The Road to Red

I’m watching the consistory in Rome, where my bishop, Timothy Dolan, has just been elevated to cardinal. The Holy Father spoke of service and sacrifice, and the blood red of the cardinals as real blood sacrifice. Pray for them, as they are called to be shepherds and models of integrity.

In A People of Hope, now-Cardinal Dolan’s interview book by John Allen, the new cardinal reflects:

My years at the North American College were a great boon to my spiritual life … Never ever wanting to be a hypocrite, and never wanting to tell anybody to do something that I wasn’t doing myself, having responsibility for the spiritual progress of the seminarians made me a better guy. When I talked to them about prayer, when I talked to them about study, when I talked to them about apostolic zeal, when I talked to them about charity and courtesy and hospitality, all of that also became a personal agenda for me. I thought, “Dolan, you’d better walk the talk.” Nemo dat quod non habet. [No one can give what he does not have.]

What gifts you can give, when you have it! When we walk with Christ on the journey He calls us individually to, with charity and humility.