I Appreciate Your Prayers
I’m going to be going off-line for a bit starting this evening as I begin a discernment retreat with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. I would appreciate your prayers over the next 24 hours or so, prayers for God’s Spirit to open all our hearts and minds.
It really is an exercise of discernment, not a job interview. I’m not asking for you to pray for any outcome other than God’s will and a gracious gift of the Spirit’s presence. We are going to be praying and visioning about an important question: “Am I called to serve the Episcopal Diocese of Washington as an ordained priest of God?”
I’ve been in a discernment process with the diocese officially since the beginning of this year, but have been praying and dreaming with friends and a few people in the diocese for a couple of years. If the answer we discern from our time together is yes, then I will have some work to do to get ready for this new chapter of ministry. I’m excited about the prospect and I desire to serve this diocese as a priest, but I am resigned to the answer we discern together.
Older prayer books talk about resignation, and I am familiar with it from years of studying, reflection and prayer with my Jesuit spiritual friend, and lately departed, Fr Leo Murray. Fr Murray taught me the Ignatian way of resignation: I will commit myself to God, I will fully give myself to the vision of ministry to which I believe that God has called me, and I will be faithful and true in all things within my control… but, for those things not in my control and not for me to choose, I will resign myself to God’s grace. That’s my paraphrase. Newer prayer books seem awfully preoccupied with achieving some specific end from prayer. Practicing this idea of resignation has allowed me so much joy in this journey, and it will carry me through any twist and turn that is coming, for God is good.
I’ll close now with a prayer used by Jesuits at the beginning of meetings and events…
“O Spirit of God, we ask you to help orient
all our actions by your inspirations,
carry them on by your gracious assistance,
that every prayer and work of ours
may always begin from you
and through you be happily ended.”
And amen.
Thanks for praying along with us!
AMDG, Todd
toddthomas.net 