I was born on the first anniversary of the 1929 crash. My father was still in college and my mother, until I was born, was a school teacher. Catholic school. We lived with my grandparents and three uncles and three aunts. All of us on my mail-carrier gramps’ salary. We were hungry, all the time.

Now, my easily fractured bones show it. And maybe my always alert appetite, too. Yet, during seven decades of Jesuit life, I have managed to do the many different things I was assigned to do. In the course of these tasks, I’ve spent time on all the continents, often enough in places where there were more monkeys than people or only a few Jesuits among a massive population.

And it has been a splendid series of decades. Now, at ninety-four, I have sent to the publisher, corrected and polished, the last book I will write. Becoming the Easter People will help people use a college-sized spiral notebook to pray about already living a life that is to stretch out into eternity—with some pretty dramatic changes shown to us by what we know of Jesus’ forty days of visiting, talking, and preparing a breakfast on the  shore for His friends.

Enough already?  No. The day the book finally went to the publisher, I knew I would try a blog and here it is. I have petitioned our Lord, “May I offer this to You? It’s what I do.”  God clearly said Yes! by giving me a tech-savvy Jesuit brother to help me, without whom I could have gotten no further than turning on the computer.

Well, one thing I have experienced through these years: God gives us the graces and gifts we need when and as we need them.  And He does a lot of things. Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!