Reflection: To be on earth, the Heart of God

A reflection on life transformed as an MSC religious.

In my late 40s, my life significantly changed following a tragic death and a miracle birth in my family. I describe these events as my epiphany! I have been in corporate finance for over thirty years, working for the same company in Canada, England, and Australia. During my time in Canada, I joined the Catholic communion in Vancouver. However, in my youth as an evangelical Anglican, I contemplated ministry, but my parish minister thought it was a passing phase. This ‘phase’ would come and go over the ensuing decades.

In the early 1970s, I discovered the MSC via the Annals, which included a promotion for vocations. I noted their multi-apostolate engagement. I applied and was accepted, but at the time, I chose not to proceed. Fast-forward to 1993 and my ‘epiphany’, I approached the MSC again and was accepted into the novitiate in 1994 following a year of discernment. Whilst I was aware the MSC was a mixed order of priests and brothers, there was only one thing on the radar for me: ordained ministry! My initial formation at a mature age was challenging for me and my formators. However, I persevered, made my first vows in 1997, and proceeded to the scholasticate.

I discovered I thrived on the intellectual stimulus of academia, which was entirely new for me. However, my pastoral placements throughout those years would significantly impact me more. I had never been exposed to homelessness, HIV/AIDS, or transexuals in my life before joining the MSC. However, a six-month placement at the Sacred Heart Hospice in Sydney had the most significant impact. When it concluded, I said to my formators, ‘I have to nurse’, to which they responded, ‘Well, do it!’. The formation team agreed that I would proceed to ordination and then obtain a degree in nursing and combine both as per the French model of the ‘worker/priest’ of the early 1950s.

In 2001, I graduated with a Bachelor of Theology, a university medal and a scholarship for academic excellence. The year that followed is one I would rather forget, but in hindsight, as events unfolded, I now perceive them as the ‘finger of the Lord’; it seems God had a different plan for me! Through a rather intense period of discernment, I chose to remain a lay-consecrated MSC (brother) and proceeded to study nursing. I moved to Canberra, became part of our MSC Daramalan College community, and undertook nearly four years of further study at the University of Canberra. When I graduated, I nursed with Calvary Health Care (Little Company of Mary) across multiple disciplines, specialising in palliative care and gerontology. The years that ensued in this ministry were both life-giving and transformative. While I have been retired from full-time nursing for several years, I continue volunteering with Calvary in Sydney. I spend time with people with terminal illnesses, recording their life stories for publication. I also continue to nurse and coordinate the medical care of the men in our communities.

Whilst the past almost thirty years have had their ups and downs, I will forever be thankful to the MSC for the opportunities and support afforded me. In my thesis (nursing), I articulated my nursing philosophy as moving beyond the biomedical paradigm of doing to and for and ‘being with’. Our MSC heart spirituality informed these sentiments since it comes down to ‘presence’ for me. Some years ago, our Indonesian brothers invited me as a guest speaker at their tri-annual gathering. I emphasised that our role and identity were not so much tied to what we ‘do’ but more about our way of ‘being’, our way of being ‘present’ to one another and in this world … to be on earth the Heart of God!

Let me digress and expound on my lived experience of our ‘heart spirituality’. While studying nursing, I was granted a scholarship in 2004 to spend a semester at Khon Kaen University in Thailand. Khon Kaen is not on the tourist map and is in the northern rural province of Esan near the Laos/Cambodian border. My brief was to pursue a project researching the quality-of-life issues for men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS. I travelled the province with a Catholic sister who visited and supported these people. The experience was life-changing, and I felt privileged to be allowed into their lives. I recall one woman telling me, ‘My virus is my friend. If I am not a friend of my virus, it will kill me.’

However, another more profound experience was whilst on sabbatical in Jerusalem in 2012. I was based at Tantur on the West Bank adjacent to that ghastly wall and security checkpoint encircling Bethlehem. Whenever I travelled into the Old City in Jerusalem, I would take the ‘Arab’ bus (as opposed to the modern air-conditioned illegal Jewish settler bus), which I would board at the checkpoint. During my three months there, I befriended a refugee family of three generations living in Bethlehem. One day, travelling with them into the Old City, the IOF stopped our bus, and this entire family was dragged from the bus by security forces and interrogated. The look and feeling of terror are forever ingrained in me. This was just one of many such experiences where I experienced first-hand the terror Palestinians face daily from their Zionist oppressors, igniting my rising sense of injustice perpetrated with impunity.

I crave creative and intellectual stimulation. I always have, and as I look forward, I continue my search for ‘finding God in all things’. So, at 78 years of age and preparing for a sabbatical in Ireland with the Dominicans at An Tairseach, I’ve immersed myself in reading Berry, Swimme, Teilhard de Chardin, O’Murchu (MSC) and Rohr. I feel I’m up to my neck in cosmology, ecology, contemporary theology and spirituality. Where once I thought I might be deemed a heretic, I now find I am not alone in my thoughts and have been affirmed, thanks to a chance meeting with Timothy Radcliffe, OP, earlier this year!

At the end of 2023, I was appointed to St Mary’s Towers, our spiritual base in a rural setting, just over an hour’s drive southwest of Sydney. One of the reasons for my appointment was to sit on the redevelopment committee, and whilst it may not happen, I envisage, in the context of Laudato Si’, the possible establishment of an organic farm and ecology centre. Thus, the past year has opened so many more possibilities to exercise my imagination for our mission that I only regret that I am not ten years younger to see some of my ideas and plans come to fruition. I await to see what my An Tairseach sabbatical experience will reveal!

My role and identity as a religious brother, as an MSC brother, has been and continues to be a grace-filled vocational alternative to ordained ministry. When we consider the word ‘vocation’, we also need to look at its Latin root ‘vocare’, loosely defined as ‘inner voice’, from which we derive the expression ‘a calling’. One of my best experiences in nursing was precepting undergraduates from university on a clinical placement. I could have two equally competent undergrads, but one might have a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 mentality, and that person, I would say, had a ‘job’. The other equally competent placement knew instinctively how to ‘be’ with a patient, and that candidate I described as having the ‘vocation’.

As time passed and I celebrated my silver jubilee, I reflected on my vocation as an MSC religious in the context of vowed religious life. Not once have I regretted not pursuing ordained ministry. Being an MSC religious is my vocation, whereas ordained ministry was not. Our post-Vatican II Church has rethought the relationship between religious life and ordained ministry. The two are separate but compatible charisms in the Church. Religious life is not essential to ordained ministry; ordained ministry is not crucial to religious life. Religious life, as described by Vatican II, is “a form of life to which some Christians, both clerical and lay, are ‘called’ by God so that they may enjoy a special gift of grace in the life of the Church and may contribute, each in their way, to the mission of the Church.” (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, paragraph 43)

At 78, I know on paper I am, as the statisticians describe my age group as ‘old-old’! That’s a number on paper, but I don’t feel ‘old’, and I know God has not finished with me yet!

John Walker, MSC