“‘Come. Follow Me.’ It was the Lord Jesus calling.” These words, the very beginning of the Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross, seemed to come not from the seminarian who proclaimed them, but rather from the majestic crucifix hanging above the altar. Or they could have come from the flickering flame of the Paschal Candle, standing in the middle of the chapel, giving light amidst the pressing darkness. Regardless of where they came from, whether from the seminarian or the crucifix or the Paschal Candle, these words floated in the air, carried by the blue and purple and green light that shone from the magnificent stained glass windows behind the altar, light that reached even to the back of this ark-shaped chapel.
It was the first Lucernarium of my sophomore year. Luce, as it is fondly called, is a prayer service held at Moreau Seminary on the north side of Notre Dame's campus each Thursday night. A form of the Church’s Night Prayer, Luce contains singing, lots of candles and a reflection from a seminarian studying to be a Holy Cross priest. I had been going to Luce every week with my friends since the beginning of the spring semester of our freshman year, but it had been some time since we had been because of the summer. Furthermore, I had gone into the summer expecting to know by the time school came around whether God was calling me to the priesthood and whether it would be to diocesan life or to the Congregation of Holy Cross, the order of priests associated with the University of Notre Dame. But, as it often goes, God doesn’t work according to our expectations.
So there I found myself, sitting in the Moreau Seminary Chapel, at the beginning of my sophomore year, with these two choices weighing on my heart. There I found myself looked upon by the Cross, bathed in dark blue and purple and green light flowing from the windows, as we sang a hymn and heard a reading from Scripture.
The week before, Holy Cross had joyously celebrated the profession of final vows and the diaconate ordination of two seminarians, and the seminarian leading prayer that night used these recent events to ground his reflection. As I sat there, in the dark but somehow bright chapel, I listened to him tell of a tradition in Holy Cross. Holy Cross men, soon before their ordination to the priesthood, visit a room full of chalices. (Kind of like the scene from the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indiana Jones must choose the genuine Holy Grail from among many chalices to save his father's life.) This room, however, is full of the chalices of deceased Holy Cross priests, and these soon-to-be priests in the Congregation of Holy Cross choose one of those chalices to be their very own. One Holy Cross priest later described it to me like this: “It’s actually kind of like Harry Potter, you know, where the wand chooses the wizard. Well, the chalice chooses the priest.”
As I heard the seminarian tell of this tradition, all of a sudden I realized I desired to be a part of Holy Cross. I suddenly recognized all the times in which God had worked in my life, bringing me to this point. It was like someone had given me a pair of glasses, a better pair, I guess, with which I could see that God had been leading me to Holy Cross this entire time. Sitting in that chapel, surrounded by the blues and the purples and the greens, surrounded by these Holy Cross men, I felt at home. I had been looking for that place where I felt I belonged and here it was; I had found what I was looking for.
But why this moment? Why was it this story about a tradition in Holy Cross, a story about chalices, that made me see clearly God’s work in my life? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure—I guess that’s how grace often works, as an unexpected and totally free gift. But here’s what I do know: I have always found the fact that our Catholic faith must be handed on absolutely beautiful. I think it is so beautiful that the only reason you or I are Catholic is that there was someone before us who handed the faith on to us, and there was someone before them, and someone before them, and so on and so on, all the way back to the Apostles. We all have freely been given this incredible gift, this gift of faith. We are all linked, then, by this gift of faith handed on from one generation to another.
Furthermore, with these chalices, Holy Cross priests have celebrated and will continue to celebrate the sacrament of our unity, the Eucharist. This Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Lord Jesus Christ, gathers us all together; it unites us. And just as our faith is a gift from God, so too is the Eucharist a gift from the Lord: it is a free gift of his love, a tangible and real indicator of his unconditional love for us and a reminder that he will indeed be with us always.
Everything we have is a freely given gift from our good and gracious God, and here, in the tradition of handing on the chalices, was a concrete symbol of this beautiful truth of our faith.
And so my heart, which had been before so restless and anxious, was now at peace as I sat in that pew in the Moreau Seminary Chapel, as I rested and rejoiced in the complete and utter goodness of God’s gift to me, both the gift of my faith, but also the gift of this call I was now beginning to discern. I was home.
And so, as Luce continued, and we each received from someone else the beautiful Light of Christ, as the Easter Candle flickered steadily, as the blue and the purple and the green shone in the darkness, as the magnificent Christ gazed on us all from the crucifix, as I felt like I was home, I heard the voice of Christ come from within my heart. "It is the Lord Jesus calling. ‘Come. Follow Me.'"
