas a Kempis' Imitation of Christ. He thought it too much of mortification of the flesh, too harsh. I wasn't in good form to explain, however I did try to mention the second conversion, the purgation of the senses, required of any soul striving for union with Christ. I suppose the classic work could go unappreciated by many, who do not comprhehend the necessity of mortification, yes, of the flesh, of whatever bacteria of the soul needs to be expunged.

The spiritual life is harsh, yes. It is as harsh and stark as the vast farmland in November twilight, driving into darkness on a two-lane highway. Death has come to the landscape in night, crops harvested and some soil turned, some not, in readiness for seeds sown to be frozen.

The spiritual life goes to the extreme in order to balance out the need for reparation, to learn to love to suffer, suffer to love. The seed must fall to the ground and die before it can bring new life. Is that so hard to understand? No. But it is painful, the dying, and breath-taking in immensity, and each seed must learn to die and grow in isolation, each to its own, all in God.

This morning I happened to see the control-and-balance priest. He asked how the big "wing-ding" went. I remarked that I had to return a little early from it, that my pain level could not manage the hoards of people. But then I smiled and said, "Talk about balance--there were so many incredibly on-fire, out-of-balance Catholics there, listening to talks about out-of-balance SAINTS!" He looked at me, and then laughed. I laughed, too.

I am thankful to the Coming Home Network and the hoards of on-fire Catholics--cradle, revert, convert--right in the middle of a necessary extreme, valiantly striving to make good the strides won by the martyrs of our Faith.