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| Fr. Reuben Edward Nuxoll | |
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So, what are you going to do when you grow
up?” “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll play baseball, or
maybe I’ll be a scientist.” Not much came to my
twelve-year-old mind. The other option was to continue on the
farm. Priesthood? Never even thought of it. If anyone had
mentioned it to me, I probably would have replied, “Why
would I want to do that?”
The Life I Lived,
the Blessings I Unwittingly Received
It was the beginning
of 1993. As far as I know, I was quite
like all the other boys my age. I fit in
well with all my classmates; the only exception was that,
when the math teacher asked me to correct the quizzes,
I put frowny-faces on the quizzes of those who got
under 80%, and some of the girls complained. I was
in Little League baseball and then on the Babe Ruth
baseball team. I played basketball. I loved soccer, though the
league only started the year I left home. I did
not mind class and studying as much as most do,
but that did not make any difference, since some of
my friends were like me. In first grade we had
a competition to count as high as we could in
writing, and I ended up losing to Tom Hattrup after
we were well into the thousands. (That was when he
became my friend.) During the afternoons, if I was not
driving the tractor for my dad on our 500-acre farm
or at a baseball game, you might have found me
riding horses or reading a book. I loved to read
the Lord of the Rings. (Peter Jackson had not yet
made the movies.) Every summer my family and some friends
went camping in the Gospel-Hump Wilderness of the Rocky Mountains
and hiked each day deep into the fir and pine
landscape to fish in clear, blue, cold lakes. One time
my friend Tom and I caught 25 rainbow and cutthroat
trout in less than an hour. October of 1992 was
my first big-game hunting trip with my dad. After our
third day of tracking, I downed my buck (I would
not settle for a doe). I will never forget it:
facing down a steep slope, almost a cliff, with a
small herd of deer running about 200 yards below us,
I clipped the lungs and nailed the heart of a
2-point buck (4 points in mid-west sizes). It dropped and
rolled a short distance down the slope. My dad dropped
a doe right next to the buck. My life was
similar to that of the other boys in Cottonwood, and
I definitely had no desire to go elsewhere. I could
not imagine being in any other place, and I had
all I could want.
In one way I think
I had more than most boys my age. The problem
is, I did not realize what I had until I
left it: a good Catholic family. That is quite an
understatement, as I now see : I had an excellent
Catholic family. We were Catholics, Catholic Americans, not—you might say—American
Catholics. Our first identity was Catholic, then came America, though
we were solidly American, as much as you can be
when you live in a town of 822 people (now
944!) on the edge of an Idaho prairie bordered by
the Rockies and Hell’s Canyon, the deepest in North America—in
other words, in the middle of nowhere. We were so
in-the-middle-of-nowhere that the kids going to college would talk about
being “from the prairie” and everyone knew what it meant.
So we were American, and we were Catholic. We had
a religious formation to be proud of. How many ten-year-olds
nowadays know the Ten Commandments, the corporal and spiritual works
of mercy, the seven sacraments, the Rosary, the responses at
Mass, and the Creed? By heart? My Mom and Dad
gave the best they could—which was a lot—to all of
us. I had four wonderful sisters at the time, two
older and two younger. (Of course, I am sorry to
say that back then I did not realize they were
so wonderful.) My mom and dad made some “tactical” errors,
but their love more than made up for it. They
cared deeply about our education. As a cultural example, we
all had to take at least two years of piano
lessons starting in first grade, and then we could take
another instrument to our liking. (I took the alto saxophone.)
Back then I did not realize how spiritually
blessed I was. It was actually only a couple years
ago that I realized how much God had done for
me through my family. A retired military chaplain, Father Victor
Lustig, celebrated a daily “farmers’ Mass” at 6:30 A.M. so
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that the farmers could get to the fields on time.
My whole family went to this Mass, and I often
rode my bike there a bit beforehand, since a lot
of my friends went to the early Mass, and it
was always a race to get there first and be
one of the two altar-servers. Father Victor was also my
regular confessor : at first every two weeks, and then
my Mom decided we would go every week. (Yes, moms
have a lot of authority in the home!). As a
family we also prayed the Rosary every night on our
knees, my Dad with his arms resting on a chair-back,
my Mom up further toward the couch and monitoring the
family at the same time, telling us “Rachel, lead the
next mystery,” or “Yvonne, do you have an intention?” or
“Reuben, fold your hands,” or “Bridget, kneel straight,” or “Mary,
stop wiggling around.” Our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary
was not merely external; it was deep. Praying the rosary
certainly was not my personal highlight of the day. It
took too much time. I would rather have been playing
computer games or watching a movie or shooting hoops in
our shop. Still, daily Mass and Rosary had an effect
on me that will never leave. I found peace there.
