It’s not easy. To serve Christ means to be like Him and to do what He does. In the case of Christ, to serve man is His ministry: to embrace the blind, the cripple, the leper, the most rejected of mankind was His work.

Jesus told James and John that if they want to sit in His right and left hand, they must drink of the bitter cup. They must be servants of the people. Taking to themselves the most forgotten ones. This is the suffering and struggle that we too must embrace to be true lovers of Christ.

When I entered religious life I had to give up everything: my parents, my relatives, my friends, my desire for money, possession, business and the pride of life. I wanted to have everything that made practical sense. I also wanted to love and to serve and be like the Jesuit who left everything in America to serve us simple Jamaican boys.

Now, within religious life, I have found my vocation within my vocation. I want to love the Lord and to the serve the most rejected of my neighbours as Jesus served them — the poorest of the poor. In service of God in total self-sacrifice, we must give up everything that we have. In religious life I found that I am really nothing and I have nothing to give but my sinful self. As Sirach tells us, “My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, understand, you must continue in time of adversity.” — Sirach 2: 1-2.

To live a religious life I had to leave my job at the airline, I had to leave my family, I had to leave my friends and give up everything. Once I was at the monastery in New England, Massachusetts, I had to cut myself off from everything and anything and to live with strange friends who had no idea about Jamaica and Chinese people. Tears and sadness filled my heart but I wanted to be like Jesus who lived a life of self-sacrifice and service to those who we St George’s boys walked by.

The Jesuits were wonderful to me, the priests were truly “fathers” to me and the other 64 candidates. They lead me to Jesus with spiritual direction, conferences and classes about spirituality, a deep and scheduled life of prayer; service of one another and ascetical life.

I wanted to be a holy man, I wanted to be like Christ, I discovered that I am a weak and sinful man. But I learned that after I sinned, I had to get up, stand up and to start all over again. I became strong and persevering as I knelt at the foot of the cross.

I sought the interior life, the internal structure of our life, self-knowledge, and tried to conform to the truth and reality of Christ. I found that deep down within myself, Christ lives — that he lives deep in the life and soul of every man. Within the depths of every man there is a womb like Mary; Christ must be born in us and fostered in us. He must take over our lives so that it is not we who live but Christ in us. All these I learned in the Jesuits.

But at the age of 40, having taught at the universities I found something missing in my life: the ministry of Christ’s service to the poorest and most forgotten of people. When I left America and came to Jamaica and found in my beloved country the height and the depths of Christ’s ministry to the poorest and most forgotten of people; Eventide, Gun Court, the ghettos, Tivoli Gardens, Southside, Kingston, General Penitentiary, and the homeless and destitute in the streets. If Jesus came to Jamaica He would go to those places and find people to do His ministry, so I felt compelled to do as He would in Jamaica.

If you want to know us, know our ministry. If you want to know Christ, know His ministry. If you want to know a man, know him by his deeds. That is all I tried to do in my works. Thank you, Jesus!