But I got lost a time or two

Wiped my brow and kept pushing through

I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

Every long lost dream led me to where you are

Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars

Pointing me on my way into your loving arms

This much I know is true

That God blessed the broken road

That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent, just passing through

I'd like to have the time I lost, and give it back to you

But you just smile and take my hand

You've been there, you understand

It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true

Every long lost dream led me to where you are

Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars

Pointing me on my way into your loving arms

This much I know is true

That God blessed the broken road

That led me straight to you

But now I'm just rolling home into my lover's arms

This much I know is true

That God blessed the broken road

That led me straight to you

( - Bobby C. Boyd, Jeff Hannah and Marcus Hummon,

Copyright CAREERS-BMG MUSIC PUBLISHING INC; JEFF DIGGS MUSIC)

There is an old Yiddish saying that translates, "Man plans: God laughs." The journey that is life only rarely progresses according to the plan of the pilgrim. Instead, it is full of unexpected turns and vistas unlooked for, since it is directed by Another. Mine is no exception. As recently as two years ago, I had not thought that I would come to this moment, but now that it has arrived, it seems to me that all that has gone before has led directly to it.

Crossing

As some of you already know, as some of you have been suspecting, as some of you have feared, as some of you have hoped, and perhaps as most of you until this moment have not been told, I shall be stepping down as Vicar of Saint Peter's Anglican Church in Waynesville at the end of this month in order to prepare for coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. None of my congregation will be following me on this path: instead, Saint Peter's will continue as an Anglican mission, still in the Anglican Church of America, but under the care of the Anglican Province of America until the finalization of a formal concordat between these two jurisdictions. A smooth transition of administration is already under way. My final celebration of the Eucharist at Saint Peter's will take place, God willing, at 7 p.m. on December 29th. (This is the Feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, a saint for whom I have always held a special regard: Indeed, my first offering of the Mass as a newly-ordained priest on May 16th, 1980 was a votive of Saint Thomas.)

It is my preference and my hope to be able to make the impending transition through the special structure - called an "ordinariate' - which was provided for Anglicans by Pope Benedict XVI last year to enable those of us who will to enter the Catholic Church and to bring along with us those elements of our liturgical, theological, and pastoral heritage that are in conformity with the Church's teaching. It is intended to be a means whereby these gifts may be contributed to the rich variety encompassed by that vast Communion, which (though most are not aware of the fact) consists of two dozen distinct ritual Churches united with Rome and with one another. However, the Ordinariate - the "bridge across the Tiber," as some have called it - is only one means of accomplishing the end - the "how," which is provisional, as contrasted with the "that," which is settled. With or without an Ordinariate, the decision as to my course is firm. The only thing that I have not decided is whether to apply for ordination: On that matter, "my soul in silence waits."

Having said all that, I still suspect that most of you are less interested in the "how" and the "that" than in the "why" of the matter, so it is mostly to that question that I will address myself.

When it comes to the question of entering into full communion, most people who are not Catholic - and, no doubt, some who are - tend to focus on what the newcomer has to (or what they fancy he has to) leave behind and not to notice what he gets to take with him. With that in mind, let me begin by saying that my taking this step cannot fairly be characterized as the rejection of anything that is good, or true, or beautiful in my Christian heritage and past history, whether personal or ecclesiastical. Instead, it involves my carrying it into what I have come to recognize as the one arena on this earth in which, by the grace of God, each and all of these blessings may most surely be moved toward the perfection that they will attain in heaven. To be sure, there will be baggage that I will have to leave behind on the platform, but that will be nothing that I ought to miss very much, if at all. If I had to - God being my helper - I'd leave it all behind but that does not seem to be required, especially on the terms offered by that kind and gentle soul who now occupies Peter's Throne. Even if such a sacrifice were required, it would still be worth it to me in order to move closer to the heart of the "Great Belonging" of which we all in Christ are members.

Journeying

My motto for this journey could be, "In my beginning is my end." It has been, and remains, a pilgrimage from a Great into a Greater Belonging. Like Tennyson's Ulysses, "I am a part of all that I have met," and it is a part of me.

