Those letters M.H.M., after my name, stand for Mill Hill Missionaries, the Catholic Society with whom I trained and was ordained to the priesthood. Science studies at University College, Cork, preceded my appointment to work in teaching in Northern Pakistan...the North-West Frontier Territory and all that Kipling.
When I came to work in Liverpool Archdiocese, the land of my birth, I was delighted to be given, in addition to my parish work, the task of promoting overseas mission work in the "home" church. For a few weeks each year I can visit mission lands in Africa and Asia, where material poverty is still allied with strength of Faith. I believe that I return enriched by the experience and, hopefully, able to project a wider vision of the Gospel message.
Devotees of Rugby League will appreciate that, as I was born in Saint Helens, where my father was prominent in Rugby Union circles, my appointment to St. Patrick's here in Wigan, was a truly missionary experience. That was just over two years ago.
Throughout our lives, surely, our Father slowly forms us into what He wants us to be...for His own purposes. It reminds me of the inscription above the door of a Liverpool library which read: "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man and writing an exact man (Bacon)". A local wag (there are many in Liverpool) had written beneath (Bacon) "maketh a fat man."
Under God's guidance may you, too, find fulfilment and happiness.
God Bless!
Father Bill.
Way back in 1981 (I think it was), my Christmas mail was abused by an intrusive Sinclair computer called Bert, which insisted on adding its own greetings to the ones I was sending out. It warned, "we are taking over" ... and when I look at the numerous ways in
which I can now be contacted (most of them computer driven) it obviously knew what it was talking about.
And so, fearfully, we approach the brave new Millenium. I can't help recalling that in the early days of THIS millenium (1066 and all that) a certain English king got an arrow in his eye (I love Ken Dodd's suggestion "Try blinking, 'Arold, it may work its way out!") and wonder which of our infernal creations will eventually give US one in the eye. I already have an industrial dispute with a Liverpool convent answerphone which ends its taped message, "Goodbye and God bless you". Blessing people happens to be part of my professional activity and I see redundancy looming if machines start dishing out blessings to all and sundry.
It has been a curate's egg of a year...not really fit to put before an eminent P.P. For what seemed like endless weeks early on, I had the dreaded 'flu: being a novice pensioner I hadn't used my entitlement to a jab, and I lived, just about, to regret it. Older and wiser now, and duly jabbed, I am facing even the rains and storms of the present winter with more confidence. Unfortunately I do not seem to have caught up on my workload again since those harrowing weeks.
For most of 1999, I waited and waited for the go-ahead on the major re-ordering plans I had worked out for Saint Patrick's church. Eventually the workmen moved in in September and we closed the church for almost three months. Unable to hear confession I had to ban sinning throughout the parish, as well as all unneccessary births, marriages and deaths. The Lord co-operated to an extraordinary degree! It was most nerve-wracking to watch the old place being torn to pieces around countless miles of scaffolding, but the alterations were finally completed and we moved back into the building on the first Sunday of Advent. I am delighted with the results and, more importantly, the parishioners agree that they still have the old Saint Pat's ... but more beautiful than ever. Now we are busy paying the bills and hoping that Jeffrey (Lord) Archer doesn't demand back his kind donation to our fund.
Having missed out in 1998, I resolved to have a holiday in '99 and to take up my old custom of visiting the missions for that purpose. Normally I would not go to the tropics in mid-summer, but did go to the Phillipines in July. I chose the date so that I could attend a special event out there. Whilst our own too-materialistic communities are failing to provide priests even for our own people, some of the mission territories are now so mature that they can themselves begin to take up mission work. So in July I saw the first Fillipino priest ordained as a Mill Hill Missionary out in San Jose in Antique. Father Rex is appointed to work in Pakistan, my own first love as a mission, so I was doubly pleased to be there. Mind you, I think I'm going to have to make some concessions to old age in future: I found the heat and humidity overpowering and it took me a full week to get over the jet-lag on my return. The old joints too are becoming arthritic and are cramping my style. 2000 is again a Holy Year but NO! I am not planning to bike it to Rome as I did fifty years ago.
I guess I can do just as well praying to God here in Wigan ... thanking Him for a million blessings in the past Millenium and asking for 2000 blessings for you this special Christmas and New Year. And let's pray together, though we may be far apart, for a change in the hearts of men (and women too!) so that our sad little world may become a fairer place, more welcoming to the Babe of Bethlehem and more conformed to His ways.
May God Bless you and keep you in His care.
Father Bill.
