Ben Wilson, LPC

Sabbath helps us to recapture the Story and our Author. Here is an excerpt from Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron. The main character Chase is an American pastor. He has lost his face by having it in front of people every Sunday and is seeking to find it in Italy with his uncle who is a Franciscan monk. He writes his journal entries to St. Francis. 

Dear Francis,

I like Catholics, especially Italian ones. If someone weeps in church here, it's just business as usual. They cry lighting candles for a sick relative, looking at Jesus suffering on the cross, or touching the feet of a saint captured in marble. If someone started sobbing uncontrollably during a communion service at Putnam Hill people would get freaked.

In New England, public displays of emotion give people the hives. What if it's catching? Here you can bawl your eyes out or lie prostrate on the floor, and people step over you like you're a piece of furniture. They assume you're doing what normal people do in the presence of God. Not bad theology. Peter gave me a book about the Eucharist. It's pretty fascinating. The guy who wrote it says we're not just Homo sapiens (knowing people) but Homo eucharistica (Eucharistic people) as well. In other words, we need more than reason or information to nourish our faith; we're built for firsthand experiences of God through things like the Eucharist as well. 

It's like Gandhi said, "The world is so hungry for God that God could only come as a piece of bread. We so long for joy that God even risked coming into the world in the form of intoxication, that risky thing called wine."

Some time back I heard someone say that the Bible is less a book that tells us what to do than a story that tells us who we are. Maybe that's why the liturgy moved me last Sunday. It took me on a guided journey where I was reminded of who I am, where I came from, how things have gotten so out of whack in this world, how God intervened, and how history is going to end. For so long now I've felt dislocated, and the liturgy helped relocate me. I'm not a character in search of an Author; I have a story.