By Jane Watkins Elias
November 16, 2011
I acknowledge that it was “past associations” that led me to the Newman Fellowship. I initially came to the Church of The Good Shepherd because of my husband, A. C. Elias, Jr. In 2006, we were married there. A year and a half later, he was buried from that church.
Arch’s deep spirituality moved me greatly. I was impressed that he would drive to Rosemont in the middle of the night every Maundy Thursday to keep watch with Christ. When I first started worshipping there, I recognized right away that this congregation was more than a neighborhood church; it was a destination that congregants had sought out for worship together.
When Arch became too ill to attend Mass, Father Moyer came to our house weekly to administer Communion and finally Extreme Unction. After Arch’s death, it was hard for me to walk into that church again. It was even harder to leave it.
So it was through the examples before me that I began my current spiritual journey. My personal path seemed even more fraught because thirty years ago I had shifted from the Roman Catholic Church to become Episcopalian. Given the recent provision for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, sometimes my thoughts calcify into a hard pebble of a question: Do I really want to return to the Catholic Church?
I try to open my mind to the more profound meaning of Anglicanorum Coetibus and the unity of Christ’s disciples. This Apostolic Constitution states that “every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists; in fact, ‘such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause, the preaching the Gospel to every creature.’” (Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 1).
And I open my heart to the words of John Henry Newman, written at sea on June 16, 1833: “Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see/ The distant scene,—one step enough for me./ I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou/ Shouldst lead me on./ I loved to choose and see my path, but now/ Lead Thou me on!”
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