By Father Matthew Crane
In the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to study Spanish for eight weeks at a school in Guadalajara. This was one of the first times in my life I lived outside the United States for an extended period of time and the first time I was trying to become proficient in a language other than English.
The results were mixed.
In fact, it quickly became very distressing. I remember saying to my parents at one point: “This is the hardest thing that I have ever done.” It was true at the time, but I was young.
In any case, despite the slow-going, I quickly developed a routine. In the morning, I had an intense session focused on grammar and vocabulary, one-on-one, with a tutor. Then, lunch. After lunch, several more hours of “conversation,” one-on-one, with a different tutor. Before returning to where I was staying, I stopped to pray for an hour in the adoration chapel of a parish near the school.
The chapel did not stand out, nor look particularly “chapel-ish.” It was just another building covered in white stucco among the white stucco buildings of the parish campus. At the entrance, a door of floor-to-ceiling glass slid aside automatically, allowing one to walk the center aisle between two rows of simple pews — long wood slats of slightly irregular sizes to create a seat and a back. The monstrance sat on a stone altar, elevated above the rest of the space by a handful of gray granite steps, not unlike the cathedral in St. Cloud. And above all that was the sole piece of art in the chapel, a crucifix easily five feet in height, suspended from the high ceiling by wires, so it appeared to be hovering over the Blessed Sacrament.
Seated, like a good Catholic, about 10 pews from the front on the right side, after a couple of weeks of this rather challenging grind, I remember expressing my frustrations in prayer, “Lord, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m surrounded by things I know, things I have an English word for, but I don’t have the Spanish word yet. I can see things but can’t say things. I’m cut off by my lack of words! I feel like I am trapped in a room of glass, cut off, unable to touch the world around me. Do you even know this? You made language. Have you ever not had the words to say what you want to say?”
And he stood there silently, reduced down from the will that lit the stars and sang to the dawn on the First Morning, into a flimsy piece of bread. And in the image of him that hovered above that presence, his arms were stretched out to embrace the whole world, even as he hung in the silence of death.
The love of God demands expression in something beyond mere words because it exceeds what mere words can convey. There are many things in our lives, even our religious lives, like language, that are capable of a rich expression. We hold them close, promote them, even call them essential to our faith. But it is always good to remind ourselves that they can never fully contain the infinite love of God.
Father Matthew Crane is the vicar of canonical affairs for the Diocese of St. Cloud.