A Note of Thanks from Amy & Nick Montanez
Amy & Nick Montanez
To Our Beloved Community: St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields,
Father Chris Clements said in his sermon of January 17th, 2021, that of all the churches he has known, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields “is one of the most alive, Spirit-filled, and welcoming. It is a treasure, or in Scriptural words, a pearl of great price. And so if we fail to support and nurture it, we will lose something that cannot be replaced, and I think we will be forever sorry.”
Nick and I want to tell you that these words could not ring truer to us now as we pick our heads up out of our surreal brush with COVID, the aftermath, and the recovery.
We really don’t know how to thank you all except to trust that you know us well enough to know that we are openly grateful to be part of this beloved community. We have received an abundance of cards, flowers, emails, texts, meals, prayers, love, and phone calls that remind us daily and sometimes hourly of the preciousness of our community, who you each are individually, and who we are as we come together as a community. We are so grateful. The words are weak. The feeling is strong.
Since he came home from his 8-day stint in the hospital, Nick and I have had some profound conversations. If you will indulge me, I want to try and capture some of his words regarding a repetitive experience he had while there.
Nick described a constant flow of energy, an “energetic field” that was always there any time he wanted to tap into it. It was level, no ups, downs, or ins and outs, and it was always flowing forward. He knew he did not have to do anything, or respond in any way, or even think about it, but that all he had to do was receive it, and that allowed him to join it. Several times he questioned himself. “Am I dreaming this?” And over and over, the answer was, “No, this is real. I can feel it.” As I sat listening to him, he kept using the word “mechanism”---there was some mechanism that started it, and he believed that it was the prayers, texts, emails, and love from people he knew and many he didn’t. (I have a huge network of prayer warriors, and people were praying for Nick across the globe. Some people sent Nick texts, and he never knew who they were!) He also said he knew he would be ok if he could just allow himself to rest in this energetic field of support. His only job was to receive. There was no transaction. No need to respond. Just receive.
I am a believer. This did not come as a great surprise to me as I have had similar experiences in this energetic field. But hearing his experience is such a reminder of the power of prayer, the presence of God, the communion of saints, and what happens when we pray for people. The web—the source— is so powerful, so strong, so true, that it is hard to put words on something that is at once a huge reality and also such a mystery. We also know that there are 400,000+ who have been prayed for who have not survived. When I asked Nick about this, he just kept saying that he knew no matter what happened, it would all be ok. (At this point, I reminded him that I might not be so ok if he didn’t make it out of there!)
During my spiritual director’s training program, I read Thomas R. Kelly’s A Testament Of Devotion. I pulled it off the shelf during his hospital stay, remembering that Kelly wrote in one of his chapters about the blessed community. This is what I was looking for:
Holy Fellowship reaches behind these intellectual frames to the immediacy of experience in God and seeks contact in this fountainhead of real, dynamic connectedness….Two people, three people, ten people may be in living touch with one another through Him who underlies their separate lives. This is an astounding experience, which I can only describe but cannot explain in the language of science. But in the vivid experience of divine Fellowship, it is there. We know that these souls are with us, lifting their lives and ours continuously to God and opening themselves, with us, in steady and humble obedience to Him. It is as if the boundaries of ourselves were enlarged, as if we were within them and as if they were within us. Their strength, given to them by God, becomes our strength, and our joy, given to us by God, becomes their joy….But the solid kernel of community of life in God is in the center of the experience, renewing our life and courage and commitment and love. For daily and hourly, the cosmic Sacrament is enacted, the Bread and the Wine are divided amongst us by a heavenly Ministrant, and the substance of His body becomes our life, and the substance of His blood flows in our veins. Holy is the Fellowship, wondrous is the Ministrant, marvelous is the Grail.
Friends, may God bless you each and all for your love and devotion; for every prayer, text, phone call, bouquet, FB message, good thought, and meal. We are so very grateful. We also prayed for you and for all of those souls who have no one to pray for them. May we never take our blessed community for granted, or as Father Chris said, “we will be forever sorry.”
Both Nick and I look forward to the day when we can freely hug you. I am actually a little afraid that I may become like the crazy woman who walks around just hugging everyone when all of this is over. It wouldn’t be a bad reputation to have!
Deep and abiding peace to you all, with more thanksgiving than I can say.
Amy, for both of us