Everyone remembers, so they say, where they were and what they were doing when they heard of the death of President John Kennedy. It was the morning papers, delivered to the breakfast table in Pakistan, which brought the news to us ... and provoked frenzied discussion as to the whys and wherefores and international consequences and all sorts of speculation about matters in which we were quite incompetent. Then in came Father White, aged 82 at the time, straight from the chapel with his usual vague and prayerful look about him. He heard the news simultaneously from five excited voices. He was so shocked that he delayed his Grace before meals to intone, "May God rest his soul! What's for breakfast?" ... which was, I suppose, the most practical and sensible thing said that morning.
But lately, to be honest, I have more frequently recalled the beginning rather than the end of Camelot (editors note: Camelot was the name given to the Kennedy entourage). Wasn't it in his inaugural speech that the President rallied his nation with the words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country!"? THIS memory is prompted by a vision which has haunted me of late. I seem to see an accusing face and a pointing finger, just like those posters of World War 1 which bore the words "Your country needs YOU". But in my dream the words are, "What are you doing for people with ingrowing toe-nails?". And I break out in a cold sweat dear reader, because I have to admit that I am doing precisely nothing ... zero ... zilch ... for that portion of my fellow men who are so afflicted. I must stress that I am not short of compassion for anyone in pain, wherever in the anatomy the trouble is seated, but I guess that true, personal involvement with the ingrowing problem is more likely to be felt by a fellow-sufferer or a chiropodist. My main work is with the inner man rather than with the ingrowing one and, though my own feet could hardly be described as "things of beauty to be enjoyed forever", I am advised that corns and bunions are as nothing compared with the agony of the aforesaid toenails. So my advice to a complainant of this particular ilk is likely to be, "Offer it up to God in reparation for a sinful world, and keep taking the paracetomol" ... which, I admit, does not sound very sympathetic.
By now, dear and persistant reader, you are probably asking yourself, "What is the man rambling on about now?", so I had better explain. It is a symptom of modern life that members of the sadly declining caring professions (priests, doctors, Tony Blair, nurses, William Hague, nannies etc., etc.) are being constantly bombarded with plaints and complaints of the "Wot about the workers?" variety. Truly we have to open our hearts to all of mankind and particularly to the disadvantaged, as Jesus himself did, but my heart does also bleed for the poor postman who daily delivers a weighty bundle of mail demanding my concern for a vast variety of people who are convinced that they are being marginalised simply because I feel the need to lay my head upon my pillow for a few hours out of every 24.
I do believe that a parish is meant to be a caring community and that it is shameful if anybody is excluded from OUR concern. But there are other members of the parish community who can better empathise with those in need than I can, if only because they have themselves borne trials and tribulations from which the good Lord has so far spared me. Or should I seek infection with everything from beri-beri to leprosy just so that I can really share with, and care for, those who cry out for my help? It seems to me that every Christian, through the normal experiences of life, gains an insight into some special needs, and that insight makes them ideal carers for those in need. I must search around for twelve apostles or maybe even "seventy two others", as the Lord did, as I am sure that we could be a really Christian community if we tried. And hopefully the Lord will understand if he asks me "When I needed a neighbour were you there, were you there?" and I can only respond, "Well not exactly, but I did make sure that Mrs Motherly WAS there".
May God bless you and keep you in His care.
Father Bill
This hopeful thought is inspired by a recent e-mail to our website from across the wide, western ocean, which detailed the concern felt in the archdiocese of Edmonton, Canada, as the number of priests available to serve the Catholics of the archdiocese declines year by year. Similar concerns are felt in many dioceses, including our own, throughout Europe and North America, mirroring, perhaps, the dilemma felt in past years in other traditionally Catholic areas of the world. It seems to me that we are, maybe, generating our own anxiety by worrying too much about the survival of a particular way of religious life to which we have become accustomed. After all, if we had a million priests and built a million and one parish churches, we would have created a "shortage of priests" by our present standards. Hereabouts we are seeing parishes being paired or mutliplied under the pastoral care of one priest (or maybe a couple of priests). Our people bemoan the loss of "their" priest or of "their" parish, though, in truth, it was for "them" to provide the priests they need. Priests do not grow on trees but arise from devout, sacrificing communities of fervent believers.
