Duped
Is 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Rom 11:33-36; Mt 16:13-20
In the years before entering seminary, I volunteered as a minister of care for my parish. I had the privilege of being with people of all ages and walks of life during some of the most difficult days of their lives. I witnessed both the wrenching grief of saying goodbye to loved ones and the ecstatic joy of receiving miraculous good news.
Those experiences were formative for my vocational journey to the priesthood. But, after nearly 35 years, one encounter remains as powerful as if it happened yesterday.
The woman who ran the hospital ministry program tragically had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing aggressive treatment. I was asked to bring her Communion and I remember feeling incredibly nervous as I prepared to enter her room.
Relieved to find her sleeping, I quietly offered some prayers and was preparing to leave when her eyes suddenly opened. She seemed very groggy and I wasn’t sure if she recognized me or not.
She said quite clearly, “This is all a farce. Why are you even here? Stop wasting your time, none of it matters.” Then her eyes closed and she slipped back into sleep.
I was stunned. I couldn’t believe that I was hearing this from the very person who provided ministry formation to hundreds of people. She was the one I went to countless times seeking advice or looking for spiritual support.
Did she really mean what she said? Was she even aware of it, or was it the incoherent rambling of a heavily sedated person?
Mercifully, the cancer was successfully treated and she returned to her ministry at the parish. She never gave any indication that she recalled my hospital visit and I never asked her about it. Furthermore, she continued to talk about the power of faith, prayer and the Eucharist, just as she had before.
“Lord, you duped me,” Jeremiah exclaims in our first reading today. Whenever I remember that hospital visit, these words of the prophet come to mind. Had I been duped? Was all this ministry talk just a fraudulent way of trying to make us feel better during trying times?
I remember spending a long night agonizing over those questions. Not unlike Jeremiah, I blamed myself for having been so foolish to let myself be misled.
But then I remembered something that we were taught in our ministry training by the very woman whose integrity I was questioning: If you are struggling with a question of faith, never turn to another person or source for answers before you voice your concern directly to God in prayer. I shared that advice countless times with patients and their families. I saw with my own eyes how helpful it was. Why wasn’t I using it myself?
So I did. I spent well over an hour voicing (sometimes screaming) my fear, anger, disappointment and shame about what happened. But as I did so, I also found myself voicing my gratitude, awe and wonder at having witnessed amazing moments of people coming to peace with God and joyfully receiving God’s grace, even in the face of great suffering and loss.
What I realized was that I had indeed been duped — not by God, but by my own ego that too confidently assumed all the answers to the mystery of suffering could be found in my little prayer book and by my “generously” taking a few minutes out of my week to make a brief hospital visit. Did my ministry leader know I needed to understand this when she uttered her words that day in the hospital? Perhaps. But regardless, she was the voice of a message that I needed to hear.
Once Jeremiah heard himself profess that he felt duped, he could admit that there was, after all, a profound salvific truth in God’s word that he had to speak.
If you have ever felt duped by God for believing something that ultimately seemed to be foolish, maybe that is precisely where God is asking you to look again to receive the truth.