I was baptized into the Great Belonging of Christ's body in the Methodist Church, but that act did not make me a Methodist, but a catholic Christian. This is true in the case of all baptisms administered with water "in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Methodism claims nothing less; the Catholic Church entirely agrees, for while she teaches that the Church of Jesus Christ "subsists" visibly and most fully in that body whose bishops are in full communion with one another and with the Bishop of Rome, she does not thereby deny the reality of the Christian identity and commitment of those who are outside those limits, but instead invites them inside: "All my fresh springs are in thee.")

As a young man, in order to remain, and more perfectly be, Methodist, I became an Anglican by confirmation in the Episcopal Church. Since I had learned that, so long as John and Charles Wesley lived, they refused to countenance the separation of their movement from the Church of England, I believed I was simply doing what they would have wanted.

As a middle-aged man, following years of "fighting the long defeat" of apostolic Christianity in the Episcopal Church and the official Anglican Communion and concluding that there was no lasting desire or intention in them to allow the survival, let alone the extension, of the catholic faith within them, I entered the Continuing Anglican movement in order to continue to be an Anglican.

My combined experience within both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Continuum has finally led me to the same conclusion so many of my friends, mentors, and colleagues reached long before I did, which is that nothing good about the Anglican Way ultimately can survive if it remains cut off from its fount and origin. The past four and one-half centuries of organic disunion have demonstrated to my own satisfaction that apart from its union with the main trunk, the Anglican branch of the Christian tree –finest and most humane product of the Reformation though it is - can only either (1) rot from the heart out, until merely the bark is left to give it shape until it is fragmented by external pressure, or (2) become fossilized, in which case it may be more solid but no less subject to fragmentation.

Succeeding

Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Experiments succeed whether they prove or disprove their hypothesis. So far as I can see, the Anglican experiment has succeeded in that it has disproved the hypothesis that catholic faith and practice can endure indefinitely apart from visible communion with that See of which Peter and Paul were co-founders.

This is coupled with the realization that - notwithstanding all the faults and sins of its members and even of its leaders (which it acknowledges) - for the last hundred years and more (while one by one the churches of the Reformation have succumbed, through surrender to or by retreat in the face of the spirit of the age) there has been in the world but one Christian communion which has consistently and proactively stood for divine truth and the dignity of man against every idolatrous tyranny which destroys and degrades him. This perception finds confirmation in the prophetic ministries of Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, and - and with more besides - it has made clear to me beyond a reasonable doubt my own call into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Confessing

I want it to be clearly understood that however much those things I have come to perceive as shortcomings in what I have passed through have propelled me along this path, of far greater importance to me is the fact that I have been drawn on by the fullness and the splendor of truth confessed by the Catholic Church. Of course, I am fully aware that such a statement might lead many to ask, "You mean, you really believe all that stuff?."

If by "all that stuff," the questioner means the authoritative teaching contained in The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), the short answer is, "Yes, I do." Do I comprehend every detail? No, at least not yet, but since faith is first a gift of God leading to and enabling a free decision to trust the Gift-giver, I am not required fully to understand in order to give full assent. Indeed, it is through my willing assent that I may hope at length to understand.

That the journey won't end with this step is certain, because none of our journeys ends on this earth. There is a final step. In his time, at his command and in order to attain the final end for which I was made, the Lord Jesus Christ will summon me from this Militant to the Expectant portion of his Church, there to strive until all is subsumed into the Church Triumphant - the Greatest Belonging of all. And in that end will be my true beginning. T. S. Eliot says it well:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

– Four Quartets: "Little Gidding," V.

Although this is all I feel led say on the subject at the moment (and, Lord knows, it is a lot), please don't refrain from asking for clarification if you need it. And keep me in your prayers, whatever you do, as you shall be in mine. So shall we all at length find ourselves together "landed safe on Canaan's side." Then, after such sorrow, what joy, what light, what glory.

In Christ our Lord and our God, Samuel L. Edwards

Waynesville, North Carolina
Eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception
through the Feast of Saint John the Evangelist
December 7-27, 2010