August 10, 2025: Keep Walking

KEEP WALKING

I have been a priest for well over half of my life at this point. I have to say that I have never really wanted to be anything else--at least most of the time. I first felt ‘called’ when I was seven years old. In fact, I used to play Mass with my brothers and the neighbor kids--even if they were Missouri Synod Lutherans. I tried to deny that call through high school and college. But, by God’s grace and the support of friends, I finally gave in to exploring ordained priesthood and started seminary after I graduated from St Cloud State College in 1974.

So...I have been a priest now for 46 years. After my first 4 years of ordination, I thought about leaving the priesthood. I was very angry, disappointed and disillusioned over some circumstances, that I thought about throwing in the towel and finding a job that had nothing to do with church. One of my good friends—Sr Joyce Iten (who was also my 2nd and 4th grade teacher) told me: “Steve, you are not free to stay unless you are free to leave. Only you can make that decision.” I was grateful for her challenge. I wanted to quit at that time, ...but I didn’t. I can’t. I found I was caught up in whining....that I simply had some personal work to do.

The question that kept coming back to was this: “Where is my faith placed?” Is my faith in priests? No. It is in bishops? No. Is it in the pope? No. They are merely “earthenware jars”...and often flawed ones at that. They hold the “treasure” but they are NOT the “treasure.” Believe me, how I know that! Is my faith in organized religion? No. Organized religion has and will always be in need of reform.

I finally came to this conclusion: to leave would be to turn my back on God. How could I turn my back on the God who called me to be a priest simply because the going was rough? How could I go off and leave my “faith family”? After exploring the possibility of leaving and after wallowing in depression and self-pity for a while, as well as wrestling with questions of faith, I finally came to the realization that if I have faith at all, then this was the time to prove it---by staying and remaining faithful. Sometimes you have to act ‘as if’ you have faith...not fake it...but act in hope.

The question for all of us is: Do I have faith? No…I don’t mean do you believe that this or that bible story happened or this or that church doctrine to be true. I mean---do we really trust God? Can you and I keep walking with God, even when we can’t see where we are going, even when our most precious things, relationships and assumptions are taken away from us?

I am amazed at people who say they have “lost their faith” when a church is renovated, an altar rail is removed, or their favorite Mass time is changed, or their parish church or school is closed, or a church member or leader disappoints them. If faith only holds up when things are going fine, when the world is the way we like it, when we are blessed with all that life has to offer, when every church member is perfect...then maybe it is NOT faith.

Is your faith being tested? Here is how you will know if you have passed the test. If we go on loving and trusting God after we hear the diagnosis of cancer, after the house burns down, after we lose our job, after one’s spouse turns ill or dies...or after our friends abandon us---after we lose everything we can lose—then we can say we have faith. I knew some folks in every parish I have served whose faith absolutely inspired me...quiet, consistent, strong.

Perhaps we could get ourselves into the mindset of one of my favorite lines from saint Julian of Norwich, a mystic, who said that "All is well, all is well, and all manner of things will be well." It's not some kind of a childish option of burying your head in the sand... acting like fears or problems are not a part of our life. In fact, it's quite the opposite. To be a person of faith with our fears and losses and hurts requires great courage, great faith -- the kind of confident assurance that we heard about in today's readings.



We must be ready at all times to face our fears no matter what they are. Like so many people of faith who have gone before us who have stepped into the unknown who have trusted and hoped in God, we too, are called to step forward in faith to forgive, to build bridges rather than tear them down, to bring Christ to every broken relationship and situation. Sometimes faith doesn’t feel good, but we are called to act in faith….for then we will come to know where our true treasure is.