Early in 1981, a man from the Gold Coast area was ordained to the priesthood in St Vincent’s Church, Surfers Paradise. Martin attended, with his parents. It was the first really big ecclesiastical ceremony my human had seen, so of course, it was very impressive for him.
Martin has never forgotten the moment when the Bishop of Lismore, who officiated, laid his hands on the young man’s head to call down the Holy Spirit upon him to make him a priest. Martin pretty much made up his mind right then that he wanted it to happen to him some day.
He immediately decided that he wanted to join the Jesuits, although he hadn’t had any direct contact with any Jesuits at that time.
However, he was impressed by their reputation for intelligence and for zeal, and also by the order’s versatility (Jesuits have done almost everything over the years). So he contacted the Jesuit parish in Toowong, Brisbane, and arranged to go there and meet with the parish priest, Fr Leo Flynn.
He went up to Brisbane by bus and spoke to Fr Flynn, who gave him some material to read, including a biography of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He also told my human that that there was a tradition of prospective Jesuits being interviewed by three different members of the Society, and he would put the wheels in motion for this to happen.
Soon after this, Martin found out that the Archdiocese of Brisbane was holding “vocation weekends” for young people considering the priesthood or religious life – “aspirants”, to use the official Catholic term. Fr Bill Morris, who was then the vocations director for the archdiocese, organized these. Martin attended two of these weekends, which were held in a retreat house at Beachmere on the Sunshine Coast.
MARTIN: I had to get lifts to and from Beachmere. I did get a learners license in Queensland, but to be honest, I have never properly learned how to drive. I think the main reason is that I became a total bundle of nerves behind the wheel. This is certainly one area in which my anxiety problems have held me back…. Although I expect the roads of Australia are dangerous enough without me on them!
FERDINAND: Indeed…. The first weekend was a bit difficult for my human as it was actually the first time he had been away from his parents for any significant length of time! His parents and I had been the only constants in his life until then. (He took me along, but kept me in his backpack and didn’t show me to anyone, out of pure embarrassment!) He was miserable and sleepless the first night – which was made worse by someone tinkling tunelessly on a piano in a nearby room – but it got better after that.
Both boys and girls attended these weekends, and despite his thoughts of being a priest, my human did not forget his attraction to the female sex. He had an embarrassing moment when he started chatting up an attractive redhead — I did mention his weakness for redheads, didn’t I?
MARTIN: At length!
FERDINAND: But she turned out to already be a member of the Sisters of St Joseph.
MARTIN: Okay, so I got what I deserved that time.
FERDINAND: By the way, Fr Bill Morris who organized these vocation weekends later became bishop of Toowoomba. But Pope Benedict XVI later removed him from that position in somewhat controversial circumstances.{8}
Given his healthy interest in the female form, Martin was quite aware that a lifetime commitment to celibacy might hold its difficulties. But he was also quite emotionally inhibited about asking girls out – he had not “dated” at this stage, and wouldn’t do so for a long time yet! So marriage hardly seemed a likely alternative.
MARTIN: Absolutely. I really think I was in a sort of “false consciousness” at this time. I thought I could make myself worthy of the priesthood by sheer willpower. Of course it isn’t like that.
FERDINAND: Indeed not. Anyway, back to our story…
The chaplain of the University of Queensland at the time was a Jesuit. He contacted Martin, and then came to the Murphy residence to conduct the first interview with my human.
MARTIN: There were a lot of questions – they seemed to want to find out everything about me. It was almost as if I was applying to join the FBI or the CIA! And later I did a second interview with another priest.
FERDINAND: He also went on a retreat conducted by two priests of the Discalced Carmelite order at a large house on the Gold Coast; it was held over a weekend and proved to be an interesting experience. The priests were contrasting personalities – almost like the classic “good cop, bad cop”. One of them was very gentle and reassuring and talked about love a lot. The other was much more forceful and (having been in the army before he joined the priesthood) would occasionally forget himself and use colorful language; once he said, “This will all seem like so much bullshit unless you put it into practice – unless you DO it!!!!!”
