Not long ago I read the story of Randy Pausch, the young college professor with terminal cancer who gave the inspiring graduation talk following the final term he taught. As I reflected on his words, I asked myself what my last sermon might sound like. I immediately realized, of course, that I could never plan such a talk, even though I had almost fifty years of priesthood and countless sermons and homilies to look back on.

Still, any sermon could end up being my last if God chooses to call me at any moment, so perhaps it is not so foolish to pause and think what I might hope to say at this moment if it were my last.

As I think back, I recall three changes that influenced my spiritual life most deeply. The first happened a few years after I was ordained. I was temporarily assigned to a parish in which one of my tasks was to substitute once a week for a hospital chaplain. I felt I had little more to offer than pious platitudes about God’s will or heaven, so I found it hard to talk to people who were dying.

One afternoon I was asked to visit a woman who was dying. As her family prayed, I noticed a trace of disdain in her adult son’s eyes every time he looked at me. When I left the room, I felt a deep sense of failure and anger at my inability to fulfill the task I saw as mine. Walking along the hospital corridor, I kept asking myself what I should have said. Suddenly (I can still see the moment in my mind), I “heard” in my mind the words, “You had nothing to say.” In that moment I realized that all that was required of me was to be there. My mere presence was the testimony, the assurance, that Christ was there. My words were useless; my individuality had nothing to offer. I was there simply as the sign, the sacrament, of Christ’s presence. Suddenly the burden lifted, and my whole notion of what being a priest meant changed.

In baptism we say that “we put on Christ.” We know the Golden Rule as “Do unto others what you would wish others to do unto you.” But that moment in the hospital made me realize that the truly Christian version is “Be unto others as you wish others to be unto you.” We believe that being baptized into Christ makes us a “priestly people,” and my experience long ago fulfills that idea: The most important thing we can do is to be there for others in their pain or loss or loneliness. The only necessary action I did in that hospital room that day was walk in the door; after that, “I” was helpless; only Christ could act. That is the priesthood we all share if we are one with Christ.

My calling as a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer led to my working several years in the Congregation’s international government. This was the second change that profoundly influenced my spiritual life.

One of my new responsibilities was to visit Redemptorist communities around the world. I met with thousands of priests, sisters, brothers, and laypeople around the globe who were giving their lives to care for the spiritual and physical needs of so many people. The pictures and videos of the recent earthquake in Haiti and the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia show places I’ve actually seen and heard and smelled. (It’s even more challenging to live it than to smell it.)