Pope Paul II said, "to be a missioner a person must be a contemplative." When we studied at Maryknoll seminary, right from August 1942, it was stressed that we need a very deep intimate love-relationship with Christ in order to be a good priest and a missioner. One book recommended to us was Christ the Life of the Soul. This book stressed the need of following Christ's words - "He who abides in me and me in him, the same bears much fruit."

At our class's 40th anniversary at Maryknoll in 1991, Fr. Tom Golden was telling us that our big need was Centering Prayer. He passed out a very good one-page article on it. I suppose many of us by then had been growing in that direction. The same year, in September, I went to the Holy Land for the ten week Spirituality program, and again there was a strong pull by the Holy Spirit to this deep, intimate, abiding love union with God as the only way to receive the fullness of life. The Holy Spirit sent by the Father and the Son was drawing us to see our God as our ALL and the ALL of the ALL to whom we were sent to minister; and with our centering on God as the ALL of all of us there was a great feeling of having arrived at the most important "mission method" - a being lifted up by God into his very own DIVINE - HUMAN life, we together with the people we serve.

As Mother Theresa of Calcutta told us at the 1985 Eucharistic Congress in Nairobi: "Its easy to pray (in a contemplative way). After a busy day caring for the sick we always spend an hour with Christ in our chapel before retiring. All we need say is - LORD I know you're in me, and I know you love me; I'm also in you and I love You!" Then just be there with our God and our ALL and the ALL of all of us humans and Angels!

I will conclude with a sermon given by Bishop Egan before he took Cardinal O'Connor's place in New York. His words also show the power of contemplative love, union with God, and all people 'in, with and through him.' "This morning as you entered St. Patrick's cathedral you may have noticed across 5th Avenue an impressing collection of buildings - Rockefeller Center, in front of which is to be found a huge bronze statue of ATLAS struggling to hold the UNIVERSE on his shoulders. In the center, high over the chapel altar, you may have noticed another Globe, like Atlas' globe, symbolizing the UNIVERSE. It is in the left hand of the Virgin Mary, who has on her lap the child Jesus, upon whom her GAZE is fixed in peace and love. The Globe seems to be preoccupying Her not at all. She carried it securely but without strain. Two works of art both depicting how one might deal with the universe, the world, or if you will- life. In the one case the enterprise is an unremitting struggle. In the other, it is some how lost in a second effort far more important, that of looking upon one's God and loving that GOD."

Dr. Robert Schneider, who successfully treated me for Cancer over a period of two years, was much interested in contemplation; and one day he asked how do we hold ourselves on God after we're gotten away from the thoughts etc. about God. Some lines in Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation seemed to answer our question: that "we should look on God with a simple gaze which is perfect adoration" (or perfect adoring love). And the result of this deep intimate love union with our God enables us, and through us, many others to see God as our ALL or our everything. This is certainly the mission method that enables our other mission methods to bear much fruit for here and hereafter!

Then after our next fifty years in Christ's priesthood, it will be possible to say of us "Here was a man whose mind, heart and spirit were incandescent with the fire of a vision that transfigured his humanity and pointed his fellow human beings to the transforming energy and presence of Divine life in the World, among us here and now."

Too optimistic? (50 years, that is)? No, just practicalistic - after all, the laborers are still too few, and look at all the years of experience God gets from recycling us "oldies" back into gathering in the Harvest! (Mary, Mother of our priesthood, work on this with God - Amen!)

Jim's Ministry             Jim's Biography

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