As a missionary I have seen such communities ... some very tiny ... which not only survive but thrive in far worse circumstances than ours. It is so moving to find such groups, maybe in high mountain valleys, desperately poor by worldly standards, having never seen a priest for years yet still clinging to their old Faith and passing it on to their upcoming generations. And why do we, priests, find onerous the task of serving a couple of thousand souls when some of our brothers in Holy Orders cope with twenty or thirty thousand? Perhaps Our Lord wants us to re-read the account of the feeding of the five thousand and to think again WHO can really cope with that sort of problem.
I treasure the memory of some time I spent in a small village on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. The village was very poor but it was the centre of a mission "parish" with thirty-odd oustations for the one priest to serve. Many in the Sunday congregation in the village walked five miles to attend Mass. To make their effort worthwhile they demanded a service lasting at least two hours: they then prepared a lunch and had catechetical sessions together before trekking home again in the dusk. Meanwhile the more remote outstations were having their own services and events, without the assistance of a priest: he would, likely, come to them only once in several months with Mass and Sacraments. Did their faith wilt under such deprivation? Rather not, I would say. In some larger settlements the men would gather in their spare time, and chip away, with simple tools, at lumps of rock, squaring them and cementing them into place as the foundations and walls of a church ... "ready for the day when we can have a priest of our own". And will they ever get such a priest? Hopefully, yes. For the local seminaries are having to extend their accommodation constantly to cope with the numbers of applicants ... many from similar, remote villages. But it will take a long time and much financial support from the Society of Saint Peter Apostle throughout the world to provide what we, I'm afraid, have taken for granted over these recent years. Many of the young aspirants have such poor basic education. Truly Faith does prosper in adversity!
On the way to Emmaus the disciples had "downcast" faces ... as we, too, often have in these hard times. But the realisation that their Lord was again alive restored their trust, their love, and their hope. Cope with Good Friday and Holy Saturday and celebrate, as ever, the joy and promise of Easter Day. HAPPY EASTER.
It's a grand 'perk' of my membership of a missionary society that I can go to many different parts of our world (especially the less-developed parts) and still find a place among friends and old colleagues to lay my weary head at nights. One land which constantly calls me back is the Phillipines.
Sadly, those islands in the Pacific too often receive a bad reputation through our media...by tales of paedophilia, deep and lasting poverty and wars and kidnappings in the southern areas. I spend as little time as possible in the vast metropolis, Manila, which endures most of the disadvantages of 3rd world cities, and find my joy in the simpler life of the people of lesser and poorer islands. On Panay, I head for the west coastal region, the Western Visayas, the province of Antique. There the palm-fringed beaches face the South China Sea and are primarily the home of fishing people. Perhaps it is the everlasting chore of scrounging a living from the reluctant sea, or maybe the danger of typhoons and tidal waves, or simply the injustice of hard work at sea or in the rice fields to meet the demands of greedy landlords; the truth I love is that the people have a steady, lasting faith in God and a prayerful devotion to Him. I am put to shame, but, at the same time refreshed by the hours I can spend among them. You may, indeed, recall how, a few years ago, the country was so nearly brought to its knees in the latter days of the presidency of the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. Corruption and brutality were rife until the people and a small section of the army eventually rebelled. At the height of the crisis, Marcos ordered the rest of the army onto the streets, with tanks and big guns to subdue the people. What did they do? They stood before the tanks, praying together and stuffing flowers down the barrells of the guns even while Marcos was screaming orders that the tanks should run them over. Eventually the army returned to barracks, Marcos fled the country and the new president went on TV to ask the people to pray for peace and prosperity in the new era. Would that happen in any other country?
And now I am remembering a particular evening when, in the tropical darkness, I went for a stroll in the garden of the house where I was staying. Two voices greeted me from the gloom under a clump of trees and I paused to chat. They were a couple of young men ( we couldn't see one another, but we could talk and they could dream) and both were embarked on the long course of training which might end in ordination into the priesthood. I knew they would have to overcome many difficulties...not least in finding the money to live throughout the training course...so I did my best to encourage them. One, I know, did not eventually reach his goal: his mother was dying of TB and he, himself had the disease. I'll call him Sonny. That was not his name but they do tend to have strange names out there. We talked a long time that night..about love of God, the ills of the world, and, as I said, about our dreams.
