It isn't often that you meet someone who has no agenda other than to make himself present to you, to celebrate your vocation with you, to affirm what God has called you to do, to journey with you through your moments, all without asking what he himself might be profiting from the mundaneness of this friendship. Surely all this seems like an ordinary comment to be making about someone. Unless he was a bishop, or perhaps, most reluctantly, a cardinal.
And yet, he had a deep knowing that his seemingly trivial presence in our lives would not have been for nothing. The sun cannot shine without melting ice, and it does so without even trying. His vocation as a priest, a bishop, and then a cardinal for the final six months of his life, was lived just by being present: to melt away our fears, our doubts, our uncertainties, our delusion, our hypocrisy, our complacency, our self-fixation.
As a bishop, he neither built an empire nor erected a monument for himself. In fact, one would be rather hard-pressed to find something of physical tangibility that he had left behind as a result of his life and ministry. Most of us remember him for simply being present to listen, to eat and drink, to smile, to talk; and yes, even to dance. And yet, in his perpetual absence now, how we wish he had left a physical token behind that would represent his continued presence to inspire us through life.
And yet, he had a deep knowing that his seemingly trivial presence in our lives would not have been for nothing. The sun cannot shine without melting ice, and it does so without even trying. His vocation as a priest, a bishop, and then a cardinal for the final six months of his life, was lived just by being present: to melt away our fears, our doubts, our uncertainties, our delusion, our hypocrisy, our complacency, our self-fixation.
As a bishop, he neither built an empire nor erected a monument for himself. In fact, one would be rather hard-pressed to find something of physical tangibility that he had left behind as a result of his life and ministry. Most of us remember him for simply being present to listen, to eat and drink, to smile, to talk; and yes, even to dance. And yet, in his perpetual absence now, how we wish he had left a physical token behind that would represent his continued presence to inspire us through life.
May our longing for the presence of his companionship throughout the remaining years of our lives henceforth remind us of our thirst for heaven. May we continue being inspired, by the parable that he was, to be present in the the lives of many others so that our eventual absence from their lives one day may cause them to reach for heaven. May we meet him all the days of our lives, in the company of the saints, at the table of the Eucharist. May he be rejoicing in the eternal bliss of heaven, worshipping with the angels and saints, and revelling in the eternal crown he has received in place of the red hat he never wore.
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Read the interview with Deacon Sherman about his friendship with the late Cornelius Cardinal Sim on Journey with Us.
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