Then I had a very great experience that I'll never forget. I was lying
on top of my bed one evening asking myself, "What am I going to
do?" Then suddenly I fell over the side of the bed onto my knees
and felt a great peace. I knew just what I wanted to do. I had been
fighting against becoming a priest for a long time, but now I felt very
happy and peaceful about the priesthood. It seemed that He had literally
cried out to me from out of the blue. I've often said it was like St.
Paul falling off his horse and changing his life. I know most people
get vocations gradually, but mine came in a moment that I'll never forget.
Though I had just been elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Tufts, I basically
decided to leave school to enter the priesthood.
The students were seventh and eighth graders. We were preparing them
for good high schools. And we were successful in getting a number of
them into BC High and a few of them to a good public high school like
Boston Latin. The numbers weren't large, but we still made a difference
for a lot of these "ghetto kids." I remember what one of them
said excitedly one day, "Hey, Father, look! The trees are all red."
He had never seen the leaves change before, because he had lived in
the inner city his whole life!
Working in field education at Weston College was a welcome change, because
being Director of Field Education at Weston College connected me with
the type of work I found natural after my experiences at Columbia Point.
But the faculty had not been too happy with me, because they didn't
want anybody to do anything but study. Yet we were the first of the
ten US Jesuit provinces to send people into Clinical Pastoral Education,
even though I never made it myself. Later on, of course, it would become
quite common.
At that point, I went into the Second Week of the Exercises, which is
the longest part, dealing with our ups and downs. I tried to show them
how they are following the path of Jesus, who had his own ups and downs.
My own experience had always been that I was living out that Second
Week through my various ministries. I remember the last time when I
did this seven or eight years ago, I said to the students, "Without
the cross, there is something lacking in your lives." And it was
just around that time that I developed a prostate problem, so I said
to the students, "It looks like I'm entering the Third Week."
Through all this, I was on a roll, and it was wonderful.
Due to death or sickness some
of these selected readings have been read by someone other than the
author. This page contains one such replacement.
