My encounter with a very persistent man: St. Junipero Serra

My first encounter with St. Junipero Serra changed my life. I didn’t know at the time what he’d done for me, though. I didn’t even know who he was. But St. Junipero is nothing if not persistent. For instance, legend has it that he once walked all the way from California to Mexico City to appeal for the just treatment of the Native peoples by proposing a bill of rights.

At the time, he was an aging man with something of a limp. That didn’t stop him. He was so persistent in his care for the Indigenous converts that he was often accused of being a troublemaker.

The year he started chasing me with that sort of persistence must have been 2009 or so, a few years before he was even canonized. I was visiting my younger brother in Los Angeles. He had been battling a serious health issue, so I went to spend a week with him to offer moral support. I’d hopped on a plane in Boston, having taken a week off from pastoring my Anglican parish on nearby Cape Cod.

During the time of the visit, I’d been experiencing a growing attraction to Catholicism and wasn’t sure what to do about it. I didn’t know if there was room for me in the Catholic Church or how a married man with a vocation to the priesthood could fit in, if at all. Was there a way for me to honor my vocation, provide financially for my family, and still become Catholic? The same questions kept returning to me, month after month.

The questions were so pressing on my mind, in fact, that, while in Los Angeles, I had a phone conversation with a Catholic priest to whom a mutual friend had introduced me. I asked him what my options might be and begged for advice. I had no clue how to move forward, or even if I should. He had some good thoughts for me, but I still felt as if the weight of the decision had me stuck. Anxiety set in -- the questions I was asking might not have answers.

I’d never heard of St. Junipero Serra, but I had heard about the mission at San Juan Capistrano. While I was in Los Angeles, I determined to ask if my brother was up for a daytrip to see it. From all the pictures I’d seen, it was a gorgeous place and as a lover of history I was desirous to visit.

We made our way to the mission and wandered the grounds, peeking into the dark, stucco-clad rooms lining the courtyard. With interest, we read the signs about what life was like in the mission. The flowers were in bloom all through the courtyard and the famous mission bells rang in their bell wall. But none of the history or beauty of the property prepared me for what it would be like to step into the chapel. Here, the place came to life.

The chapel is clearly very old. The flat ceiling is held up by wooden crossbeams painted in a decorative green pattern. The slats of the ceiling are roughly milled and, for all I know, could have been planed and installed by hand hundreds of years ago. The nave is crowded with statues of saints with hundreds of votive candles blazing at their feet. The candles shine all the more brightly because the room is lit only by a few small windows that are set deeply into the walls.

I lit a candle at the statue of St. Peregrine and whispered an embarrassed prayer. I’d never lit a candle at a shrine before.

Then I turned my attention to the sanctuary and saw the golden reredos, which is an ancient Baroque altarpiece. Elaborately carved, precious and irreplaceable, it is overwhelming in its beauty. The reredos is a relatively recent addition, added to the chapel as part of a 20th-century revival. The Spanish priests and Native converts at San Juan Capistrano originally worshiped in the Great Stone Church, reduced now to rubble by an 1812 earthquake. Instead of gold, they would have seen colorful Native wall paintings. Yet they were surrounded by God's glory as they prayed. This place still gleams with it.

Inside the old exterior, the chapel is still young. Prayers are still prayed at that altar. The Holy Sacrifice is still offered. It’s renewed daily. The rest of the mission feels something like a museum. The chapel does not. I didn’t realize that the divine presence I was feeling, the life of the place that I couldn’t quite figure out, wasn’t Christ alone but it was Christ and all his saints. In particular, it was St. Junipero Serra, the priest who founded that very chapel in the year 1776 and offered Mass there in the very place I was standing.

I wonder of St. Junipero made me and my brother his special projects that day. My brother’s health is now better than ever. More importantly, he later became Catholic and I became Catholic. I don’t doubt that in some ways I appeared to be a lost cause, hopelessly stuck as I arrived in that chapel as a tourist.

Perhaps St. Junipero took pity on me. This same man who described one of his journeys through the California desert as “very painful,” because of the blazing sun and,“a roaring lion quite close by,” who wrote a letter to his parents in Spain telling them, “Always forward! Never turn back” -- this is the man who I now suspect began to secretly push me forward.

There’s a famous story about San Juan Capistrano. It says that we know all is right with the world each year when the swallows return on their migratory pattern to nest in the eaves of the mission. Unbeknownst to me, I was a swallow that day. Attracted to the beauty of the place, something very real and powerful and ancient found me. It captured me and gathered me up into God’s love. I came, like a bird, to nest in my new home.

So, on the feast day of St. Junipero Serra, I wanted to write this piece to encourage everyone. Even if our lives can feel like deserts at times, or we are stuck and feeling far from who we ought to be, we never know how goodness is at work in the background of our lives. We never know who might be watching out for us and secretly assisting us.

It might even be St. Junipero Serra. I hear he’s very persistent.