Today’s grace: Fr. Benedict Groeschel

At this year’s Easter Vigil, I will celebrate the tenth anniversary of my homecoming to the Body of Christ, the Church. During Lent, I’ll be posting a daily reflection on one of the practices, doctrines, personalities, and moments that have been particularly precious to me during my ten years as a Catholic.

Today’s grace is occasioned by an article which appeared in Sunday’s New York Times. The piece is about Benedict Groeschel, the author, EWTN personality, lecturer, psychologist, co-founder of the Franciscans Friars of the Renewal, and above all, priest. I have known Fr. Benedict now for nearly ten years, and although I’ve only seen him on average once or twice a year, he and his ministry have been one of the signal graces in my journey as a Catholic.

I first met Fr. Benedict in October 1997, during my first week as the new director of the Edmundite Apostolate Center (later renamed St. Edmund’s Retreat) on Enders Island near Mystic, Connecticut. For years, the Center had been known as a hotbed of New Age and dissenting Catholic spirituality. It was also in the middle of a financial and personnel crisis that had precipitated my hiring. Among other staff there were two faithful but marginalized priests, an actively homosexual religious brother and a nun, my immediate predecessor, from the Mary Daly-Matthew Fox school of feminist and creation spirituality. Most of our visiting retreat directors were notable dissenters, including the Capuchin, Michael Crosby, unofficial chaplain of Call to Action, and the Center was owned and operated by the Society of St. Edmund, a dying order of mostly liberal academics.

On my first day at the Center, I passed by one of our conference rooms and was startled to see a group of women sitting in a circle on the floor with their hands in a large pot of water. They were all humming the same droning note. The droning went on and on until finally I’d had enough and left. Later, I asked the nun on staff what the women had been doing. “They were depositing their negative energies into sea water,” she explained helpfully. “You mean, like Confession?” I asked. “Exactly,” she replied. I was appalled.

I carried around a sense of foreboding for much of that week until Thursday, when during a walk-through of the grounds I came around a corner and almost knocked over Fr. Benedict Groeschel. I was as stunned as he was, but for different reasons. I had read several of Fr. Benedict’s books and had heard him speak twice that year, once at Brown University and again at an apologetics conference in Steubenville, Ohio. “You’re Father Benedict Groeschel,” I practically shouted. “I was almost the late Father Benedict Groeschel,” he replied, alluding to our near collision. “Can I talk to you for a while?” I asked. He agreed and my life was changed.

It seems that for more than a decade Fr. Benedict had avoided Enders Island because of its reputation. “Just look at the crap in the bookstore,” he said. But he was putting the finishing touches on a new book and had needed a place to hole up for a few days of editing and re-writing. So he’d booked a room and quietly slipped onto the island. Naturally, I saw his presence as a sign and a grace. When we were alone, I explained the situation to him, including the fact that one of the priests on staff, Fr. Tom Hoar, and I had conspired to return the Center and all its programs - including the bookstore - to the authentic teaching of the Church. Fr. Benedict gave me over 90 minutes of his time that day, offering what to this former Army officer sounded like a veritable Order of Battle. He detailed the challenges we’d have to overcome, the machinations we could expect from our opponents, the strategies we should employ to frustrate them, and the spiritual ammunition we would have to store up in order to endure and win. “We’re taking the Church back doorway by doorway, house by house,” he said, echoing one of his recurring themes: that genuine renewal will necessarily involve restoration.

Finally, he counseled that we would never be successful without keeping our own hearts pure, loving those who would hate us for what we were doing, and honoring Jesus Christ every step of the way. He suggested that Fr. Tom and I begin a program of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for ourselves and the entire staff as a way of re-orientating the retreat center on Christ. He also committed that he would personally make himself available to come to Enders Island twice every year to speak.

Fr. Benedict did return. Often. And he still comes to Enders Island twice every year for days of recollection that attract hundreds of faithful Catholics from around the Northeast. Thanks to his sage advice, we did take back the Edmundite Apostolate Center for the authentic teaching of the Church. Within a year both the dissenting nun and the gay brother had been reassigned, we had recruited all new retreat directors, we had revived our radio ministry, and we had launched an innovative program called The St. Michael Institute of Sacred Art. In one of his return visits, Fr. Benedict complimented Fr. Tom and I from the platform, saying, “this may be the most genuinely Catholic retreat center in the United States.” Little did he know that his advice and his consistent presence had as much to do with the transformation as anything we did.

I could tell a million stories about Fr. Benedict, about his side-splitting humor, his graciousness in always taking my calls, or the way his New Jersey tough-guy demeanor dissolves when he talks about Our Lady. I could say that he’s the most amazing speaker I’ve ever heard, a man who can make two lengthy presentations, plus a homily, on any topic without the use of any notes. There’s a lot I could tell you about Fr. Benedict Groeschel, but the most important thing is this: He is a man truly in love with Jesus Christ.

(Mark Gordon)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.