Eleven years ago this month I decided (with a strong nudge from the Holy Spirit) to leave corporate life and go to work for the Legion of Christ.
The idea had been in my mind (and the minds of a couple priests I greatly respect), so it wasn’t as if I was suddenly struck by lightning. But the decision did happen at a particular time in a particular place with a particular person.
Fr Emilio Diaz-Torre, LC
I was on a spiritual retreat at the Legion’s conference center in Thornwood, NY. Fr Emilio Diaz Torre offered me spiritual direction. We sat in a small conference room near the reception desk. The three of us – Father Emilio, the Holy Spirit and me – decided it was time for me to make a life-changing career move.
Having been in communications/public relations for an oil company, I figured working for the Catholic Church would be fun, positive and uplifting. Often, it has been those things. But if you have been following the path of the Legion the past couple years, you know there have been a few bumps in the road. The joy of the mission has been mixed at times with disappointment, shame and tears.
Still, I don’t regret my decision. I vividly recall that discussion with Fr Emilio and am deeply grateful for his invitation to a different life. And because that discussion occurred at Thornwood, that place has always had a special meaning to me, a meaning I have felt on many subsequent visits.
Those visits will end with the just-announced decision by the Legion to sell the property. The brothers studying philosophy will move to Rome (that will be an improvement in both climate and scenery). Friends with offices on the site will relocate. Priests living there will find new quarters. And that little conference room near the reception desk will find another purpose.
Am I disappointed? Yes – because the center is a place where many good things have happened in my life. No – because I know the property is beyond the needs of the Legion.
More important, those good things that I experienced at Thornwood have little to nothing to do with the bricks, mortar, windows, trees, flowers or pathways of the physical place. They have everything to do with the people – Legionaries, consecrated, plain old lay folks like me – who have become my colleagues, partners, brothers, sisters, mentors and friends over the past decade.
These wonderful people will not be sold.
