The
Invitation
Since 2007
Brent Chalmers was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church in 2007. During a pilgrimage to the Holy Land two years later, he visited a church on the eastern slopes of Mount Zion, outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem.
The church was apparently built on the site of the palace of Caiaphas, the Jewish High Priest who judged Jesus. This is where Peter’s triple denial of Jesus is said to have occurred. It is called St Peter in Gallicantu which comes from the Latin word “cock’s crow.”
Later that day, musing more than meditating on the very last chapter of the Bible, John 21, Brent was struck by the parallels where Jesus asks Peter a third time “Do you love me?” and Peter responds “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
Jesus then says:
“Feed my sheep.”
Suddenly the lights went on – more like a punch on the nose, he says. “Here I heard my calling, my mission for life. I had received what can only be described as a personal invitation.
I had always professed to love God, although I didn’t really have a clue how to do that. I started out putting the emphasis on me trying to love Him, which is probably a good way to start – but slowly, over the years, I have come to understand how God loves us. God is always the initiator, God is the doer, God is the one who seduces us.”
Brent has had many other similar experiences and has tried to respond in kind and in the manner that Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327) wrote:
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.”
These experiences were of the Divine loving him, God radically accepting him; and then spending the rest of his life trying to verbalise those experiences, invariably finding ways to give that love back through forms of service, compassion, and worship.
He clearly understood that this revelation was not unique to him, it is true of everybody; even though most people are completely unaware of it. None of it is to earn God’s love; it’s always and only to return God’s love. Love is repaid by love alone.
Brent tries, as best he can (often unsuccessfully), to allow God to use him as He sees fit – in his case, to feed His sheep.