The Higher Call

IN 1915, 42-year-old American poet Robert Frost had a poem published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. The poem’s narrator stands at a fork in the woods where the road, covered in yellow autumn leaves, splits into two. The poet doesn’t reveal a destination, but rather a motive. He needs to keep moving and selects what appears to him to be the lesser traveled road. Trying to convince himself that he might back-track and take the other road later on, he knows deep down that he won’t.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Because of its timeless themes, The Road Not Taken continues to resonate with readers. Faced with decisions between two goods, we often need to choose one. We cannot marry both Tom and Dick. We may choose either one or maybe neither one, preferring Harry after all. We cannot take a full-time day job with two equally good companies. Most of us are not going to prepare meatloaf as well as braised salmon for dinner – one or the other, but not both.

Generally, decisions most directly affect the person making them, but that effect is never exclusive. Since we don’t live in a vacuum, we don’t decide in one either. Our decisions affect not only ourselves, but also those around us, most particularly those emotionally closest to us.

First day of school. First day of college. First day in your own apartment. First day on a first job. First day of married life. First day in assisted living. The persons directly involved in these first days are looking forward with either trepidation or excitement to what’s coming. Those others, closest to them, may have totally different emotions. 

When we think about holy men and women who entered the priesthood or religious life, we seldom consider that, to do so, they left behind their families and all the hopes and dreams those families held for their children.

Around the year 1210, 15-year-old Fernando de Vicente de Martins de Bulhoes, the future Saint Anthony of Padua, entered the Augustinian monastery of Saint Vincent’s “Outside the Walls,” in Lisbon, Portugal. Let’s imagine how his mother may have felt.

The road taken

In the long, slanting rays of dawn, Senhora Maria Teresa was standing on the front step of her palatial family home in Lisbon. She had planted her feet firmly onto the stone while pressing against the limestone wall for support. Her gaze was locked on the swaying rumps of two mounted steeds, casually plodding up the street away from her.

Vicente (Fernando’s father) had stayed in his study, where Fernando had knelt before him, requesting his blessing. His father had given it, but Maria knew, begrudgingly. Didn’t Fernando realize that he was shattering Vicente’s dream for his oldest son? The dream had to rest on Pedro now, to take up the role of knight that Fernando was forsaking.

How could he travel so peacefully? Just a moment ago, he had knelt before his mother like the knight he’d been trained to be. He had kissed her hand, then rose, bowed to her, and mounted his horse. With a nod and a hesitant smile, he had turned his mount and left without a backward glance. She could understand his servant Luis doing this, but her son?  

New father and mother

Maria Teresa could not go with him. That would have been both an embarrassment and an overreaching mother’s gesture. He was a man. He wanted to become a man of God. Deep down, she had prayed for this, never believing he would choose that path.

Now that he was actually going, Maria Teresa began heaving with grief, anger, worry, and joy. Fernando was no longer hers. He belonged to God.

Hadn’t he always belonged to God? Doesn’t everyone belong to God Who made them?

But not in this way. Now Fernando’s father would no longer be Senhor Vicente, but God the Father. And the Blessed Mother would supplant Maria Teresa.

With a vicious longing, she ached for former days when she taught him his prayers. How quickly he learned them! Fernando, however, never prayed routinely. He was immersed in each prayer, no matter how many times he prayed. His rapt attention always awed her.

He had served regularly at Mass. Whenever he passed a church, he would go inside and pray for a moment. Once, he told her, a demon had appeared to him, and he had traced the Sign of the Cross on the marble step. The demon had vanished.

With a choke and a sob, Maria realized that his bond to the Blessed Mother seemed deeper than her own, as if he had two mothers whom he equally loved. Indications of his vocation were present all along. How could she and Vicente have discounted them?

Until the two chestnut horses rounded a street corner, Maria Teresa didn’t realize how focused her vision was on the two swishing tails. With them out of sight, the street, peppered with pedestrians, seemed empty.

No coming back

She needed to pray. She needed to focus on the days ahead, on Vicente and their other children: Maria, Feliciana, and Pedro. But she didn’t want to leave the street. When Luis came back, maybe Fernando would be with him. A foolish hope. She needed to pray. If Fernando came back, she’d know. But he wasn’t coming back. She knew that, too.

The family chapel was on the upper floor. Maria found herself in it without realizing that she had ascended the stairs.

In the early morning light, the wall tapestries looked warm and rich. Personalities from the Old Testament surrounded her: Moses, Daniel, Job, Elijah. Her eyes fixed on Noah. There he was, hammering the door on the ark. The last nail. From the east, his sons were driving forward a flock of animals and birds. They would enter the ark along with Noah and his family. The rain would fall. The flood waters would rise. The ark would wobble, lift, then drift back and forth, bobbing wherever the waves took it. After a very long time, perhaps a year or more, the flood would have receded. Then the ark would strike ground and settle. Noah and his family and all the beasts would disembark. She could see a miniature of that in the upper left corner of the tapestry.

Was Noah anywhere near where he had lived before? Even if he were, wouldn’t all he knew and possessed have been destroyed by the flood? Noah was starting out new. Fresh.

What about his wife? How did she feel about this new beginning? The friends she had known were long gone, drowned in the waters. She would have to go on without them, creating a new life in a new place.

From below the chapel, a horse whinnied. Maria darted down the stairs, out the front door, and toward the stable. Luis was astride one chestnut horse, the other’s bridle in his hand.

“He’s fine, Senhora,” Luis smiled. “The abbot said you could visit on Sunday afternoons.”

Meditation

Have you recently experienced a major life shift? Do you know someone who has? What fears accompanied this shift? What expectations? What joy? How might the Holy Spirit help you or another person in making a life altering decision? How might you support such a person?