It gave me a glimpse of happiness. We were constant,
never missing a single day of family Rosary and hardly
ever a daily Mass. The happiness I glimpsed never dimmed.
The Priesthood Trigger
Even so, I never wanted
to be a priest. Only when I met a Legionary
and realized that I wanted to be “like him” did
the priesthood start to seep in. Now that I am
a priest, I can calmly say that either I am
a Legionary priest, or I am not a priest. Of
course, once a priest, there’s no turning around, but my
entire vocation is Legionary, and I am proud of it.
Quite possibly, I would not have completed my formation in
other styles of priesthood: I find the strong community support
very helpful, and the Legionary charism fits perfectly with who
I am, even though it’s a challenge to live up
to.
The most influential and admired man in
my childhood after my dad was Father Victor. Of course,
my cousin John Stockton was a super-hero for me too,
but I never imagined reaching his level. I also looked
up to St. Mary’s parish priests, in particular Father Muha.
Nevertheless, and only God knows why he made me this
way, I never had the urge to be a priest
like them. They were holy and were constantly present in
my life, but God had other plans for me, just
as he has plans for each of us, if we
listen to him.
The Potluck Where I Met Robin Hood
and Little John
I do not remember dates
very well, but one February evening in 1993 we went
to a potluck at my friends’ house. A priest was
in town who belonged to a congregation called the Legionaries
of Christ, which had something or another to do with
some consecrated women who had been to my house a
year before. We were going to throw a party for
this priest and the seminarian who was with him. The
priest was a great guy, and so was the brother.
When I see somebody in full uniform, I think he
looks cool—or more than cool—and that is how I felt
when I saw Father Edward and Brother Ned—decked out in
full uniform—at the Wimers’ house. They belonged to something that
went beyond them, and they were proud of it.
Father Ed, as I called him, put on a video
of the Legion and its boarding school for boys thinking
about becoming priests: Mass, sacraments, Rosary, the mountains and lakes
of New Hampshire, soccer, every day (with complete, organized teams),
a band that played upbeat songs so I could play
my sax, skiing, sledding, ice-hockey in the winter on the
lake, swimming every day in the summer, and a challenging
academic life. What more could I ask for? Yet that
was not the main point: they were happy. When I
say happy, I do not mean they had fun once
in a while, and got to eat candy all the
time; I mean they were happy, in any situation. Why?
Why were they so happy, and yet I was not
as happy as they were?
I liked the video
and I liked Father Ed, but priesthood , well, no,
not really, it still was not an option.
When
they left that evening, I made Father Ed promise to
come to my house the next time they were in
town, and to play catch with me. He promised.
My family had been so impressed, that within a
week we had taken a tune and “metamorphosed” it. The
cartoon Robin Hood was always a family favorite, so out
came, “Father Ed and Brother Ned / Driving through the
U.S.” instead of “Robin Hood and Little John / Walking
through the forest.” I was so enthusiastic that I transformed
almost the entire song.
A Time to Play Catch
When Father Ed and Brother Ned arrived in April, we
sang the new song to them.
I had
not forgotten Father Ed’s promise to play catch with me,
so practically the first thing I blurted out when he
arrived at our house on the edge of town was,
“Father, are you ready to play catch?”
“Sure, do
you have a mitt I can use?”
I went
upstairs to my bedroom, got two mitts and a hardball,
and headed back downstairs to the living room. Father Ed
was still sitting in one of our rocking chairs in
clergyman and black suit.
“But Father, aren’t you going
to change?”
“No, I’ll do fine in this.”
Wow, a priest who not only wears his uniform, but
is also able to play catch in his uniform! And
he was a natural. Not to mention that his sport
was not baseball but ice hockey. I asked him to
pitch while I played catcher: he threw more strikes than
balls, and they stung. To top it off, he was
respectfully approachable and kept me glued to every word he
said.
Almost the Truth
“Reuben, what did you think
about the apostolic school (the boarding school for boys thinking
of the priesthood), the video I showed you last February?”