But then things hit a snag. After having two of the traditional three interviews, Martin got a phone call from the deputy provincial of the Jesuits in Australia, saying that they felt he was not mature enough as yet, and wanted him to put off joining the Society for at least one year. This was devastating news. The Jesuits presumably wanted him to find a job and get some more work experience before he joined them, but this was something he was having great difficulty in doing, and it seemed to condemn my human to another year of futility on the Gold Coast, a place he was becoming increasingly determined to leave!
MARTIN: The ironic thing, I guess, is that the Gold Coast was, and still is, an extremely popular resort area, a place that most people would love to go to. But for me, it became a place that I had to escape from. I really had to get away from there before I could start doing things with my life.
FERDINAND: However, just when it seemed all was lost, a strange thing happened: a chance meeting that completely changed my human’s life.
The MSC fathers who ran Daramalan College also published the Annals, a Catholic magazine. It so happened that Fr Paul Stenhouse, the editor of the Australian Annals, came to Surfers Paradise to promote the magazine. Martin happened to get talking to him after Mass and mentioned the fact that he had tried to join the Jesuits and hadn’t been successful. Fr Stenhouse suggested that he could join the MSC’s as a pre-novitiate student to test his vocation. He came to the Murphy house and did the paperwork with Martin and his parents right then and there! And then it was a matter of waiting.
MARTIN: Yes, indeed. My life was completely changed by that meeting – just as much as it was by my adoption, probably.
FERDINAND: In the meantime, the Murphy family had saved up to go on a “pilgrimage”, a trip organized by the Church and guided by a priest. This happened at the end of the year. They visited Jerusalem, Rome (where they attended midnight Mass at St Peter’s, celebrated by Pope John Paul the second), Spain and France, and finally England, where we were able to make a side trip to go and visit Mum and Dad’s relatives in Liverpool.
I made the trip up to Liverpool with Martin in his rucksack. England was in the depths of winter at that time, and for part of the journey the train passed through snow-covered fields. A passenger sitting close to us looked out at these fields and lamented in a broad Liverpool accent, “Oh dear! All the veggies ruined! They could have lasted me for years!” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “All the veggies ruined….” Martin roared with laughter, while his embarrassed parent shushed him.
It was when we came back from this trip that Martin received the extremely welcome letter saying he had been accepted by the MSC’s.
Now, I believe there was something you wanted to add?
MARTIN: Yep. It’s about something that happened in Paris…
FERDINAND: Oh, really?
MARTIN: Not what you might expect, ha-ha!
This is difficult to talk about. I don’t want to sound like a nut job on the one hand, or as if I’m trying to portray myself as some sort of great mystic on the other, but this is something that really did happen and it had a profound effect on me.
While we were staying in a hotel in Paris, I tried praying one night using the “Jesus prayer” —the words “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, repeated over and over again as a sort of a mantra. After I had been doing it for a while, something strange happened.
I started getting a strong feeling of a presence… a feminine presence – in the room. I had my eyes shut and I kept them shut because I was afraid that if I opened them I would see something! After a while, the “presence” faded. Now, it felt a very kind and gentle presence and I believe it was the Virgin Mary. In fact there was another, similar presence with it which I believe was St Mary Magdalene, as we had visited a church dedicated to her not long before. So these both felt like wonderful, gentle presences… but it was also a scary experience. I felt terrified for a while, simply because it was so unexpected and nothing like it had happened to me before.
FERDINAND: My human is well aware that there could be all sorts of psychological explanations for this type of “religious experience”, and it may have only been in his head. He has had a small number of these experiences over the years and he certainly makes no claim to being a visionary or a mystic.
But still, he says that these experiences are one of the reasons why he continues to believe in God and in the existence of a spiritual or supernatural dimension, as he calls it, to the universe.
Martin now believes that this first religious experience was given to him to encourage and strengthen him through the difficult times that lay ahead of him in the seminary…. and afterwards.