This spring and summer gives me a chance to celebrate four anniversaries. I entered the Jesuits 35 years ago, in late August 1978. Ten years later, I was ordained to the priesthood. That’s 25 years on May 28. My final vows were professed 20 years ago, on May 31, 1993. And, in late August, I celebrate the 10th anniversary of successful surgery for a brain tumour.
I’m sure most of us reach milestones and wonder where the years went. We say that it seems just like yesterday. Well, the years do seem to have flown by and 35 years ago often seems like yesterday. But when I look back, I am amazed at the number of people, works, places, and situations with which I have been involved. I’ve learned so many skills and abilities and have experienced so much diversity in my life. I wonder how all of those experiences and encounters could fit into the life of one person.
And, hopefully, I’ll have another 35 years to engage with the world around me. Early on in my Jesuit life, a friend urged me to keep a diary. I opted not to. If I had kept account of 35 years of 365 days, I’m sure that I would have enough characters and events to write several trilogies.
How does one sum up all these years? The years have been richly blessed. Many experiences have been joyful and engaging. Just as many have been sad or challenging. There are some parts of my ministry from those years that I would just as soon forget – people or situations that were so challenging that I sometimes wondered how to get out of them. Yet, I know that they are the very situations that taught me so much and stretched me.
Being stretched is something I think of quite often as I reflect on the brain tumour, the gradual healing process, and the many ways that it has changed my life forever. Would I have chosen it? Certainly not! But I have never regretted it or wished that it had not happened. As a matter of fact, there are some days when I almost wish that I had the tumour earlier in my ordained ministry. I think that it would have made me a more effective priest and a more humble person.
As a Jesuit novice, I prayed with Ignatius’ First Principle and Foundation, where he invites us to pray for indifference and detachment (i.e., spiritual freedom). “On our own part we ought not to seek health rather than sickness, wealth rather than poverty, honour rather than dishonour, a long life rather than a short one.” It was only with the tumour that I more clearly understood what he meant. In understanding it, I realized what a liberating thing it is when you are free about your life. I wish that I knew that at the start of my life.
I’m sometimes asked what I have been most grateful for in a quarter century of priesthood. That’s easy. There are many areas of gratitude, but the most gratifying is what I see happening when someone reaches freedom because of what happens to them in a retreat, in the sacrament of reconciliation or in spiritual counselling. I think of the woman in confession who is able to finally let go of a long ago sin that has had power over her for years. Or, I remember the young man who is not comfortable in his own skin who finally finds the freedom to be himself. I recall the older woman who lets go of her frustration about a long ago dream not coming to fulfilment. There is the middle aged man who discovers the freedom to venture out in risk and tackle a new area that he knows will use his gifts. Seeing people reach freedom is beautiful
An image has stayed with me since I experienced the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius as a novice. Toward the end of the Exercises, Ignatius invites us to remember the many gifts and blessings we have received. Even as a 21 year old, I was struck by how many blessings I have received. I had the image of running around the track of a stadium and being struck by how the stands were filled with all the people who have been a part of my life. That stadium is even more crowded now at the age of 57. They better build a new one for my 50th anniversary of ordination!