God calls some people in the Bible to assignments not of their own choosing. Take Jonah. God called him to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. Instead, Jonah booked passage on a cruise ship bound for Tarshish. It took three days in the belly of a great fish to convince Jonah to cooperate with God’s plan.
Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033-1109) accepted a call to work unsuited to his own inclinations. He preferred the relative obscurity of monastic life, where he could think, write and pray. The highly visible job as archbishop of Canterbury didn’t interest him. He had no great aspiration to mediate disputes between kings and popes or intervene with priests whose lives had gone off the rails. He vigorously resisted his appointment and even had to be dragged to the swearing-in ceremony. The bishop’s staff signifying his pastoral office had to be forced into his clenched fist.
Anselm finally acquiesced, stating his terms for acceptance, including the recovery of prayer and Scripture meditation as matters of first priority. He ably led the church and turned out an endless supply of fresh theological and philosophical insights. While living in exile for offending King William II, he wrote one of his lasting contributions, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man). It’s a deep dive into the meaning of the cross, which he interpreted as Jesus’s sacrifice that paid humanity’s sinful debt with God.
Anselm rose to become one of the most erudite scholars and original thinkers of the Middle Ages. His famous words, “I believe in order to understand,” are reflected in one of his prayers from the Proslogion: