October 25, The Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Allow me to let you in on a little secret, when I grow up I want to be just like Father Jim Willig. Some of you may recognize this name. Father Jim was a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati who died prematurely of renal cell cancer at the age of fifty. He passed away in 2001. Father Jim was much beloved in the Archdiocese for his faith, dedication to the Church and for his outreach to the faithful of all ages. At the time of his death, he was pastor of former Saints Peter and Paul Parish in Reading.
Father Jim began a non-profit media ministry known as Heart To Heart and offered a Sunday Gospel lecture series entitled Lunch and Evening With The Lord. As he struggled with his cancer illness, he committed to the following goals: to deepen his love for God, to assist others in loving God, and to love others more deeply. As he approached death, he authored the book Lessons Form The School Of Suffering. He supported the Jesuit Spiritual Center at Milford for years, and in remembrance, the center has a small chapel dedicated to him called the Willig Chapel. The local media honored him at the time of his passing with various tributes.
In his last years of life, I met Father Jim at St. Joseph Parish in Cincinnati’s west end where he was a guest presider one Sunday. He was a warm and welcoming man which offered me strong evidence of what others have commented about him. Shortly after this, The Cincinnati Enquire ran an article about the Lenten Season around Ash Wednesday of that year. With this article was a photo of Father Jim Willig with a big smile, holding in his hand a fish sandwich the size of a McDonald’s double quarter pounder with cheese.
As we grow and mature, we develop our own individual personalities, views of life, and a general code for living. This is normal and healthy. At the same time, God is always calling us forth to grow and stretch ourselves to be new persons. To bring this about, God introduces individuals into our lives, personally or through the media, who we can admire and say, “I would like to be like Mr. X or Mrs. X.” Instead of being stuck in our ways and views, it is good to reach for those “stars” placed before us calling us to be a new creation in Christ.
I hope we all have those heroes and wisdom figures which inspire us, those special people God has put into our lives calling us to greater faith and awareness. Whatever age we might be, young or more advanced in years, not hinder us from saying, “when I grow up, I wish to be like ___” who God has placed into our lives as an example for us.