It was Maundy Thursday 1997, St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, Houston Texas. The feet had been washed, the Eucharist celebrated, the altar stripped, and the Blessed Sacrament reserved in a modest tabernacle at one side of the nave. The Overnight Watch with Christ had begun. Parishioners had signed up in advance keep vigil for an hour through the night until the Good Friday liturgy the next day at noon. I had signed up for the midnight-to-one block, being something of a night owl by disposition.
I arrived at the church about ten minutes before my appointed time, and waited outside the church doors. They were locked from within, and the person watching before me soon finished their shift and gave me entrance as they departed. I was alone in the nave, an austere modern structure with dark woodwork and white plastered walls. Recessed lighting cast a warm glow throughout the room—enough to see and read by, but properly subdued for keeping a vigil.
Copies of a parish booklet of Lenten devotions lay on a small table at the front of the church. I picked up one of these, sat in a pew near the altar, and began to settle in for the hour. I read the prayers slowly, trying to enter into them as fully as possible. At times I would put aside the booklet and take a hymnal from the bookrack in the pew, select a hymn, and meditate on the text or sing quietly. Before long the hour had come to an end and I looked outside for my successor.
No one was there.
I waited for a few minutes, wondering if they were running late, knowing that if I departed, no one else would be able to enter the building for the rest of the night. The crash bars on the main doors would automatically lock behind me, and anyone coming later would keep their vigil in the churchyard.
It became clear that the 1:00 AM watcher would not be coming. I returned to the nave—this time sitting near the back, better to hear someone at the door if they should turn up, after all. I settled in again for a second hour, wrapping my jacket closer around myself. I wished I’d thought to bring a hat or head-covering. Even suburban Houston can be chilly in early spring, late in the night.
The large cross above the altar in St. Dunstan’s Church is of a piece with the building itself—modern, understated, almost monastic in its simplicity. It is made of dark wood, carved in a way that hints at the contours of a human figure, suggesting rather than describing any specific detail. The cross itself seemed to shimmer with a warm energy in the dim church. I may have dozed off for a moment. But I remember being aware of a Presence, something vast and gentle and embracing, as I gazed at the cross. I cannot say that I “saw” Jesus there, only that I experienced him in a way that I never had before. I felt myself seen, and known, and welcomed in the Presence there, in the echoing silence and the glowing darkness.
Years later, I was reading about John Vianney, the beloved parish priest of Ars, a tiny French town in the early nineteenth century. Fr. John had a parishioner who used to come sit in the church every day. “In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pick-axe in the porch, and he spent a long time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament…I asked him once what he said to Our Lord during the long visits he made Him. Do you know what he told me? ‘Eh, Monsieur le Curé I say nothing to Him, I look at Him and He looks at me, and we are happy.’”
Sometimes words are not necessary. Simply to be quiet, in the Presence, is enough.
To know, and to be known. To be loved, and to love.
“Be still then, and know that I am God.” (Ps. 46:11)
—The Rev. Jason Haddux
[1] https://eucharisticvirtue.com/2017/09/05/daily-eucharist-quote-st-john-vianney-67/
Accessed 4 February 2021, 20:30 Central Time