Let us not grow weary doing good. Galatians 6:9
As many of you know, I am spending much of my retirement focused on supporting the work of the church in the Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Barbados off the coast of Venezuela.
Half the time I am raising money by leading priest retreats mainly in Canada and the United States. The other half of my time is spent being down there working on programs in person or working on them from home.
All this requires quite a bit of travel, both to lead priest retreats and to make pastoral visits to the islands. To give you an idea of how much traveling I have done in recent years, I have more than 275,000 frequent miles on American Airlines, more than 130,000 on United and another 40,000 on Delta, even after upgrading several times.
When people hear that I have been to more than a hundred places like Barbados, St. Lucia, Victoria, Wales, Sault Ste. Marie, Trinidad, Labrador, Portland, England, San Diego, San Jose, Nassau, Ireland, Boston, Denver, Savannah and Winnipeg, they think that I must be one very lucky tourist.
When I think of those places, I think of heat, stress, poverty, delayed flights, hours of preparation, airport food, intestinal parasites, long days, strange beds, bad weather, jammed projectors and hotel buffets. Most of the time, all I see are the insides of airports, hotels, courtesy vans and large banquet rooms with round tables and stacking chairs.
Let me be clear that I feel privileged to be invited to those places, honored to be able to do my bit to strengthen presbyterates around the world and blessed to be able to share the money I make with two Caribbean mission dioceses.
However, when I am tired, hot, stressed out and impatient, I often wonder why I put myself through all that. I wonder out loud why I didn’t learn to play golf, move to Florida and act like a “real” retired person.
I wonder in all honesty why I even care. Seriously, why should I care at my age? It’s not like I am some kind of “Father Teresa of Calcutta” as one of my great nephews called me.
Actually, I have given this some consideration. Here is what I believe. I believe that I was open to “something new” in retirement. I believe an opportunity mysteriously opened up in front of me. I believe my personality type propelled me to check it out.
I believe in the challenge offered by St. Theresa of Avila: “May you use those gifts that you have received and pass on the love that has been given to you.”
In short, I believe that God has somehow led me to this and so I am reluctant to back out now.
How about you? What do you do when you get tired of caring?
To read more from Father Knott, visit his blog: FatherKnott.com.
