The community of believers was of one heart and mind . . . . (Acts 4:32)

I remember a wonderful retreat when I was in Second Theology. A classmate recommended a priest friend to us as our retreat director, Father Ed Hays. Our classmate said, “He has a prayer farm called Shantivanam.” We were a little sceptical but we made the call. Father Ed needed the money and so accepted. That was 1975. To get ready for our retreat, Ed Hayes spent a week on retreat at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani. But I will never forget his enthusiasm for the Word of God. He held up the New Testament and told us that it was the how-to manual for being a priest. I can still hear him singing our call to prayer for the retreat: ♫“Come my friends, let us be of one heart and one mind!”♫ After that retreat, Ed Hays would go on to write over 30 books on spirituality. He died in 2016.