“I have to be rooted in prayer. I guess the bedrock, and when I look back to it has been this way for almost 40 years—although I guess I have really realized it and savored it over the last ten years—is prayer. The Passionist Community has challenged me to be a prayerful person. I think in terms of living in family or community, in terms of any success in ministry with the people of God, that I had to be rooted in prayer. The prayer again, it’s….Something you probably cannot use on the computer…even the divine office which I have just barely tolerated for the last 30 years, for the last eight or ten years has been very life-giving to me. And it is not just the method, it is in the context of others praying with me. We pray together. The mass has increased terrifically for me in terms of giving life the mass is probably the cornerstone of my spirituality today. And to be able to do that, I live in community with 14 others, and those 14 men challenged me in prayer, in the mass being together with them, not to be mediocre but to be the best that I can. And that is what I have needed. That is what has given me life.”

Fr. Richard Parks, CP, 5.23.08


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