Fr Bernard writes…
Sunday May 24th 7th Sunday of Easter 2020
We are coming to the final week of this Easter Season when we have been celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus and his promise of life after what we call death. This has been at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world reminding us of our own mortality. Last Thursday I received another reminder of mortality when Bishop Marcus sent an email notifying us of the death of Fr Michael Sullivan, a retired priest of the diocese. What made this slightly different from other such notifications was the fact that Michael was a classmate of mine throughout seminary. He had entered in 1960 and gone through the full 13 years of training. I was a late vocation, aged 12, entering the following year and only doing 12 years! There were 21 of us ordained from Ushaw College in 1973 and Michael is the 8th of our year to have died in that time. Fr Joe Knowles, another priest of our diocese died in 1990 as a result of an accident. There are now just three of us ordained for Leeds in 1973 and the other two are retired because of ill health. So mortality, my own included, is at the forefront of my mind. It is good to hear the last words of this Sunday’s gospel when Jesus says, “I am not in the world any longer, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.” That’s my prayer for Michael, and when the time comes, for myself, that he and I will go to the Father.
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