After our ordination at Fordham University Church, we spent some weeks at the theologians’ villa at Blue Ridge Summit. Then we went to Woodstock in order to finish our fourth year theology.
The first thing I did when we arrived at Woodstock was to visit Father Fisher, my spiritual father. He asked me, “How are you?”, “I am now ready to die,” I answered “What makes you so ready to die/” he asked. ” All my life I have wanted to say Mass,” I said. “Now that I have said Mass, I am ready to die”.
He smiled and said: “You will not die yet; you will work for forty more years.” He said this fifty nine years ago. Father Fisher was not a prophet. But he was a holy man and a wise counselor.
I spent most of these fifty-nine years teaching philosophy. Once. an interviewer asked me: “Could you tell me why you chose to devote your life to philosophy?” “I did not chose philosophy”, I said. I was given an assignment to teach philosophy. So I only fulfilled my assignment.” “Do you mean to say,” the interviewer asked, “that you would not have taught philosophy if you had not perceived an assignment to do so?”. “Yes.” I answered. “How horrible! ” she said.
Sometimes, we tend to look at work done under obedience as somehow unreal and insincere. But Michelangelo painted the Sistine chapel in obedience to the Pope’s request and his paintings were certainly real and sincere. Jesuits who live under obedience are not geniuses like Michelangelo. But we strive to be real and sincere.
Dear Father Provincial, you have just begun to fulfill an assignment which you did not choose. It was chosen for you by Jesus. When we accept an assignment out of obedience to Jesus it becomes our charism for his Mystical Body. Jesus is the head of his Mystical Body.
The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Mystical Body. Some medieval theologians used to say somewhat quaintly that Mary is the neck of the Mystical body. Because when graces from the head are scattered throughout the body they have to pass through MARY. So, if there are days of storm and rain we can always, like Saint Bernard, “Look to the Star, call on Mary: Respice stellam, voca Mariam.” And we are always reassured by St. Stanislaus Kotska, that the mother of God is my mother, “Mater Dei est mater mea.”
Ferriols, R. S.J. (2013, December) Anniversary Message on the 59th Year of My Priesthood, Windhover, 4, 27.
