“For your penance, why don’t you go for a long walk, or maybe a run.”
I heard these words many times over school breaks during my college years, when we had an associate pastor at my home parish, Fr. Steve, who, though newly ordained, was wonderfully gentle. I think this is the only penance he ever gave me.
A memory of this came back to me after a long and frustrating day. It was a day when nothing especially terrible happened, but nothing seemed to go quite right. I was tired and feeling awkward: trying to be a friendly presence in the thrift store, I’m pretty sure at least one lady thought I was tailing her to make sure she didn’t steal anything. After praying the Stations of the Cross in a church downtown, an unknown man asked me for money, and when I told him I had none, called me something inappropriate. I got the time wrong for meeting the student volunteers for whom I am supposed to be a help and support and was an hour late. Arriving home after ministry, I couldn’t figure out how to fix a small maintenance issue in the house and was too weary to make sense of my email inbox. Besides all this, I was carrying worry for a woman I’d met earlier in the week who I’m concerned may be caught in prostitution.
Of course, that evening we were kicking off a day of prayer on forgiveness – to give you a sense of my frame of mind, the only embellishment I made to the outline we were given of the talk introducing the theme was to make a bold outline around the word, “Impossible”.
After an hour of adoration which left me amazed by the Lord’s ability to abide my presence, I remembered Fr. Steve’s penance and changed into my exercise habit, skeptical that it would help, but desperate enough to try. And after a few laps around campus, everything looked different.
I felt a surge of energy and hope (thank you, endorphins!) and was able to have a new perspective on my “awkward” day: OK, maybe I made that one lady nervous, but I also had two joyful reunions with friends from my first stint downtown several years ago. I was able to feel badly and pray for the man who used inappropriate language with me, while shaking off the residue of fear and sliminess from that encounter. I remembered the student volunteers’ sweetness, eagerness to help, and evident happiness in their service and focused on their joy rather than my mistake in timing. And I even began to feel that this day of prayer would not have to be a burden to the Lord OR to me … and forgiveness, the day’s theme, may not be so IMPOSSIBLE after all.
When I was in college, I sometimes thought Fr. Steve was a bit … well, unspiritual, for giving a pagan penance like going for a run. I’m terribly grateful now for his humanity and his wisdom. Oftentimes, we try to look for demanding solutions to our difficulties (perhaps I should offer a Rosary Novena and fast from coffee for a week!) or else we begin to find crises lurking behind every frustrating day (I am so tired – I probably am not meant to be in this assignment and I should call Mother Della Marie). Most often, what we really need is to take a little time and space to honor our humanity, tell the Lord it’s been hard, and so find strength to reenter the arena. I began the evening discouraged, practically on the verge of despair – but it turns out that all I needed was a run.
Watch a beautiful 3-min. video about our ministry in downtown Steubenville here.
-Sr. Agnes Therese Davis, T.O.R.
