Farewell to a Brother Pilgrim

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This past Thursday morning, one of my dearest friends and brother pilgrims, Sam Campbell III, passed away.

I met Sam some ten years ago during my travels on LiveJournal, as a fellow Christian journeying on this road. Over the years we grew close, sharing in some of the same struggles, grappling with temptations, and grasping for an intellectual understanding and faith in God, and for His peace. Sam has been one of the gentlest, humblest, most caring souls I’ve ever encountered. He has looked out for me. From time to time, particularly if I’d gone silent from the online world for a while, he would drop me a line to ask if I was okay, to let me know he was thinking of me and praying for me. We’ve shared a love for Star Trek, Tolkien, hobbits, Linux, and so many other things; I could always be sure he would get my wry jokes and references. I never got a chance to meet him in person, but I felt as if I knew him so well: he was always there close by.

Sam was deaf and blind, and experienced so many sufferings in this life, but I never heard him complain. This week as we reflect on the Passion of our Lord, I’m reminded how willingly and patiently Sam took up the cross he had been given; how freely he gave of himself and made sacrifices for the sake of love, moving halfway across the country to become a loving husband to his wife Noelle, and a father to her two children. He was a good man, one of the best men I’ve ever known. I loved him a lot, and I’m going to miss him terribly.

I remember this week, too, that in the suffering and death of our Lord — though wrenching, painful, and sad — He purchased Resurrection and eternal life for those who trust in Him. Parting with those we love is sorrowful, but death from this life is but for a moment — the road goes ever on and on. Farewell for now, Sam. I look forward to the day when our paths will cross again.

Requiescat in pace, frater peregrine. Vale, dum coeamus iterum die illa.

The Sovereignty of God, or, My Brush with Calvinism, Part 1

The next chapter in my conversion story, a long-promised episode that I think will be of interest to many of my Reformed brethren.

John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564)

In the year or two after my revolution, I began searching for God and for my true spiritual home, more earnestly than ever. Despite all my wanderings and stumblings, I still had the notion that I was somehow in control of my destiny, that I would find God on my terms — that somehow, I could flesh out the truth in my own mind and order my own path. Needless to say, I didn’t get very far with that attitude. But then, a series of events conspired to demonstrate to me, more than ever before, God’s ultimate sovereignty over our lives.

In this period, for really the first time in my life, I found myself presented with Calvinism, the teachings and interpretations in the tradition of John Calvin, what has come to be known as Reformed theology. Since my youth I had been seeking greater intellectual rigor in my faith, a faith tempered by reason and thought — and, like so many young people today, I discovered Calvinism, without really ever looking for it.

John Calvin Richardson (1853–1930), my great-great-grandfather, who, as far as we know, was a good and God-fearing man who lived up to his moniker, and a Baptist.

John Calvin Richardson (1853–1930), my great-great-grandfather.

Growing up, of course, I had heard of Calvin. One could say he was in my blood. My great-great-grandfather was John Calvin Richardson (1853–1930), and, as far as we know, he lived up to his moniker, being a pious and God-fearing man and a Baptist. I knew very little of Calvin the theologian, only that he taught predestination, which, even to my young, evangelical mind, seemed an unpleasant and frightening doctrine. In school, reading Nathaniel Hawthorne or Mary Rowlandson, we examined the Calvinist themes of providence and the sovereignty of God. I learned the TULIP and its contrast in Arminianism, and realized for the first time that the theology I’d been brought up with was Arminian. I was fascinated and briefly wrestled with the ideas, but resigned myself that I had no authority to come to a conclusion. To my unschooled mind, Calvinism and Arminianism were the only two theological choices.

It was around that time that a friend invited me to her church (coincidentally[?], the caring friend of this episode), the first time I’d visited a church other than my childhood one in years. It was my first encounter with hardboiled Calvinism, and to my surprise I found the preaching compelling and the congregation welcoming and friendly; I made several friends. This was an outpost of Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the sect founded and led by Rev. Ian Paisley — and so it had rabid anti-Catholicism bleeding from its pores. Although this prejudice showed itself even in such far-flung followers as these in Alabama, those I met there were not hateful people — most of them.

