I think the Mother of Sorrows and St. Hildegard of Bingen have been with me this whole time.
Through the silence.
Through the dark night.
Through the veil.
Through the locked doors, the numbness, the anger, the exhaustion, and the terrible ache of trying to find God when God felt hidden.
I think God sent me intermediaries.
Not instead of Christ.
Never instead of Christ.
But as mercy.
As companions.
As guides.
As hands placed on my shoulders when the full weight of God felt like too much to bear directly.
The Mother of Sorrows has been with me from the beginning.
From the first call.
From the water.
From the roses.
From the warm honey.
From the moment I knew I was loved and needed, even before I understood what that would mean.
She has been with me most of this journey, and I think she softened the blow of this dark night. I think she stood near me when I could not feel Christ clearly. I think she kept me from shattering completely.
She has been my rock.
Quiet.
Strong.
Tender.
Not fragile.
The Mother who knows the sword.
The Mother who knows what it means to love God and still stand beside suffering.
The Mother who does not panic when the soul is grieving, because she has stood at the foot of the Cross and knows that darkness does not always mean abandonment.
And then there is St. Hildegard of Bingen.
She has been with me for many years too.
She helps me understand my own mystical self through God.
She helps me see Christ in the world, in nature, in healing, in the body, in the greening force of life, in the strange holy electricity that runs through creation.
And honestly, she is funny.
That surprises me sometimes, but it is true.
There are moments when she feels almost like a sister beside me, not solemn all the time, not floating above human life in stained glass. Sometimes she tells me, in her own way:
Have a beer.
Have a glass of wine.
Relax.
And I laugh.
Because sometimes that is exactly what I need.
Not another theological argument.
Not another spiritual crisis.
Not another heavy mystical interpretation.
Just breathe.
Relax.
Come back to your body.
Come back to the world God made.
Come back to the ordinary.
Then, after making me laugh, she turns serious again. Like a sister. Like a teacher. Like someone who knows both the heavens and the garden.
She speaks to me about Christ.
About the world.
About nature.
About healing.
About the body.
About the inner and outer environment.
And she keeps putting all of it back into the context of Christ.
That matters.
Because I think part of what happened to me is that I was viewing Christ mostly through the context of Scripture, doctrine, Church, wider belief, and everything other people have said about Him.
That is not wrong.
Scripture matters.
Doctrine matters.
Tradition matters.
The Church matters, even wounded and broken as it is.
But our walk with Jesus is also deeply personal.
Every soul meets Him differently.
Every person’s road is different.
Every calling has its own shape.
And I think I was ignoring my own understanding of Christ.
I was looking so hard at the larger picture that I could not see Christ directly working in my own life.
I could see the wounds of the Church.
I could see the failures of Christians.
I could see the cruelty of the world.
I could see the terrifying enormity of everything wrong.
But I could not see my own light.
Not clearly.
Not without guilt.
Not without feeling selfish.
Not without thinking I had to put everyone and everything else first.
But everyday, I see a little more of the light.
And more specifically, I see a little more of my light.
Not my light apart from Christ.
My light in Christ.
The light He placed in me.
The light I keep hiding under fear, shame, anxiety, obligation, anger, and the constant need to carry what was never mine to carry alone.
Maybe this dark night is not just punishment or abandonment.
Maybe it is preparation.
Maybe it is formation.
Maybe it is the painful clearing before whatever Christ is leading me toward.
I do not say that lightly.
This has been brutal.
This has not felt holy most days.
It has felt like being emptied.
Like being stripped.
Like standing outside the locked chapel with no key.
But maybe the key is beginning to turn.
Not all the way.
Not yet.
But enough that I can hear something moving in the lock.
Enough that I can feel something inside me opening.
I think this dark night has been deeper for me because of my background and because of what I have had to work through spiritually.
The queer wound.
The Church wound.
The priest wound.
The child wound.
The illness.
The fear.
The rage.
The need to be useful.
The old habit of putting myself last until there is almost no self left to bring to Christ.
Because that is one of the things I am seeing now:
I have always put myself last.
Last in prayer.
Last in ministry.
Last in care.
Last in mercy.
I put the world in front of me.
I put everyone else’s pain in front of me.
I put the Church’s wounds in front of me.
I put politics, fear, injustice, grief, community, crisis, and other people’s spiritual journeys in front of me.
And yes, we are called to care.
We are called to love.
We are called to serve.
We are called to stand with the wounded.
