It may sound a bit pious, but I believe in the depths of my being that I have a “vocation,” a “call” from God to be a priest and to be that priest wherever God puts me. Most, maybe all, of my assignments as priest have not been in places that I would have chosen for myself. I feel like I was being “sent” there!
When I was ordained in 1970, I had spent my whole life in rural areas. I grew up in Rhodelia. When I decided to go to the seminary, I was sent to high school and two years of college in a rural setting outside the city of Louisville. We rarely saw the insides of Louisville during the six years that I was there. After that, I was sent to St. Meinrad Seminary in the countryside of southern Indiana. After twelve years of seminary formation “in the country” and hearing about “city life,” I had my heart set on being assigned to a city parish where I could take advantage of its nice restaurants, movie theatres and “things to do” that I had always heard about! Instead, I was sent to the seven-county home missions down along the Tennessee border. After ten years there, I was sent to Calvary, a small rural community outside of Lebanon, Kentucky. Finally, to my complete surprise and deep fear, I was finally called and sent to Louisville to be pastor of our Cathedral. After that I felt called to be a vocation director, a campus minister at Bellarmine University, a seminary department head, an international priest retreat director, a weekly columnist for The Record and finally a missionary in the Caribbean missions. I don’t think I really asked to do most of those things. It seems I was mysteriously called to do them. Most of them seemed to fall accidently into my lap.
I have always felt that God was behind every one of those assignments. I felt that they were the result of my being led to do them, or sent to do them, rather than something I initially thought of doing on my own.
When I was getting ready to retire, it occurred to me out of nowhere that maybe I could start a program for retired priests like myself who wanted to serve either in the missions of Alaska during the summer if they liked to fish or hunt or maybe in the missions of the Caribbean in the winter if they wanted to escape the cold winters up here in the United States. The problem was, I didn’t know anyone in the Alaskan missions or the Caribbean missions. Then one morning, as I was eating breakfast alone at the seminary, I looked up and there getting his breakfast was a visiting bishop from the Caribbean countries of Barbados and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We were the only ones in the cafeteria.
I left the cafeteria without introducing myself, turned around and went back, introduced myself and a few months later I was flying down to volunteer in his two Caribbean countries. It seemed like an accident on one hand and like I was being sent by a higher power on the other.
I made twelve trips altogether. I never had time to develop the option in the Alaskan Missions. Then COVID hit and the volcano in St. Vincent erupted causing me to have to quit and look for another ministry closer to home. I almost felt that I was being sent home for another purpose, but I didn’t know what it could be!
After fretting a couple of weeks about what to do next, I was tossing and turning one night when, all of a sudden, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I had the feeling that I was being sent back home to see what I could do for my own home parishes of St. Theresa and St. Mary Magdalen down in Meade County. Slowly, the dream of a new Family Life Center and Guest House to serve both communities came into focus during the following few months.
After that, I swore off any more “mission projects” until one day I was talking to Sister Stephen, one of our local Little Sisters of the Poor who is from Kenya. Before I knew it, I had committed to build a new church in Kenya in honor of her mother, an illiterate catechist, who instructed hundreds in the Catholic faith. When she grew old and could not walk the great distance to church, she dreamed of having a nice church in her village and did what she could to advance the idea. Maybe you read Her amazing story in The Record a few weeks ago. It will be dedicated next weekend and our own Father John Judie will represent me at that dedication.
Wrestling with today’s gospel text, I realized that I have been wrestling with the question of “what will I leave behind” when “my life is demanded of me” as the gospel today puts it. I have no children to leave behind. As the gospel put it, I have never desired to be “rich for my own good,” but “rich in want matters to God.” Here is what stood out in today’s gospel when I read it.
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.
What about you? What do you want to leave behind? What do you want your “legacy” to be? Are you more interested in storing up treasure for yourself or being rich in what matters to God? Your “legacy” cannot be built in a few days or months or years. It has to be built over a lifetime! A ‘legacy” is not about money. It’s about whether, at the end, you have lived for yourself or lived for others! For most of you, you have lived for your children! Your “legacy” is about how they will remember you! Will you be remembered as a pathetic hoarder of your gifts and talents or a generous sharer of your gifts and talents? You can start building your “legacy” now by turning outward toward others, rather than inward toward yourself! Don’t be like that “fool” that Jesus talked about in the gospel today who thought he could “take his precious stored-up wealth with him when he died,” rather than leaving something behind, rather than giving something back, so as to better the lives of those he left behind!
My friends! This is the bottom line! When it’s all said and done, will there be anyone to even care whether you lived or died? Yes, will there really be anyone to even care whether you lived or died? That's really the only legacy you can leave behind!
Speaking of leaving a legacy, I would like to leave you with the most challenging question I have ever read. I read it just a few weeks ago. It asked this question. “At the end of your life, what are the very last words you want someone to say to you?” Let me repeat that! “At the end of your life, what are the very last words you want someone to say to you?”
What you hear them say, for good or bad, will probably describe what your "legacy" will be!
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