Good luck with that, Matthew.
Posted on 09/30/2012 6:25:09 AM PDT by marshmallow
…SILVERADO, Calif. – On the morning Grant Desme ceased to exist, he was at peace. He spent years searching for serenity, convinced it was coming soon, next, now. It never did. Life was a blaring stereo, and he had become numb to its noise. The sound finally abated when he arrived here. He believed God muted it.
So on Christmas Eve two years ago he and seven other men marched into the church at St. Michael's Abbey and readied for a transition the church considered spiritual death. Grant Desme would go by another name. His plainclothes would become a head-to-toe white habit. For the next two years, he would commit to the dual life of a priest-in-training and a monk in the Norbertine Order. The naming ceremony bound him to the virtues of chastity, poverty and obedience.
To determine his new name, Desme submitted three choices from which St. Michael's abbot and spiritual leader, the Rt. Rev. Eugene J. Hayes, would choose. Desme liked Paul, Louis and Moses. None sounded right. Neither did Desme's second round of choices. On his vestition day, he knelt before the Father Abbot Eugene, who handed him a copy of the rule of St. Augustine.
"And in our order," he said, "you will be called Matthew."
Sometime after the ceremony, Frater Matthew Desme approached Father Abbot Eugene. For the rest of his life, people would call him Matthew. He wanted to know why.
"He said it struck him because [Saint Matthew] was a rich tax collector," Frater Matthew says, "and I was a rich baseball player."
On the afternoon Grant Desme retired from baseball, he was at peace. The world in which he had immersed himself was shocked and dumbfounded, of course, that a strapping 23-year-old center fielder with power, speed, smarts and just about.....
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.yahoo.com ...
Outstanding article.
I know this story because I play Dynasty fantasy baseball, where you keep minor league teams as well as MLB teams of fantasy players.
Desme was on my watch list to pickup...he had a huge year and the AFL with rising stars...and then he went into the priesthood shortly after that.
Amazing and inspirational story.
I think the article does an excellent job of describing the experience of the call to a consecrated vocation: “I had everything I’d ever wanted, and it wasn’t enough.” The article also conveys the idea that every choice of a goal in life or a way of life involves giving up the alternative paths. Some people really seem to struggle with the idea that if you do *this*, you cannot simultaneously do *that*, and are always mourning the opportunities passed up rather than finding fulfillment in the opportunities taken.
Great article! Very positive!
On phrase, though, was particularly egregious: "Father Ambrose suggested he spend extra time in his cell praying. The loneliness of baseball – one man standing inside a rectangular box, his mind racing, his adrenal glands churning, him and another man 60 feet, 6 inches away, nothing but muscle memory to save him from embarrassment – prepared him for these moments of solitude."
I'd give that the Cognitve Dissonance Award of 2012.
That's a charitable way of saying it's garbage.
The title is misleading.
Frater means brother — monk, in our language.
Not a priest.
That’s nothing. Pujols quit his job as a Cardinal in order to become an Angel.
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