My Spiritual Journey - Greg DuRoss

My how time flies!  In about six weeks, Jesus has been born, grown in adulthood and in today's Gospel we hear about how Jesus is being tempted by the devil while in the desert.  First the devil taunts Jesus to prove he really is the Son of God.  At another point, the devil tempts Jesus by offering Him all the Kingdoms of the World if only He will fall down and worship the devil.

Virtually every day of our lives we to face temptation and our response to each situation is a small part in our ongoing spiritual journey.  Today I have been invited to share with you, highlights of my spiritual journey over the years.

The Order of Service distributed each week says, we're a community of Christians on a spiritual journey. What does that really mean?  I never thought much about it until asked to do this homily and I surely never thought of my life in terms of a spiritual journey, so maybe John, you and Nancy Lee have already accomplished one major milestone with me. 

I guess my spiritual journey begins in Detroit where I was born and raised a Roman Catholic and attended 12 years of Catholic school ... because I had to.    

• Spiritual journey.  Does that include all those years serving as an altar boy?  I am not sure I thought of those bicycle rides on very cold Michigan winter mornings to Our Lady Queen of Peace Church and the chapel at St. John's Hospital as a spiritual journey.   For me the payoff was the free breakfast in the hospital cafeteria -- anything I wanted to eat -- and getting to go into school late.
• Spiritual journey.  Does that include the "reminder kicks" we received from the priest while kneeling next to him?  Heaven forbid that he should lean down and say something that wasn't the prescribed word of God.  Oh no, much better to see the altar boy limping off to his next task that he had not forgotten in the first place.
• Spiritual journey.  Is that what those religion classes were?   Most of us thought of it more like a penance to be endured, because the classes were not very well taught.  

And so it was as a Roman Catholic, where you did things because you had to rather than because you wanted to.

That began to change when I moved to Charlottesville, VA where the young vibrant parish serving the University of Virginia community was full of students, faculty, employees and families, many of whom were not Roman Catholic!  Yes indeed, we were drawing more Baptists and Protestants than the Protestants and Baptists!  Eventually I became President of the Parish Council.  What I did not know was that in the spring of 1979, my spiritual journey, such as it was, was about to grind to a halt.  The "top down" management style was not much to my liking, particularly one charade of democracy, with the predetermined outcome stated in advance by the Pastor.  I am sure a few of you can imagine how hard that was for me to swallow.