Brother Jim Kozak was a legend.  A farm boy, who entered religious life at the height of the ecclesial fervor of the Second Vatican Council, he was a lifelong romantic who, from an early age, dreamed of a world where peace and harmony prevailed.  After spending three very happy and formative years at Dujarie Institute, on the idyllic campus of Our Lady’s university, Br. Jim, unsurprisingly, volunteered to go to West Africa to support the community’s fledgling schools there.  The missionary impulse took hold, and even when he returned to the United States, some thirty years later, he couldn’t help but put himself on the front lines: in the inner city in Chicago, at a boys’ home in Detroit, in classrooms, on the sidelines of high school football games, and just about any messy place that can be imagined.  He was a missionary at heart even in his retirement, taking up residence, for fourteen years, in one of the college dorms down the street from the official retirement home.  He, in fact, died in his room at the college, in the mission field, leaving no doubt about the spirit that animated his entire life.

Brother Jim Kozak was a friend to many.  He could be crusty and cantankerous sometimes—such is the life of an idealist—but he was always sweet and good.  He taught me more about ministry than all of the textbooks, case studies, internships, workshops, and professors that have been a part of my decades-long formal training.  He just had a way of being present to people, plopping down with a cup of coffee in the faculty lounge, sitting faithfully in the bleachers during soccer practice, or shooting the breeze in the rec room on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  KoKo, as I affectionately called him (and which he hated), nevertheless, was unafraid to challenge or provoke those whom he encountered.  He might hurl a playful insult to start a conversation or play devil’s advocate in a debate.  These actions were missionary in nature, the risk of being close to another, and while he might sometimes get burned in those exchanges, he was completely harmless.  Such vulnerability, which is Jesus’ vulnerability, is the foundation of all authetic relationships.

Brother Jim Kozak was a man of prayer.  His missionary endeavors and ministry of presence were rooted in a deeply private communion with the Lord, an awareness of his own goodness, that he was truly and incontrovertibly a child of the living God.  He could be seen sitting alone in the chapel of Columba Hall, spending quiet time before the tabernacle.  He was known for his morning journaling routine and held many people as intentions throughout the day.  We were once leading an overnight retreat together, and our rooms were next to each other.  I could hear him through the thin walls, praying aloud, “True to you, Lord, true to you, just trying to be true to you Lord, true to you, true to you, true to you….”  Such spiritual security allowed him to live faithfully in community, to cultivate a trustworthy rapport with people, and to be effective in his outreach to others without being unconsciously needy or self-serving.

I loved my friend, Jim, am grateful for the witness of his life, and cannot wait to see him again.

Da yie, yanko.

The word “Christian” was used to describe the early followers of Jesus (Acts 11:26).  Apparently, these “little Christs” were replicas of Jesus who were spreading the nascent faith by their acts of charity.  While becoming another Christ is at the heart of discipleship, history has nevertheless revealed that eight billion little Christs coming into contact with one another, without any coordination, can create much tension and confusion.  The good news is that Christ is not only individual but also corporate, that is, catholic, “according to the whole,” a cosmic and transcendent blue print for the way the manifold and constantly evolving parts go together and endure together.  To be a little Christ without this blue print is to be relegated to an ineffectual religious psychodrama that bears no fruit.  To be catholic without the fire of conversion is to be in the club, but without the guts that actually lead to communion.  Let’s therefore ask for the grace to say our prayers privately the night before we sit proudly in the Sunday pew, to stop to help the stranger on our way to our full-time ministry, to loan a sawbuck to the tithe-collector.  In this way, we shall discover the inevitably of Christ in whom there is nothing “little.”  Ave Crux, Spes Unica. 

Sic et Non was one of the most famous texts of the High Middle Ages.  Known for its rigor and critical analysis of important theological and philosophical questions, it became the cornerstone of medieval scholasticism.  Literally translating to “Yes and No,” the work was meant to rescue the rational soul from the lukewarm and lazy inertia of ideology—putting our minds on autopilot at the expense of actually understanding the meaning of things—and invite real-time engagement with ideas and, quite frankly, the risk of thinking.  Sometimes the answer to a question can be Yes and No at one and the same time.  What a mess!  Yet, when, in a humble act of trust, we are willing to stand in the middle of seeming contradictions without trying to force them into neat categories that make us feel like we are in control, the truth emerges: a virgin birth, a Word-made-flesh, a resurrected person, and an infinite sequence of things that don’t seem to go together.  The next time therefore we reach for the Either-Or Playbook—to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of having contact with the truth—let’s choose to insert an “and” instead.  We will rejoice as we discover the constant creativity that holds life together and sic et non our way into eternity.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

Rem Tene, Verba Sequentur.  “Hold the matter and the words will follow.”  This ancient axiom, attributed to Cato the Elder, is not only good advice for the struggling grad student who sits museless before a blank computer screen, but for anybody who wants to make meaning in their lives.  Indeed, in our hyperactive and bifurcated 21st century world, where we can hide in a system of rabbit holes without ever having to come up to see the light of day, it’s easy to get distracted from our purpose, to get lost in ourselves, and to lose hope.  One day we’re into the latest fashion, the next day it’s statistics of famous baseball players, then it’s recipes, then real estate, and before we know it, we’re stuck in the mud, flapping in the breeze, a boat without a rudder.  Let’s therefore get in the habit of paying attention to our spiritual feelings throughout the course of the day and simply choose to return to our center when we sense that we are drifting.  Let’s follow Jesus’ lead by holding the matter of our human lives with an open heart.  The words will gradually flow as our stories are effortlessly written by the one who has been holding us all along.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.

My best praying happens in line at the grocery store.  A clearly-defined container—anywhere from ninety seconds to a few minutes—provided to me, as a free gift, without the work of trying to figure out how to squeeze some intentional prayer time into the complex, and often stressful, circumstances of the world in which we live.  The stability of that moment in the queue, which could just as easily be the time we spend at a traffic light or on a street corner waiting for the bus, also has a cosmic meaning: life itself, in all of its diversity and intricacy, naturally tends towards prayer, which is to say, these pockets of time are not just inconveniences that will eventually be erased with some new form of technology, but are instead intrinsic to reality, constant and organic invitations that rise and fall in the course of a given day for our own human transcendence.  In this new year, with babies crying and produce being scanned in the background, let’s have Mass between the chapsticks and magazines.  There, we will find Christ, not some far-off deity, or the product of some profound act of piety, but hidden in the stuff, just waiting to be discovered.  Ave Crux, Spes Unica.