He recalls the question of one of his fellow priests who asked: What do you plan to do after retirement? This sudden question caught him by surprise and left him embarrassed. He answered that according to the doctor's recommendation, if he takes care of himself in his seventies, he will in his eighties be able to briskly walk for about 9 years. Later he gave a hearty laugh and thought something was missing in this reply.
About a month ago he gave up an apartment in which he lived and moved to a joint retirement home prepared for by the diocese. Before the move, he tells the readers about his housekeeper who worked in the kitchen for 25 years. She told him that she was thankful for the opportunity to work doing the same thing every day for 25 years.
"Everyday I wake up thankful for the joy and happiness to do the same thing like a machine preparing three meals each day for an elderly priest which gives me great joy and fills me with gratitude. I am given a new day in the God's kingdom. How can I not be filled with joy." The priest on hearing these words felt that he was hit in the back of his head with a blow of a hammer.
Yes, priestly life in retirement is to get the strength to live the same 24 hours of each day in a new way in God's kingdom. What a great blessing filled with thankfulness to live in God's kingdom. When he looks back on his past fifty years of pastoral life, he is sorry for not feeling the joy, pleasure, and happiness of God's kingdom even though by saying the daily Mass daily, he was living this liturgically, condensing the life of Jesus and all that he came to give us.
Living his community parish life with his coworkers he was oblivious to the joy and happiness of living the kingdom of God with the parish community taken up with the duties of his office. Anyway, even if he didn't feel the joy of living God's kingdom in his ministry, now after retirement his plan is to live as his housekeeper expressed so clearly with joy. Each day will be to meditate on the life of Jesus through the daily sacrifice of the Mass and to realize each day as he wakes up that he is in the kingdom of God with all the sacrifices, happiness, joy, and thanksgiving of the Kingdom.
The priest has come to an understanding on the great gift he has received to live each day which is the same as yesterday but in the kingdom of God; grateful for the strength to be a part of the kingdom but now in faith. He has no idea how long he will be helping to build up this kingdom. It's his plan to live with gratitude for the joy of life.
Whenever we say the 'Our Father': "Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven" he prays that all of us experience the love, joy, happiness, and thanksgiving of the kingdom.
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