I am praying the surrender prayer as a novena. Today is Day 3. It is a beautiful prayer and one that took me by surprise thanks to its sheer informality. This prayer isn't a petition to a great and terrible ruler who might cast me into hell at the first offence. This is a prayer of deepest love. It is personal. So informal it feels flippant and even irreverent. And yet it draws me as a child to its parent.
I kind of need it right now. I've hit a problem. A problem of gigantic proportions. I am afraid. I have got myself into a pickle and realise that only God can solve it for me. Still, my mind wants to wrestle directly with the problem in the belief that I ought to be able to solve it for myself, thus proving that I am worthy of God.
How did I get here? By choosing to answer a call. I wanted to be closer to God.
When God seemed to be drawing to me to Catholicism, I was more than a little surprised. Really? It has been my romantic fantasy since childhood to become Catholic. But romantic fantasies are not the same as truth. So I put it into God's hands and told God that if I had misunderstood the permission He seemed to be granting, the gentle nudges, the smiling assent, then it was up to Him to let me know. I prayed that I would never refuse to see the truth. If all this sounds offensive and patronising to Catholics, I apologise. I promise to explain.
Answering the call was wonderful at first. Sure, there were problems: how, for example, could I reconcile my passionate support of LGBTIAQ+ people with the Catholic, or indeed any Abrahamic faith? But my heart called me ever onwards and my prayers for guidance were always answered, including through the rosary. My journey through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) advanced and I found more and more joy in both prayer and daily mass.
Everything was great - until I started to feel like a Pharisee. Not because I have knowledge or wisdom or status, but because I feel like I am choosing not to believe, simply because it suits me that way. When God started nudging me towards Catholicism, why did it feel like the most massive indulgence? Because I was brought up in the beautiful world of the Baha'is. I grew up with the understanding that Christ had already returned, fulfilling the prophecies: Baha'u'llah was the promised one of all religions.
And it's not like I disbelieved it. It was simply that the practice of that faith somehow never did answer the yearning in my heart and I found myself in the strange position of envying my Christian, and most particularly my Catholic, friends.
This is the point where it becomes about truth. Is the Baha'i Faith of God or not? If not, then I'm in the clear. But if so? How can I turn my back on it for my own convenience, simply to indulge my own romantic notions of how I would like to connect with God? The problem has nothing to do with the truth of Catholicism but everything to do with rejecting my knowledge of the return of Christ. You can see the Pharisee dilemma.
On the one hand, I feel strongly that God led me here. It's therefore His "fault" and any responsibility is His. But my feeling all along has been not so much that He was leading me to repent the error of my ways as that He was answering my desires with the indulgent permission of a loving parent, knowing how I would best learn and grow. A parent who no doubt knew that, once my heart and mind became enflamed and enkindled, I would need to seek the truth. I would not be able to simply choose the convenient path.
I have begun the slow journey of reading some of the Baha'i writings at the same time as I continue my RCIA and Christian reading. It is tortuous. I am a very slow reader and of course I want the answer now! I want to know which is the "right" path so that I can follow it, thus abdicating any further responsibility in the matter. Should I be a Catholic or a Baha'i or maybe even neither? There are Catholics who become Baha'i and Baha'is who become Catholic, but their journeys and intimate relationships with truth are their own and cannot apply to me. I must seek this answer for myself.
And so I pray the surrender prayer. As it happens, today, as well as being Day 3 of my novena, is also Day 1 of Advent, my first! It is an occasion filled with joy for me and at the same time clouded with doubt and shame!
It was Fr Mark Toups who helped me today with his Rejoice! book of Advent meditations. He invited me to read Psalm 139 (Gk 138), 1-16. What a beautiful psalm! I love the reminder that God knows me more deeply than ever I could know myself. But it was verse 9 that leapt off the page for me, following as it did straight after my recitation of the surrender prayer:
If I take the wings of the dawn
or dwell at the sea's furthest end,
even there your hand would lead me;
your right hand would hold me fast.
What more loving reminder could there be that if my heart is sincere in its yearning for and love of God, then I need never fear? God's patience is inexhaustible. If I should err but do so in all earnestness, then will He meet me wherever I am. Even if I should run from Him in childish defiance, knowing my heart, patiently He would follow. Or rather, should I run, I would only find Him already waiting, arms wide in welcome, at whatever refuge I might choose. There is nowhere He cannot or will not follow, even to the sea's furthest end.
Even better? If this is true for me then it is true for all and that fills me with the greatest hope and gladness. What greater hope can there be? Truly I lift up my heart in humble awe: Alleluia!
Ruth?
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