I recently celebrated my sixtieth birthday and am filled with gratitude. From this milestone I recognize that I have some life experience to reflect upon and yet may still have some life left to live. An important dimension of my life has been the religious, spiritual one and I offer the following reflections on Vatican II as one of the components of this dimension.

When I was four years old I had my first conscious experience of God. One forlorn day I became aware of an overwhelming presence that rolled across a meadow in France. This presence, clear yet inexplicable, filled me with wonder and awe. A few years later, facing death, I experienced the presence of a loving ‘other’ just beyond the veil of the ordinary. Subsequent ineffable experiences of presence took place within both pre and post Vatican II expressions of Church. Later in life I would find poets and writers whose works would give voice to such phenomenological experiences but during the first half of my life it was the Church in which I was baptized and raised that provided the container for interpreting and living from the experience of presence.

The pre-Vatican II markers of Latin Mass, holy days of obligation, reverence for authority, and outward signs of faith (Lenten practices, Ash Wednesday, Christmas Midnight Mass, Easter, etc.) all were supported within my family of origin and within the Catholic school system I attended. With Vatican II the markers of Catholic identity shifted and yet were received warmly by my family. Vatican II certainly impacted me throughout high school and beyond. However, neither the monolithic worldview of the pre-Vatican II Church nor the plural worldviews of the post-Vatican II church interfered with my deepening sense of God’s presence. Understandably, words, symbols and structures can never fully encompassed the phenomenon of the spirit, which ultimately remains subjective and personal, but they can provide a home in which to mediate God’s grace. Perhaps this explains why religions continue to have such appeal.

Caught up in the enthusiasm of Vatican II I spend much of my twenties in training for religious life and priesthood. This formation was unapologetically progressive and I embraced it wholeheartedly. I thrived in the heady world of philosophy and theology finding echoes and validation of my inquisitive heart. However, after prolonged interior struggle I discerned, shortly before ordination, a call away from ordained priesthood although my superiors said they would welcome my return. Ultimately I left the order in order to abide more closely with the presence of God and to be of better service to those on the periphery of society.

This decision led to a twenty-five year period of public ministry as a married chaplain in various pastoral locations, most of which were in Catholic high schools. This way of ministry fit, as I was then able to walk with people as they engaged the deeper concerns of life and I found this ministry humbling and gratifying. In the rough and tumble of pastoral work I daily confronted all the controversial topics of our times and I came to understand how different epistemologies impacted discipleship. A Thomist, an eco-feminist, a liberationist, a secularist and a post-modernist each have their view on what should happen in and outside the Church. Unfortunately anger at others, mutual mistrust, infighting and disillusionment with Vatican II became the tenor of Church life more than celebrating the Gospel as a cogent means of being present in the world. In my view, the creative vision contained in the Documents of Vatican II was obscured during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What should have been a period of creative proclamation became instead a Roman winter during which the Church was unhealthily turned in on itself. Again, then, after some interior struggle I discerned a call to move away from public ministry and to follow the promised presence of God along a different path, one that would require me to continue to work for a better world while picking up my pen. How surprised I was when shortly thereafter Pope Benedict made the historic decision to retire and Pope Francis came upon the scene. Now with Pope Francis’ calling the Church to engage and proclaim the presence of God in the world, I find myself once again hopeful for the Church.

It seems to me that there is a future for the Church as long as it can remain a mediator for the presence of God. A return to the centrality of sacred presence would help to reduce the battles over obedience and governance, dogma and experience. A communal appreciation of the presence of God might shift the debate over who can be ordained away from gender rights to a time honored practice of discerning and identifying persons who are attuned to presence of God as viable servant leaders of communities. Such leaders could be male or female; married, single or celibate; heterosexual or homosexual. A Church focused on the presence of God might more willingly embrace a Vatican III whose agenda would be how Christ, the presence of God, continues to redeem a world where those who are poor or marginalized are liberated from oppression and where the earth is reclaimed for the good of all. I remain convinced of the Christian insight into the importance of presence for personal and collective redemption and that this insight will continue to serve as salt, leaven, and light in a world that both hides and reveals the presence of God.

Focusing on God’s presence, at least for me, is a worthy task as I anticipate, hopefully, a few more decades in communion with the Church before I return to the presence in the fields and the stars. I expect that this will require that I become like a child again, vulnerable and dependent yet full of wonder and awe at the presence of God.