Joyful Hope

Reflection by Patrick Douglas, Chaplaincy Coordinator.

April 12, 2009

On Palm Sunday, I had the opportunity to give a witness talk at the Office of Catholic Youth’s celebration of World Youth Day at St. Paul’s Basilica before 500 youth. Given this year’s theme, “We have set our hope on the living God” (1 Timothy 4:10), I endeavored to recall hope in my own life, especially in my calling as a husband, father, and Chaplaincy Coordinator and Business Manager at the Newman Centre.

I think I’m a hopeful guy.  Sure, I’d say I’m optimistic; generally, I like change, but the most elusive theological virtue for me to grasp is hope.  Despite my awkwardness with hope, I think I’m slowly catching on to its meaning, particularly in the events of my life.

I grew up in a solid Catholic family with an average Catholic education.  I was actively involved in my church during high school.  I feel I’ve always had a strong faith life.  However, while I was away at University, I became less involved and, eventually, I felt alienated from my home parish.  I became a nomad for Sunday Mass, always looking for a parish in which I would fit.  I came to a point in my life where I was spiritually dry, forgetting who I was and what I wanted, desperately in need of renewal.

I was in a conflicted state.  As your average, early 20’s metrosexual, I knew all too well the standards of the world.  Mixing it up on the club scene, I thought I could satisfy my urge to dance it up with the ladies, yet meet that one special girl who was a church-going Catholic like me.  Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places.  At the same time I was losing hope that God would ever allow me to love someone, or even know what that love really means.  My lack of hope manifested itself in numerous struggles.  Yet, despite this era of gloom, I look back and I am so grateful for the times I availed myself of the sacrament of confession.  Not only was sanctifying grace restored to my soul, but I was fueled by actual graces to persevere, even after subsequent falls.  Like one priest told me, “Don’t stop coming to confession because you are confessing the same sin time and again.  It is precisely for this reason that we need to return and, one day, those accumulated sacramental graces will prevail.”

Eventually, I made a choice to seek out God’s will for my life, but this time for real.  In 2001, I made a retreat to Holy Trinity Monastery in Arizona in search of rejuvenation.  This was the turning point where I decided to let go spiritually and let God guide me.  Soon afterwards, my sister, Susan, invited me to a retreat organized through the Newman Centre and I was surprised at how well I fit in with these seemingly cool young Catholics.  I started to become more involved at the Newman Centre over the next few months and joined their World Youth Day 2002 team.

Then one day I got the call from my pastor, Fr. Pat.  He said it was “God calling”.  How true it was.  I was semi-enthusiastically working at Xerox at the time and he asked if I would like to come and work for him at Newman.  It has always been a dream of mine to work for the Church and, prior to this, the only way I imagined this happening was as a priest.  I always shied from what I thought was a potential call to the priesthood and, soon after I began working at Newman Centre, I found out why.

After thinking I would never find true love, all I can say is that God really proved me wrong.  Enter Carissa.  God had the perfect plan for us to meet at a World Youth Day preparatory retreat at Marygrove Camp (near Penetang), which was organized by the Office of Catholic Youth. God planned every little detail in bringing us together, right down to our first conversation at a midnight swim in Lake Simcoe, under a star studded sky while  sharing many uncanny similarities about our lives.  As members of the John Paul II generation, I believe that we reaped the fruit that the World Youth Days are intended to bear: the discovery of our vocation.  We were married 9 months later.   9 months after that we had our first son.  Right now we’re up to 5 kids (2 boys, 3 girls) under 7 years of age — not quite the Dugger family or John and Kate Plus Eight, but we’re working on it.  Most people react negatively, or perhaps with concern for the perceived burdens of a large family; but, God has given us hope in his ability to provide beyond our necessity.  It’s a very LIVELY household, but a very happy one.

I often reflect on how I got to where I am in life and how God made it all possible.  He called me and, with His grace, I answered.  This calling, which continues even now, is not accompanied by thunder and lightning, nor is the sky about to open up.  While I was on retreat in Arizona, I came to the discovery that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that God most commonly works in the ordinary ways in our lives.

I have come to realize that, in each of these life events, Christ was always present to me and He kept that flicker of hope alive in me.  Three years ago, I was able to see in a very real way how this great hope in Christ can carry you through the most trying circumstances.  My wife was changing the diaper of our then two year-old son when she discovered blood in his diaper.  We felt strongly that something was very wrong and so brought him to the hospital emergency ward.  It was soon revealed that our son had a cancerous tumor on his kidney and we were faced with the realization that this was life-threatening.  At one moment, my wife turned to me and said “We could lose him”.  I can’t explain the peace that overcame me stemming from the inexplicable hope that God was in control.  I unwittingly said “He was never ours to begin with”.  I could never have resigned myself to the prospect of losing my child if it weren’t for the hope that “all things work unto good for those who love God.” (Romans 8:28).  My son won his battle with cancer and is now a very, VERY energetic five year old.  I can now understand this idea of hope as “joy in suffering”, seeing the fruits of the sorrows in my life and the reliance on God’s grace and cultivating a spirit of abandonment.

In a scrapbook put together to commemorate our courtship, my wife pointed out a verse from the Bible that she wrote in her prayer journal on the day after we met at the OCY retreat.  I think it pretty much sums up God’s providential hand, especially in my life:

“I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for.  Then you will call to me.  You will come and pray to me, and I will answer you.  You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart.”
- Jeremiah 29:11-13