A Magnificat Moment

In my third year in college, I was sitting in a theology class paying attention, more or less, between thoughts of needing increased work hours to pay my rent and wondering how long could I keep eating a diet of canned hash and breakfast cereal. Then the instructor, a Jesuit priest, made a comment, meant to be a sidebar to his main point, saying “but remember, Jesus said I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”. Despite having heard that line many times before, this one was a “Magnificat” moment for me. This time the words were branded into my brain and for the next few days I kept repeating the line, feeling the same infusion of wonder and intimacy with Jesus as when the instructor stated it. What was so different this time in the classroom was that those words, rather than feeling simply like a comforting thought, rang absolutely true for me.

To this day, when I recall that moment and repeat those words, I feel the presence of God-but not as vividly as that moment in the classroom. And that has been a puzzle to me for the fifty years that have passed from that moment to this. I’ve often wondered why that initial flood of awareness of God’s presence, just from repeating the words, gradually subsided. As I get older I become more convinced that Kierkegaard was absolutely right when he suggested that even though life must be lived forwards, it “can only be understood backwards.”

I am most susceptible to doubt when confronted with endless reports and news items in the media of violence and hatred, especially those in which the perpetrators seem proud of what they have done. Then comes the aspect of doubt that is most frightening for me; that Jesus, although he was a wonderful person, is not God and furthermore that God is an idea someone made up long ago because humans need a God. This is a recurring thought, one that leads to a sense of guilt for even thinking it. It is then that life looks bleak and something to be endured, rather than embraced. Thankfully, sooner or later, what comes to me is Peter’s answer to Jesus when he asked if the disciples were also going to leave him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life (John 6:68).”

I now regard doubt as a kind of temptation and, as with any temptation, having it does not make one bad; it’s how I respond to it that makes the difference. I’ve come to accept that God allows doubt as one of my spiritual struggles. I find some affirmation for this when I think of the imprisoned John the Baptist sending two of his disciples to ask Jesus the question: “Are you he who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11: 2-3) John had his own Magnificat experience at the start of Jesus’ ministry when he saw him walking and said “Behold, the lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Such awareness could only have been a gift of the Spirit and yet John finds himself experiencing doubt and questioning if Jesus is the Messiah.

It's Jesus’s reaction to John’s question that has become interwoven with my initial experience back in college; Jesus does not tell the disciples that John should be scolded or be ashamed of himself for asking the question. He simply opens my heart with an encouragement to look around and see what He’s been doing and the effect He’s been having on my life. What He did for me was grant a grace, freely, lovingly, and totally untethered to anything I had done to earn or deserve it.

Now when I doubt, I look around at what Jesus has done in my life and re-experience that sense of wonder and awe that God is mindful of me. More than that, He resides with me at my core and leads me ever closer to Him. Then I am moved to share that gift of His presence in ways that have surprised me.  Being an amateur pianist, I have played at memorial services for those who have lost a loved one to homicide, suicide, or accidental death. I made an arrangement of “The Battle Hymn of The Republic” that was very soft, meditative, even prayerful, and, without fail, while I played it, I could feel those in attendance being comforted and connected by quiet grace. Every week I share in the joy of bringing Eucharist to the homebound and have learned how beginning an interaction with them “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” deepens and bonds that interaction like no other. I write regularly to men in prison and hear of their longing for connection and their confused, sometimes wrong, attempts to accomplish it and think we too are on the road to Emmaus.

This doubt has played an unexpected role in my own faith journey. I accept doubt as another aspect of God’s mysterious grace and have come to understand it may hurt. But when I do what Jesus told John to do in his doubt and look at how He has been present in my life, then I believe that He is with me always, thank God, “even unto the end of the world.”

Tim McGuire