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There were indications that my job interview was not going well. 

Fr. Peter ended the interview saying, “Dr. Kuehne, I don’t know if we will offer you the job, but if you come here, if anyone changes it will have to be you.” When I left I was confident the job would not be mine.

I was devastated.  I had an opportunity to land one of the prime collegiate teaching jobs in the United States, a tenure track position in politics at Saint Anselm College.

When speaking of higher education, no one uses Harvard, Stanford, and Saint Anselm in the same sentence.  The three schools don’t belong in the same sentence.  The only difference is that if the discussion is about teaching American politics, Harvard and Stanford students find their way to Saint Anselm during the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. 

Located in Manchester, N.H., with 90 percent of the state population living in a 40 mile radius of the school, Saint Anselm is at the epicenter of Presidential Primary activity.  Saint Anselm hosts several nationally televised debates every election cycle, and the candidates come to our campus several times and often do so just to teach a class.

Just how politically important is the New Hampshire Primary?  Several years ago Bernard Shaw of CNN told me that the New Hampshire Primary is the second largest media event in the world behind the Olympics. 

I was elated that I was one of three finalists for the Saint Anselm position, but I left my interview deflated.  My concerns were well justified.  Fr. Peter reopened the search process and brought three more candidates in to interview. 

I relived the interview again and again.  I knew that being an ordained Protestant minister might not play well on a Catholic campus.  But I was certain I could defuse the situation.  I had received my Ph.D. from Georgetown, and was asked by that Catholic university to sit on a committee to recommend ways to strengthen its Catholic identity.  I thought I understood Catholicism.  But Georgetown is a Jesuit Institution, and unbeknownst to me not all Catholic universities are created equal.

Saint Anselm is a Benedictine college, and while Georgetown prepared me to tackle issues like world peace, it didn’t teach me how to interview with Benedictines.  I should have known the interview was not going well when I told Fr. Peter I’d be delighted to speak in chapel.  He quickly responded by saying, “That won’t be necessary.”

There are reasons why Catholics and Protestants have not reconciled their differences.  Because the differences are real and they matter.

Thank God!

Fr. Peter did hire me after all.  I can only imagine what the following three candidates must have said about the Pope and Catholic theology, to give me a job offer.

I came, and Fr. Peter was right.  I was the one who changed.

Thank God.

When I arrived I had no intention of changing, because I was unaware I had a need to change.

Dutifully, I read a text every incoming faculty members is asked to read, the Rule of St. Benedict.  Written over 1,500 years ago, it is one of the definitive texts in the Western monastic tradition.

As a politics professor it is an interesting read, because “the Rule” lays out how a Benedictine house and life ought to be structured. 

While there is much that is interesting, there is one sentence that utterly captivated me when I read it.

“Every visitor must be received as Christ himself.”

I grew up believing Catholics had nothing to teach Protestants.  Fortunately, I was wrong.  When I read this sentence, I felt as though God was speaking directly to me.

I had grown up with the 10 Commandments along with the imperative to love others.  I was persuaded the work of the Christian was to care for the poor and dispossessed.  Being from 

Minnesota, I was well acquainted with Christ’s command to be nice. 

This sentence, however, was of a completely different order.

How does one treat Jesus if he decides to pay a visit? 

Being nice, loving abstractly, and obeying rules and regulations didn’t offer me much to go on.

I ruminated on this for several years before I understood it.

In my third year at the college I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  One aspect of my treatment was taking a radioactive iodine pill. I had to stay in a special isolated room in the hospital for several days and after I was released I was ordered to have no contact with pregnant women and children for three weeks.

Where does one go in this world of ours to both be cared for and not come into contact with a woman who may not even know she is pregnant?  A Benedictine monastery.

I explained my circumstances to Fr. Peter and he arranged for me to stay with the monks for three weeks.  When in the monastery I lived the life of a monk.  I prayed when they prayed, and the Benedictines pray more than anyone else I know.  I sang the Psalms with the Benedictines, who spend more time reading and singing scripture than any group I know.  In short, they are among the most devout group of Christians I have ever encountered.

But what was more important than all of the above is that they treated me as Christ himself.  They invited me fully into their life and lives. They did not treat me as a Protestant, a stranger, or as a living nuclear waste site.

They weren’t just kind to me.  They loved me.  They treated me as if I were Jesus in their midst.

I wish I had the language to describe what that means, but this is something that cannot be expressed in words.  It is something lived, in the moment, every moment. I did not deserve what I received.  I did not feel worthy to be treated as Christ.

But that is the miracle and trial of grace. You deny it, reject it, or find enough humility to begin to receive it.

A new journey of grace began for me during those three weeks in the Monastery. Fr. Peter was right.  I needed to change.  Fr. Peter not only hired me, he and his brothers gifted me with change I needed to believe in.

The Spirit moves in mysterious ways.  

Thankfully.

Rev. Dale S. Kuehne, Ph.D. is the author of “Sex and the iWorld. Rethinking Relationship Beyond an Age of Individualism.”  He is the Richard L. Bready Chair of Ethics, Economics, and the Common Good and founding director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.  He serves as pastor of Emmanuel Covenant Church in Nashua, NH and is a regular ShareWIK.com columnist. 

Read other columns by Rev. Dale Kuehne here. 

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