The doctrines I’d been exposed to, particularly the absolute sovereignty of God over all things, made an impact on me and fascinated me. I was referred to some A.W. Pink to read. And then — to put an exclamation point on it — came another of the most pivotal moments of my life. Early in 2007, my dear grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. And even as we prayed for his healing, it became increasingly clear to me that God had other plans.

Milton Aldridge

Milton Aldridge, my Granddaddy, while serving in Europe during World War II.

The day he passed away in September was a private, family time, and I won’t compromise that moment by putting it on display here. But on that day we all gathered at his bedside at home — all except my brother, who was working in Huntsville an hour away teaching classes, and whom we didn’t think could get away in time. We finally got in touch with him, too late, we thought.

Doctors say that a person is not conscious or aware during his death throes — but Grandaddy knew; he held on, painfully, until John got there, and was able to say his goodbyes. And then, peacefully, he was gone. It was a beautiful and terrible moment that I cannot write about even now without tears.

I left that day convinced beyond a doubt, more surely than anything had ever convinced me before, that God is the Master of Life and Death; that He had orchestrated that moment, and taken Granddaddy when it was his time, to His glory and eternal rest. That event would shape me in so many ways that I’m still only now realizing: it was the first time I had truly looked death and eternity in the face and not wanted to run away; it was the time when I finally, after years of desperately trying to hold on to everything, to let go.

Compassion by Bouguereau

“Compassion” (1897), by Compassion by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

I remember having thoughts in the months that followed that at the time alarmed me: thinking of Grandaddy in his suffering, in his weakness, in his broken and dying body, as Christ suffering on the cross. But wasn’t this terribly sacrilegious? Granddaddy wasn’t Jesus and wasn’t my Savior; why was I thinking that way? It’s only now, looking back, that I understand. It’s only in Catholic thought that I can make sense of it. God was showing me the meaning of Grandaddy’s suffering: how what seemed so senseless then, He used salvifically; how in His suffering, Christ is united with every one of us who suffers, and we with Him partake of his saving death and Resurrection. “By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion” (CCC 1505).

More: “The Sovereignty of God, or My Brush with Calvinism, Part 2: A Crisis of Faith

St. Boniface, Apostle of the Germans

St. Boniface

St. Boniface

Today is the Feast of St. Boniface (c. 7th century – 754), known as the Apostle of the Germans. Born with the name Wynfrith in the English kindgom of Wessex, he was renamed Boniface by Pope Gregory II, who commissioned him. He spent the last thirty years of his life as a missionary to the Germanic peoples, especially in the region of Frisia. He was the first archbishop of Mainz, and died a martyr for the faith while on a mission to convert the Frisians. St. Boniface leaves behind a sizable body of correspondence, his letters to and responses from popes, bishops, abbots, and nuns: his superiors, associates, and friends. I’ve selected a particularly touching passage from a letter of Boniface to his dear friend
Bishop Daniel of Winchester:

News was brought to me recently by a priest who came to Germany from your parts that you had lost your sight. You, my lord, are more aware than I am who it is who said: “Where he loves, he bestows correction.” And St. Paul says: “When I am weakest, then I am strongest of all”; and: “My strength is increased in infirmity.” The author of the psalms adds: “Many are the trials of the innocent,” etc. You, my father, have eyes like those of Didimus, of whom Antony is related to have said that his eyes saw God and His angels and the blessed joys of the heavenly Jerusalem. On this account, and because I know your wisdom and your patience, I believe that God has permitted you to be afflicted in this way so that your virtue and merit may increase and that you may gaze with the eyes of the spirit on those things which God loves and commands, whilst seeing less of the things God hates and forbids. What are our bodily eyes in this time of trial but the windows of sin through which we observe sins and sinners, or, worse still, behold and desire them and so fall into sin?

—St. Boniface
Correspondence 30 (ca. 742–746)

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