Some days later I was going to board the plane for my return to England whan a parcel was put into my hands. Via various other hands it had come from Sonny, a going away present . Pasted onto a bit of hard-board, and varnished, it was a print of that story Footprints . I'd read it before and you probably know it, too, but it is one worth telling:
One night a man had a dream. He dreamt that he was on a seashore and looking back at the tracks his feet had left in the damp sand. He realised that the tracks were a pattern of his life up to that moment. Sometimes there were just the marks of his own feet, but at other times there were the prints of the Lord, walking beside him. As he studied the tracks he recognised that the parts with only the one set of prints were actually the most difficult, critical times of his life. and so he rebuked the Lord: "Why did you leave me to walk alone just when I need you most?" But the Lord answered very, very gently: "My son, I never abandoned you, and I never will, for I love you dearly. At the times when you see only the one set of prints, they were not yours, but Mine. You see, at those times I was carrying you on my shoulders "!"
Somehow, sadly, in the disruptions of my life since then, I seem to have lost Sonny's gift, though I will never forget his memory and thoughtfulness. But I do hope that he still kept a print of it for himself. I have a feeling that he and his friends probably have nore need of its reassurances than I do. Life is REALLY tough out there.
May God bless you all and keep you in His care
Father Bill.
He was just a lad of 9 years, one of the disabled group we accompanied on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the south of France. We used to travel there on a Jumbulance ... a beautiful, custom-built coach, equipped with beds, aircraft-style cooking facilities and everything else needed for the safe and comfortable transport of the very sick and handicapped on a thousand mile journey. I had been privileged to make many such trips, helping as best I could through my priesthood and muscle, so I was not unacquainted with suffering and handicaps. But young Mark's plight was the worst I had ever known. From birth he had suffered from cerebral palsy, from total blindness and from total lack of hearing. His thin legs had grown twisted around one another and they said he was to have them broken on his return from the trip so that they would still be able to dress him. Now Lourdes is a lovely place and the music and activities and religious services are unforgettable, but when I was allotted the task of trundling Mark around in his wheelchair, I admit that I couldn't quite see the point. He could neither see nor hear any of the beauty around him. His normal life was in a home where he was well cared for and loved.
Moreover he was quite uncooperative. He had to be strapped into his chair, of course, for safety, but would wriggle his way out of the straps and flop over the arm of the chair until his hand and arm rested on the wheel, wearing holes in his sleeve and scorching his fingers. There was a long, steep hill between the religious sites and the hostel in which we stayed. We called it Cardiac Hill for painful reasons. At the foot of the hill I stopped to secure the child again in his straps, fearful that I might not make it to the top if he managed to perform his usual trick and apply friction to the wheel. I started the long push: Mark started his bid for freedom. My muttered words were not nice, and I was glad that he couldn't hear them! About halfway up Cardiac, Mark triumphed. I couldn't stop to readjust the straps lest the chair rolled back down, so I tried to push even harder. I think Isaac Newton must have known a lad like Mark when he arranged that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". So I was cussin' both Newton and Mark as the sweat rolled from my brow. And then Mark began to laugh! Maybe Newton was laughing, too, but I couldn't hear him, so it didn't matter. And then I remembered Simon of Cyrene. Young Mark's cross was heavy indeed: suddenly it did not seem such a big deal to help him carry it. If, blind and deaf as he was, he had no pleasure in life apart from feeling that wheel go round, why should I complain? We reached the top of the hill and I was richer in the understanding that "however great the problem one can always do something to help".
That night, after we had put him to bed, Mark began to scream and to tear at the side of his face. Though he was unable to tell us what was wrong, he was obviously in pain and it was a relief for us all when someone recalled that he sometimes suffered from severe earache. Evie, the nurse, was summoned and she prepared a painkiller and sleeping draught, but she had to put him on her knee and hold his nose to make him swallow the mixture. I confess I thought she was being a bit brutal and the boy's arms were flailing around. Now I hope that Evie has not got a PC ... or that, perhaps, she will not mind my describing her as a well-endowed young lady. Mark's right hand suddenly made contact with her breast ... and stopped there! A smile came over his face, his thumb went into his mouth and he drifted off into blissful sleep. I only occasionally worry about what he dreamed of that night!
Perhaps it was inevitable that the next night, when he was put to bed, Mark went into his screaming routine again. Evie was out with another patient, but this time I knew what to do. The mixture was already prepared so I got the child on my knee, held his nose and got the medicine down. He flailed around ... his hand hit my chest ... it went up and down and side to side ... and he screamed louder than ever! Mark had taught me lesson number two. It IS always possible to be helpful in a crisis, but often a single person has not got ALL the answers. Sometimes one has not got what it takes!
