The love that I felt from God not only encompassed my being but extended to all including those who had perpetuated much injustice. I was led to understand the compassion for souls that seemed to be so much the focus of Jesus’ ministry even as he was led to death. 

This love and compassion is all-encompassing, all healing and perpetual for each person as God awaits to draw all souls to conscious awareness of union in love. 

The denial of this love seems to rest with our desires and volition. In some sense, we choose to be awakened to God’s love in us by the many decisions, acts, and desires that are a part of our every day. It is not only at the level of conscious choice but where our heart’s desires are played out.  

To express this thought differently, it seems that our capacity for love is somehow proportional to our awareness of and union with God. In contemplation, we continually choose to seek a closer union with God. 

Sometime after I had received the gift of awareness of God’s love in contemplation and, certainly, after the first of the year, my consulting work dried up and I began slowly looking for other opportunities. My personal financial situation was somewhat desperate from many losses and debts incurred when the business was failing.  

Two months into the new year, God came to me in meditation with a strange message. “DO NOT WORK ANY LONGER.” The message was quite clear and I told my wife what I had heard. In my usual obstinacy, I reasoned that if God did not want me to work, then I would spend the time just seeing what was available on the job market in teaching, research projects, government, and some industries – all of which I had in my background.  

Although my resume had a great deal of depth, I didn’t receive a single response or inquiry during the next two months. Then, one Saturday evening after dinner as my wife and I were sitting at the table and I was lamenting the lack of response, my wife said, “You are being disobedient to God by continuing to search for work. What would you do, financial considerations aside, if you could choose anything at all?”  

Her statement about “being disobedient to God” felt like a slap across the face. I responded, again with some lament, “I would be of service to other people, but I don’t know what that means.” My wife and I mutually decided that I would seek ideas for my future purpose on Monday from the Director of Pastoral Care at the hospital where I was volunteering as a Eucharistic Minister. 

On Sunday while we were at the celebration of the Mass, my wife mistakenly approached one of the chaplains who she thought was the director. My wife briefly relayed the question and the chaplain, who I knew, and gave her a name of a supervisor of clinical pastoral education (CPE) with the admonishment that she couldn’t help me at the moment but maybe had some ideas.  

The next day I telephoned the CPE supervisor and told her my situation. The first words from her mouth were, “I can’t help you right now, but I am teaching a class at a nursing home on Wednesday. Why don’t you come and sit in on the class and I will have time afterward to talk to you.” I agreed. 

After the class, she told me, “Since I talked to you on Monday, I’ve had one student drop out.  You can stay in the class if you want to?” I did want to stay because I felt very much that I belonged there. Thus, began my training for ministry. Prior to my first class, I had never heard of CPE. 

Click to check out Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 1, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 2, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 3, Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 4, and Meditation Becomes Contemplation: Part 6