Holy Spirit Continues To Guide Father
Eastman In His Journey of Faith
by Patrick Eastman
Edited by Father Tony Taylor

This all began when I went on my very first retreat. Though I was raised in the Church of England and my father was an avid aherent of the Anglican-Catholic wing of the Church of England, I drifted away from the Church as a teenager. After a year’s hospitalization for tuberculosis, getting married and becoming a father of three children I returned to the practice of my faith at St. Paul’s Charleston, an Anglican-Catholic parish in Cornwall. It was soon after this that I went on my very first retreat, conducted by Father Henry Judd. During a time of private prayer, as I sat before a large crucifix I gradually became conscious that I was being called to be a priest. In the time following the retreat I tried to put the idea out of my mind, but the invitation did not go away and as the practice of my faith got deeper, it became clear that whatever practical difficulties there were would be overcome. A few years later I was selected for training for Holy Orders and began seminary studies at St. Stephen’s House in Oxford, the top seminary of the Anglican-Catholic wing of the Church of England, associated with such spiritual giants as Keble, Newman and Pusey. In the meantime I also became a Benedictine Oblate associated with the Anglican Benedictine Monastery at Nashdom in the southern England. Following the spiritual precepts of the Rule of Benedict was to become the single most important spiritual thread in my whole life, even today, rooting me in the contemplative and monastic tradition of prayer.

During my years of seminary studies at Oxford and a subsequent semester studying moral theology in Rome, my wife Maureen was back at home in Plymouth raising our three children, Karen, Mark and Chris-topher. I was ordained an Anglican priest on June 1, 1969 and began two years of ministry at St. Mary Magdalen in the economically depressed town of Sunderland in northeastern England. Then I served as Priest-in-Charge of St. Nicholas parish in the heavily industrialized town of Hedworth, a difficult assignment. The parish had been seriously neglected in the past, but after 3 years of hard work, its Masses were well attended and there was a solid group of people enthusiastic about their faith. But the excessive work took a toll on my prayer life and one day it struck me forcibly that my prayer and life had become centered on me and that I only asked God to help out with my plans and agenda. This awakening was humbling but I consider it as much a pivotal point in my life as that initial experience on the first retreat. It led me to contact the Roman Catholic Trappist monastery just over the border in Nunraw, Scotland and attend an 8 day retreat, which I then repeated with them each of the following 12 years, from 1971 to 1983. During this time I also became a founding member of the Jubilee Group committed to social justice and non-violence, as well as a participant in the Charismatic Renewal.

Everything was going well. This changed in 1977 when I began to have feelings that I was in the wrong denomination and that the Lord was calling me into the Roman Catholic Church and that I should continue to serve him as a priest. I eventually discussed this with Cardinal Hume, who told me that the National Conference of Bishops in England were not prepared to ask the Vatican for permission for converted Anglican priests to continue their ministry in the Catholic Church. Then I met Auxiliary Bishop Tom Gumbleton of Detroit at a Pax Christi meeting and he told me that the bishops of the United States had just gotten the necessary permissions. He suggested I consider applying to an American diocese and I was eventually put in touch with Archbishop Beltran when he was bishop of Tulsa. We were warmly received by him and made preparations for Maureen and I to move to Tulsa. On November 4, 1983 we went to Nunraw Abbey in Scotland where Abbot Donald McGlynn received us into the Catholic Church and confirmed us. Then on November 21 we flew to Tulsa.

Archbishop Beltran placed us at St. Benedict’s, Broken Arrow and asked Father Paul Eichhoff to take care of us. Words cannot express our appreciation of their kindness and that of all the parishioners. Archbishop Beltran asked me to be the diocesan Director of Spirituality and to establish a Diocesan Spiritual Life Center. In the meantime I had to have my academic assessment and study before being ordained a Catholic priest. Within three months I had completed all the requirements for ordination and was ordained on August 14, 1984 at Holy Family Cathedral, with my first Mass at St. Benedict’s on August 15. As I looked back over the seven years leading to my Catholic ordination, I realized that every significant step along the way had happened on a feast of Our Lady.

Maureen and I spent the next four summers getting more formal training in Spirituality at the Benedictine University of St. John’s Collegeville, MN. While I was directing the Diocesan Spiritual Life Center, Maureen began to teach in the Chrism Institute, a three year formation program for lay-ministry, eventually becoming its director and teacher for almost 10 years. When Bishop Slattery closed both the Diocesan Spiritual Life Center and the Chrism Institute in 1995, Maureen took a two year sabbatical and retu-rned to England to study for a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Theology in Southampton. Meanwhile, I was fortunate in being assigned as an associate pastor at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Parish in Tulsa with Father Bernard Jewitt, whom I had met by chance 25 years earlier in London when I was still an Anglican seminarian.

Now that I have retired from parish ministry I have even more time to explore the mystery of God’s love within me and about me. I have learned how important it is to be firmly rooted in one’s own tradition before studying another, but also know from my experience with the Charismatic Renewal how God can use other traditions to create new openings in our lives. Recalling the request of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II for Benedictines particularily to dialogue with the Buddhists, I have become an oblate of the Camaldolese Bene-dictines at Big Sur, CA. And so my spiritual journey continues.

As for the future of the Church, we need to remind ourselves of the cosmic context of all that we are and do. The material universe has existed for 15 billion years, homo sapiens for 4.4 million years, but formalized religious groups have only existed for 5,000 years. From the cosmic perspective we need to be aware that what the Spirit will lead us to in the future may be fundamentally different than anything we can imagine, but I do believe that four particular influences will continue to change all world religions: scientific discoveries, inter-religious dialogue, women doing theology and growth in meditation and contemplation.

We live in an enormously exciting and hopeful time. It is such a joy for me personally to be involved with all that is so dynamically alive in world religion. My desire is to be part of that which enables all people to be more authentically human for the furtherance of all creation. I am encouraged also in the sure and certain knowledge that the Holy Spirit is as truly at work today as it was all those 15 billion years ago.