Picked Out

On Friday after Mattins I was heading over to school for a meeting when a man passed me and called me back. 'Are you a Catholic priest?' he asked with a noticeable Irish accent. Well, no, I'm an Anglican. The gentleman proceeded to quiz me about infant baptism and then tell me I needed to repent of my sins and turn to Jesus. I know that, I said, I do it every day. I'm not sure he was particularly listening, because he kept repeating the same injunction to penitence and conversion. 'Go on, say it, say it today'. I always tell people that conversion means you indeed have to be prepared to repent and turn to Christ at any and every time, so there was no reason I shouldn't say it. The man was very insistent, however, that I not use my own words, but repeat his, so I did. 'You've made my day, God bless you,' he said, going off beaming. That's good, it's nice to have made someone's day.

I was due to have lunch with Mad Trevor and although I didn't want much and would rather have gone to the local Wetherspoon's pub he preferred the Beefeater down the road. While we were there a young man came over and sat on the seat nearby me. 'Excuse me, are you a Catholic priest?' he asked, making clear in the process that he was also of Irish extraction, and in the course of answering I referred to the earlier conversation. 'Well, you do have to repent and turn to Jesus', he replied, and we proceeded to have substantially the same exchange, in outline, as I'd had with the first gentleman. A friend of the second man came over, took off his iPod earphones and joined in, having a go at me over women preaching and gays. They knew the fellow from earlier in the day, and apparently all go to a church called Light & Life in Ottershaw, which I think from subsequent investigation is a Gypsy-community church. They asked Trevor what church he went to and were completely silenced by the response that he worshipped with the Mormons, who I suspected he was about vigorously to defend until I curtailed the discussion. 'It's obviously not a coincidence that we all came here today', said the young Irishman, Gilbert, and I didn't think it was. What conclusion God wanted me to draw from the encounters was another matter.

Reflecting back, I was struck by the fact that the earlier gentleman told me several times that I should 'stop praying in other people's words', and yet when I tried to make my own prayer of confession and turning to Jesus he shut me up and insisted I repeat his words. Gilbert, on the other hand, was absolutely definite that Pope Francis 'hasn't given his heart to Jesus', and when I asked him how he knew merely said 'I've read a lot about him, I know all about him'. I suspect what he meant was that he's a Roman Catholic and so can't have given his heart to Jesus in any way he'd recognise. I don't think God actually wants me to go along the same road as my interlocutors.

I'm still not completely sure what I'm supposed to take from my strange meetings, but the thought came to me that it might be something to do with the connection between our relationship with God and our speaking about it. Liturgically sacraments of commitment - marriage, baptism, ordination - include speaking and promising. I tell people, as I say, that we all ought to be prepared at any moment to say, 'I repent and turn to Jesus'. Separate this from the issue of whether people are going to Hell or not, that saying a certain set of words is what rescues you from damnation, and you can see how, because we are physical beings, speaking your faith is an absolutely crucial element of the process (for people who can speak). It's not perhaps what rescues you from Hell, but it does release the power of the Spirit in your life - in the same way that lovers do actually need to say 'I love you' from time to time, that saying it makes it easier to feel. I'll carry on thinking about this.