had walked almost halfway across the Ben Franklin Bridge which connects Camden, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. It was 1987, and I was a recent arrival at Holy Name Church in Camden, soon to be named pastor of that tiny, mostly Puerto Rican parish.

I stood on the bridge looking east over that little corner of the earth, about one square mile in area, that would be my parish. From this perspective I could see potholed streets, uncollected trash, abandoned houses, and clusters of drug dealers on the corners of the poorest section of the fifth poorest city in the nation.

Rising above other buildings, almost exactly in the geographical center of the parish area, is a strong symbol of hope and caring—Holy Name Church and School. As I contemplated this scene from the lofty serenity of the bridge I heard the words, "Behold the Kingdom!"

The words came from my lips, but they were not mine. At that moment God was telling me something about the next period of my life. For me those mean streets were to become God's kingdom. I would look upon the people, the places, and the relationships with reverence because I knew God was there. And I would try to respond to the realities of the parish with a reverence befitting the presence of our God.

Reverence is an Ignatian virtue. We are, of course, "created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord." I sum up Ignatian reverence this way: it is the virtue that combines faith and justice, belief and behavior.

When I am reverent I look for and acknowledge God present in the reality of the moment. Early in the first "week" of the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius describes how the perfect, or the spiritually mature, practice reverence. They "consider, meditate, and ponder more [than do the imperfect] that God our Lord is in every creature by his essence, power, and presence. Therefore . . . they are more apt to be disposed to show respect and reverence to the Creator and Lord [in those creatures] than those who are imperfect," or less mature.

When I am reverent I behave in a way that acknowledges our God. In two points of the Exercises, Ignatius describes God present and working in created reality. After each of these two points he says, "Then I will reflect on myself, and consider, according to all reason and justice, what I ought to offer the Divine Majesty, that is, all I possess and myself with it." By reverence I try to give to all people and all things the dignity they possess as temples of God and tabernacles of Jesus.

"The Ignatian contemplative develops a habitual attitude, a reverential way of looking at reality," says Fr. Clement Petrick, SJ, Maryland Province's provincial assistant for pastoral ministries. A Jesuit for nearly 50 years, he has seen God in both quiet and turbulent times in the Church and society.

For me, the Ignatian pray-er does not simply spend time in prayerful posture (although that too is necessary). The Ignatian pray-er is oxymoronic—an active contemplative. Schooled and fueled by modest moments spent in prayerful posture with scriptures and crucifix close at hand, the Ignatian contemplative develops a habitual attitude, a reverential way of looking at reality. The Ignatian look at reality is a deliberate contemplation of the God of goodness present even in the midst of evil. The active contemplative will be overwhelmed by awe and gratitude but will also make decisions and choices based on the reality of God's presence.

Religious life in the late 60s and early 70s could have been totally devastating for me had I not been able to discover and acknowledge God in the "defections" from religious life and in the liberation movements of the time. I could easily have followed others out the door and fled from religious life, the priesthood, and even the Church. But I perceived that God was present in the enormous changes taking place in ecclesiastical and civil society. Inspired at that time to repeat the long retreat, the full 30-day exercises, I wanted to enter into it with total freedom, willing to give or give up whatever the Lord might ask. I entered that long retreat with the idea that God alone was absolute and all else, including the Society of Jesus, the priesthood, and the Catholic Church, was relative. I wanted to be able to respond to the Absolute as freely and authentically as possible.

ow, more than twenty years later, I am elated that during that long retreat none of those questions arose in my disciplined prayer and in my conversation with my director. I found instead that I could give myself with more freedom to the vocation to which I had been called many years before.

But I could not give myself wholeheartedly. I became aware that the emotional generosity of youth had been tempered by the practical experience of living religious life and priestly ministry. When I came to a critical prayer in the Spiritual Exercises, "It is my earnest desire and deliberate choice . . . to imitate you in bearing all wrongs, all abuse, and all poverty, both actual and spiritual," I was unable to say those words with authenticity and integrity. The most I could muster was, "I would like some day to be able to pray those words, but today I can't."

Later during that retreat, while contemplating the story in which Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, I was impressed with the sudden change in Peter's attitude when he understood that having his feet washed was the condition for being a partner with Jesus. In that contemplation Jesus came to me and asked if he could wash my feet. The washing meant that I too would be privileged to share his lot. But then I began to wonder: Did I want to share his lot? To be poor? Homeless? Taken advantage of? Misunderstood? Rejected? Betrayed? Harassed? Falsely accused? Tortured? Executed? I was not ready to say to Jesus, "Yes, wash my feet and my hands and face and my whole body too!" What could I say? "Just the left foot, thank you!" Or, "How about one foot now and the other later?"

Even though I could not give answers to the challenges of this prayer during retreat, there were times when I was given the grace of the moment to do what was right even with the threat of considerable personal risk. During the years I was pastor at Holy Name, there were times when it was perilous to walk the streets of the city because the parish was known to be actively involved in the crusade against drug dealers. Several times I ventured out in circumstances in which I knew I could be shot. But I felt the responsibility to make Christ present in a part of the world where his saving and redeeming presence was most needed.

At other times there was the threat of an even greater evil. Among the Caribbean peoples in our parish evil spirits and the evil spirit were a reality. Not understanding very much about these matters, I did not want simply to ridicule them. I always listened patiently to accounts of infestation and dreams. Usually, if I went to a house, prayed there, and sprinkled holy water, the manifestations of evil would cease.

But in one instance, a young woman's account of noises and movements of furniture in her house was more than hysteria or imagination. Genuinely frightened this time by the unknown, I went, fortified with not only holy water but also the Eucharist in a pyx in my shirt pocket. Again, I experienced no evil manifestations. After my visit the disturbances ceased, and the house was later sold.

ven before my experience of the long retreat, I would walk into the midst of the anti-war demonstrations in Washington wearing my clerical collar and carrying oil for anointing in my pocket. I believed that in the middle of these struggles, our God, in the person of a Church official, had to be present to bring consolation and reconciliation. Was it perilous? Yes. There was tear gas, violence, riot police, the military, and the possibility of mass panic. But even in these circumstances the active contemplative discovers God laboring and loving. The active contemplative helps to make known to others the presence of a loving God who shares our concerns and fears, who wants to give hope.

The challenge of the active contemplative is to contemplate God present and working in those persons daily encountered in ministry. For me today my ministry is one to fellow Jesuits. I conjure up in my fantasy the faces of the Jesuits about whom I am presently concerned, and I commend them to the Lord. For the 22 years I was superior of various Jesuit communities, the face of Christ was in the faces of the members of my community. For the most part it was easy to find our God working in those whom he had called with me to be companions of his son in the Society of Jesus.

But it is difficult to discover the face of Christ in those with whom he specifically identifies himself in Matthew 25: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the imprisoned. Difficult, too, to deal with Lazarus at the gate. Every parish priest has met the sick beggar Lazarus at his front door. Everyone running a soup kitchen or a drop-in shelter has met a Lazarus whom he or she wants to escape, to send away, to get rid of.

My Lazarus was a particularly unpleasant young woman, an ex-addict, an ex-con, an ex-prostitute, deceitful, manipulative, larcenous, totally untrustworthy, an AIDS sufferer. Could she be my Lazarus? Was she the embodiment of Jesus asking to be loved?

One day I asked her, "Are you Jesus?"

"Huh?" she asked.

"Never mind," I replied.

Pray always? There is no other option! There is no other way but through reverence.