A couple of years later I was sad to hear that young Mark had died. I WAS sad until I realised that all the poor lad's suffering was in that tortured body and that our merciful God had called to Himself a spirit with no disability or pain ... a spirit untouched by the world's evils, and untouched by harm. It wasn't a REsurrection, of course, but a coming to Life in a most wonderful way.
Be full of hope and have a blessed Easter!
Father Bill
It's Holy Week again. Day by day we are following the Stations of the Cross ... the traditional meditation in which we follow the steps of the Lord's Passion and Death. We come again to the 5th Station and I remember St. Mark's Gospel description of how Simon of Cyrene was pressed into service to assist Our Lord, burdened under the weight of the cross. And yet again, as happens every year, my memory is jogged back to that other Mark and the stark lessons he taught me all those years ago.
He was just a lad of 9 years, one of the disabled group we accompanied on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the south of France. We used to travel there on a Jumbulance ... a beautiful, custom-built coach, equipped with beds, aircraft-style cooking facilities and everything else needed for the safe and comfortable transport of the very sick and handicapped on a thousand mile journey. I had been privileged to make many such trips, helping as best I could through my priesthood and muscle, so I was not unacquainted with suffering and handicaps. But young Mark's plight was the worst I had ever known. From birth he had suffered from cerebral palsy, from total blindness and from total lack of hearing. His thin legs had grown twisted around one another and they said he was to have them broken on his return from the trip so that they would still be able to dress him. Now Lourdes is a lovely place and the music and activities and religious services are unforgettable, but when I was allotted the task of trundling Mark around in his wheelchair, I admit that I couldn't quite see the point. He could neither see nor hear any of the beauty around him. His normal life was in a home where he was well cared for and loved.
Moreover he was quite uncooperative. He had to be strapped into his chair, of course, for safety, but would wriggle his way out of the straps and flop over the arm of the chair until his hand and arm rested on the wheel, wearing holes in his sleeve and scorching his fingers. There was a long, steep hill between the religious sites and the hostel in which we stayed. We called it Cardiac Hill for painful reasons. At the foot of the hill I stopped to secure the child again in his straps, fearful that I might not make it to the top if he managed to perform his usual trick and apply friction to the wheel. I started the long push: Mark started his bid for freedom. My muttered words were not nice, and I was glad that he couldn't hear them! About halfway up Cardiac, Mark triumphed. I couldn't stop to readjust the straps lest the chair rolled back down, so I tried to push even harder. I think Isaac Newton must have known a lad like Mark when he arranged that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". So I was cussin' both Newton and Mark as the sweat rolled from my brow. And then Mark began to laugh! Maybe Newton was laughing, too, but I couldn't hear him, so it didn't matter. And then I remembered Simon of Cyrene. Young Mark's cross was heavy indeed: suddenly it did not seem such a big deal to help him carry it. If, blind and deaf as he was, he had no pleasure in life apart from feeling that wheel go round, why should I complain? We reached the top of the hill and I was richer in the understanding that "however great the problem one can always do something to help".
That night, after we had put him to bed, Mark began to scream and to tear at the side of his face. Though he was unable to tell us what was wrong, he was obviously in pain and it was a relief for us all when someone recalled that he sometimes suffered from severe earache. Evie, the nurse, was summoned and she prepared a painkiller and sleeping draught, but she had to put him on her knee and hold his nose to make him swallow the mixture. I confess I thought she was being a bit brutal and the boy's arms were flailing around. Now I hope that Evie has not got a PC ... or that, perhaps, she will not mind my describing her as a well-endowed young lady. Mark's right hand suddenly made contact with her breast ... and stopped there! A smile came over his face, his thumb went into his mouth and he drifted off into blissful sleep. I only occasionally worry about what he dreamed of that night!
Perhaps it was inevitable that the next night, when he was put to bed, Mark went into his screaming routine again. Evie was out with another patient, but this time I knew what to do. The mixture was already prepared so I got the child on my knee, held his nose and got the medicine down. He flailed around ... his hand hit my chest ... it went up and down and side to side ... and he screamed louder than ever! Mark had taught me lesson number two. It IS always possible to be helpful in a crisis, but often a single person has not got ALL the answers. Sometimes one has not got what it takes!
A couple of years later I was sad to hear that young Mark had died. I WAS sad until I realised that all the poor lad's suffering was in that tortured body and that our merciful God had called to Himself a spirit with no disability or pain ... a spirit untouched by the world's evils, and untouched by harm. It wasn't a REsurrection, of course, but a coming to Life in a most wonderful way.
Be full of hope and have a blessed Easter! Return to Father Bills page.