Every year at the grade school I attended, some of the students in the graduating class would write a creative essay to our “old teachers” for the memorial booklet about our “20th reunion” and what had come of everyone. Now, they typically had a habit of making anyone who was heading to the seminary high school out to be a priest in some fashion. I was given fairly high praise. They reported that I, unfortunately, could not attend the reunion as I had other duties that evening in, “…fulfilling his lifelong dream as Archbishop of Chicago.” Well, it’s 20 years now. So I’m not going to bother imagining what I’m apparently in for later in 2008. Instead, I think I’ll enjoy this time pre-episcopate unburdened by such worries. Once I get ordained and elevated to office, though, I’ll be certain to come back and listen to all your criticisms of me!
But if there was one thing which I would want to remind our Archbishop of before he moves on to whatever assignment is next for him when I take over his office, it would be asking him to be ever mindful of his fatherhood and the need to constantly strengthen that relationship to his children, perhaps all too often by way of efforts towards reconciliation with them for any ways in which they have felt harmed by the Church.
