Citizen Columns
Question
How has your religion personally changed your life?
Answer
My answer follows, but I challenge you to ask the same question of yourself, writing it down (in 300 words or so) and sending it to me. A collection of your replies would strengthen the bonds between us in the parish and be a good introduction for anyone considering the parish as their own potential spiritual home.
My religion changed everything and almost nothing at all. Although I was raised in the Orthodox Church and found in its worship a peace and joy I didn’t experience anywhere else, I never intended to make it the center of my life. That all changed thirty-five years ago during my second year at McGill University. After a frightening period pulled apart by sin and guilt, I experienced—through the kindness of a priest and the mysterious power of confession—the mercy and forgiveness of God in a way that has never left me. And that turned my plans around 180 degrees. Instead of aiming for medical school (I was president of the McGill Pre-Med Society), I could only think of going to a seminary. When I told my Russian grandmother, the first words out of her mouth were a prophetic, “you will have an interesting life.” And that has proven true.
I could write a book about the people I’ve been blessed to meet, learn from and serve, about the spiritual adventures I’ve had serving as a priest in Australia, the US, Greece, England and now Canada. It was church life that also opened to me a second vocation of university teaching in theology. The decision to go to seminary forever changed my life as well because that’s where I met my wife of thirty years, with whom we have three grown sons. At the same time, so little has changed in all these years. I can’t say I love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. I can’t say I love my neighbour as myself. I can’t say “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Still, by God’s grace what changed most deeply in me was the way I look at the world. And that has stayed with me. So, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
With love in Christ,
Fr John
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