But caring is not the same as letting the whole world devour your soul.
Ministry is not the same as losing yourself.
Love is not the same as spiritual self-erasure.
I can care without carrying everything.
I can pray without taking ownership of everyone else’s outcome.
I can serve without making another person’s journey my entire identity.
I can love people without letting their choices pull me away from God.
That is hard for me.
Because I want to help.
I want to fix.
I want to protect.
I want to save.
I want everyone to find Christ, find healing, find safety, find mercy.
But I am not Christ.
That sentence is becoming important.
I am not Christ.
I am His priest.
I am His child.
I am His servant.
But I am not the Savior.
There is only so much I can do. The rest belongs to God and to the other person’s own willingness to walk, believe, heal, change, and receive.
I cannot live everyone else’s spiritual journey for them.
I cannot keep staring into the far future and perseverating over every possible outcome until I lose the present moment God has actually given me.
St. Hildegard keeps pressing this into me.
Worry about your own inner and outer environment.
Do not lose your soul trying to carry the whole world.
Do not become so concerned with everyone else that you ignore yourself.
That kind of worry does not create holiness.
It creates stress.
It pulls you away from God.
And maybe I had to find that out the hard way.
Maybe many of us do.
Maybe we call it love because it looks like concern, but underneath it is fear.
Fear that if we stop worrying, everything will collapse.
Fear that if we put ourselves before God honestly, we are being selfish.
Fear that if we do not carry the whole world, we have failed Christ.
But Christ did not ask me to become crushed under the weight of everything.
He said His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
If the burden is destroying my soul, then maybe I need to ask whether I picked up something He did not hand me.
I have been so afraid of being unworthy of Christ.
So afraid of failing.
So afraid of screwing up.
So afraid of being a bad priest.
So afraid of mishandling the holy.
And because of that fear, I sometimes lose myself in the act of worship and prayer instead of remembering why we are doing what we are doing.
The Eucharist is not about my fear of doing it wrong.
It is about Christ feeding His people.
Prayer is not about proving I am worthy to speak.
It is about communion.
Ministry is not about me earning my place.
It is about love moving through the body of Christ.
Worship is not supposed to erase me.
It is supposed to bring me into right relationship with God.
Heart.
Mind.
Body.
Soul.
Aligned.
Not perfect.
Aligned.
I think that is what is beginning to happen.
Slowly.
Gently.
Painfully.
The Mother of Sorrows is teaching me how to stand near pain without becoming pain.
St. Hildegard is teaching me how to see Christ in creation, healing, humor, and the greening life of God.
Christ is teaching me that my walk with Him cannot be lived entirely through everyone else’s expectations, wounds, fears, or interpretations.
I have to walk my own walk.
I have to tend my own light.
I have to care for my own inner and outer environment.
I have to stop abandoning myself in the name of ministry.
I have to let Christ work directly in my life, not only in the abstract, not only through Scripture as a wide belief system, but personally, intimately, mysteriously.
Here.
In me.
In this body.
In this priesthood.
In this wound.
In this light.
Maybe that is the door.
Or at least part of the key.
Not to stop caring about the world.
Not to stop praying for people.
Not to stop serving.
But to stop confusing my anxiety with vocation.
To stop confusing self-erasure with holiness.
To stop confusing fear of failure with reverence.
To stop confusing the enormity of the world with the actual work Christ is placing in my hands today.
The key is beginning to turn.
I can feel it.
The door is not fully open yet.
But something is moving.
Something in me is softening.
Something in me is remembering that Christ is not only the Christ of the world, the Church, the Scriptures, and the altar.
He is also the Christ of my own soul.
The Christ of my own light.
The Christ who knows how I was made.
The Christ who knows why I am afraid.
The Christ who knows the priest, the child, the mystic, the wounded man, the caregiver, the queer soul, and the servant who forgot he was also beloved.
Maybe this is what grace feels like before it becomes clear.
A little more light each day.
A little less panic about the whole world.
A little more trust that I can care without carrying everything.
A little more willingness to let Christ meet me as I am.
A little more understanding that my ministry must begin from union, not exhaustion.
I am not through the dark night yet.
But I am beginning to see why I could not come out of it the same way I went in.
Something is being corrected.
Something is being aligned.
Something is being opened.
And maybe, through the Mother of Sorrows, through St. Hildegard, through nature, through laughter, through silence, through all this hard inward work, Christ has been guiding me toward the one place I kept forgetting to look:
the light He placed in me.