Oops, the date in #76 should have been the 29th!
Bishop James Walsh
James Walsh was born on this date in 1891. He lived for 90 ears, 40 of them as a Maryknoll missionary in China, and the last 12 of these years in prison. Bishop Walsh wrote of how; in his early years in China, his heart was captured by his flock.
I saw them in the rice field. I have lavished admiration and affection on every special object of God’s creation, but I thought I had never even scratched the surface of love before, as I felt the fiery surge that came to me now. It was romance, if you will. “I choose you,” sang in my heart as I looked at them. They were a perfect picture of the underprivileged soul.
I said to myself, “I choose you and with you, the countless millions of God’s children like you; men forgotten and despised; people white, black and brown; souls impoverished and abandoned. I choose you and I dedicate myself to you, and I ask no other privilege but to devote the energies of my soul to such as you.”
For in this sudden revelation shines an incarnation of my life ideal: I am a missioner with a vocation that has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. “Shine on farmer boy, a symbol to me of the thousand-million like you who drew the Son of God from heaven to smooth and bless your weary anxieties and your puzzled brows.”
Do not let me forget that vision, but stay by me, and preside over my dreams.