“It was awesome, Father! I really liked it, especially
all the sports, and the band.”
“Do you want
to go?”
Without thinking, it escaped, “Sure, Father, I’d
love to!” Then I thought of my parents, “But I
don’t think my Mom and Dad will let me. It’s
too far away.”
“Well, if you’re sure you want
to go, don’t worry about that; I’ll ask them.”
(I thought, “Great, I do not have to say anything.
Father Ed will say it for me.”)
I waited
a few minutes while he talked with my parents in
another room. The trio came back to the living room
(I remember exactly where I was: near the big window
with the window seat that looks onto North Maple Street).
My mom said, “Reuben, do you really want to be
a priest?”
“Uh, yeah!” was the enthusiastic answer I
gave, though I had totally forgotten about the “priesthood” aspect
of the apostolic school. I was so excited about the
apostolic school that I had forgotten its purpose, but I
had seen something in these Legionaries, and I wanted to
have what they had. God had played smart in my
life, slipping the worm on the hook so well that
I had no idea I was swallowing it. Without realizing
it, I was going to become part of the Robin
Hood song we had transformed.
Forever After?
How did
I get to where I am from there, eighteen years
later?
Our Lord used bait at first: I
ended up at the top of my class at the
apostolic school. I won every formation competition during my first
year there, and I began to develop some great friendships,
both with those who are now Legionary priests—Father Joseph Ramos,
Father Vito Crincoli, Father Thomas Murphy, Father Gregory Heslip, Father
Nathan Miller, Father Aaron Vinduska, among others—and with those who
found another path in life and continue to be great
friends. Because of my formation at home, though, I never
fell into a mere external conformity with my vocation. Thanks
be to God.
Chunk by chunk, our Lord began
to “create a new heart in me” (Ps. 51), helping
me to understand the gift of priesthood and live up
to its requirements. No lightning bolt from heaven put any
Harry Potter scar on my forehead or made me aware
of my priestly vocation, my mission to minister. No, what
God did was take the education my parents had given
me and launch it into wider seas in the Legion,
so that I gradually understood he wanted me to be
a priest. There was no specific moment, but there were
a lot of signs. What had been a slightly resented
family event—the Rosary—little by little became a relationship of love
with Mary, talking to her about her Son, my Savior
and Head of the Mystical Body. What had been daily
Mass and a chance to serve at the altar became
the spiritual heart of my day, pumping blood into all
I did. What had been a cool priest in uniform
now became a personal call and duty to live for
others. What had been mere coincidences in my life now
became more signposts on the road. Now I am here
because I believe firmly that God has led me here,
and I have merely tried to follow in his tracks,
the tracks of so many who have gone before me.
Sometimes he has lifted me up and carried me, but
I have never pulled back. Thanks be to God.
Of course, I missed home, like any good son, and
I missed girls (who would not!), but when I look
at the new heart created in me, I see that
my home is nearer than ever through the Eucharist we
all share, that I am as close to my mom
and dad as any of my sisters or my brother,
that I love my sisters and my brother more deeply
than I would have otherwise, and that the beauty and
love a woman provides and a man needs is present
in her Maker and his Mother and the spiritual needs
of so many people. “LORD, thou hast deceived me, and
I was deceived” (Jer. 20:7). Thanks be to God.
Reader, please pray that I and the others ordained with
me, before me, and after me, will stand firm in
this wonderful calling that we are unworthy to receive, so
that we may truly love the entire Mystical Body of
the Church, Christ himself, the Legion of Christ, and Regnum
Christi, giving our lives day in and day out. May
it please God.
FR REUBEN EDWARD NUXOLL was born in Cottonwood,
Idaho, on March 25, 1980. He entered the Legionaries of
Christ’s boarding high school for vocational discernment, and he entered
the novitiate in Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1997, making his first
profession in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1999. He studied two years
of humanities in Cheshire, Connecticut. For three years he worked
at the Legion’s territorial offices at New York and Georgia.
He earned a licentiate in philosophy in 2008 and a
bachelor’s in theology in 2011 from the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum
College in Rome. While in Rome he edited the English
edition of Sacerdos magazine and then worked at the Legion’s
general offices, especially helping with Fidelis International Institute for Business
Ethics and offering tours of Vatican City and Rome. He
is currently working at the territorial office of the Legion
of Christ in Santiago, Chile.
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