Road to Heaven Not an Expressway

If you know anything about Michael the Lesser then you know that I am a fugitive from a monastery. Back in the mid-1970's, I felt that I had a calling to be a Franciscan brother.  I began earnestly to look into the orders that were hiring at that time.  There were ads promising that I would learn to fly an airplane in my first year, some that promised I would live in Rome or the Holy Land and still others that made even more extravagant promises.  Then tucked away in the corner of Catholic Digest was a little ad for the Third Order Regular of St. Francis in a place called Loretto Pennsylvania, they made no extravagant claims, they just called young men to a life of penance in the Third Order Regular.  I applied and was accepted.  I quit my job and with eight hundred dollars in my pocket to last my postulant year, I packed up all of my worldly possessions into a television box (this was way before flat screen so the boxes weren't skinny) and after a tearful goodbye to my parents, who thought my idea was dumb, and my siblings who could have cared less, I flew off to Loretto.  For the next two years, I did my best to live the life of a Franciscan.  It is kind of nice living with a bunch of people who have the same thoughts and feelings about religion that you do.  On the other hand, living in community with a bunch of men was not the easiest thing to do.  One thing that I missed was the support of my family.  The other guys would come home from school and they would find a letter from this relative or that relative or a package of goodies from home while my pigeon hole was always empty. This weighed on my mind and did have a chronic case of homesickness, but I stayed the course for two years. Then, for reasons that I am not going to go into here (you can read about them in my autobiography "Glimpses of God" available through Amazon.com) I decided to leave. I packed up my television box and flew back into Chicago, my heart was broken and I was very angry at God.  My father picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at my former roommate's apartment.  The night before I ended my day with Compline, the Church's prayer said at the end of the day. This night, I ended my day by getting happily drunk at the Cork Lounge, I was a civilian again, dammit! Long story short, it took a year for me to recover to the point where I was not angry at God. He is most merciful and He allowed me to vent and yet stayed by my side through the whole ordeal.  Some mystics write about the dark night of the soul and how that is a sign you are close to God.  Well, forgive me, I know myself and I know that if that ever happened to me, I would perish. Through the years, God has taken me down some different roads. Some of the roads, if I had my druthers, I would not have taken, but He knew and knows what He is doing.  There is no way I would change anything that has happened in my life. The time in the monastery was my basic training.  It helped me grow up and become an independent person. All of the jobs and the people I've met along the way have helped me to become who I am. Change any one thing, any one incident, and everything that came after it would change and I never would have met and married my wife and my life would have been lonely and sad without her spirit joined to mine as we grow old together and love each other more day by day. 

So, what is the point of all this drivel, what do I as Michael the Lesser, owner and operator of one of the least known blogs on the internet want you to take away from this post?  I would say, be like Matthew in our reading.  He left everything to follow Jesus and he never looked back.  He is a man to imitate as we travel down life's roads.  I apologize for this posting, it contains the word "I" many more times than it should.  I do not see myself as a shining example to be followed, just a fellow traveler sharing stories along the way.  God Bless.