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Two and half year's later my brother Jimmy arrived and the words of the old woman came back to Mammy but she hadn't the courage to carry them through. In the Lent of 1958 Jimmy and I were attending early morning Mass each day before going off to school. One morning we had a fight and Jimmy stormed off ahead of me.

I arrived home just after 8-30am and told Mammy I hadn't seen Jimmy at Mass or going up to Communion. By 9am no Jimmy and Mammy was beginning to worry. We had to cross a very busy main road at a pedestrian crossing in order to get the bus to Mass. She ran down to the newsagents beside the crossing to be told that a young boy had been knocked down there earlier by a car.

Jimmy had severe head injuries and a broken elbow and needed an emergency tracheostomy as his breathing was compromised by massive swelling of the head and neck. For 15 days he lay in a coma with little hope of recovery offered to my parents by the neurologists or other medical staff. Every minute of every day was spent in prayers of supplication for him. As Mammy sat by Jimmy's bedside and watched his frail body, stripped and naked, lying on the white hospital sheets the old woman's words came back to haunt her. Day 15 came and the doctors told my parents to expect the worst.

At this point the prayers of begging and supplication changed to ones of surrender, Mammy and Daddy offered their son to God. They told the Lord that if He wanted Jimmy to be with Him then He could take him. Immediately, Jimmy became restless and agitated and then he became peaceful and on day 17 he regained consciouness.

From that day forward for many years there was a constant trek to clinics, psychologists, physiotherapy, back into operating theatres for multiple orthopaedic surgery, and attendance at the Head Injuries Club, more for parental support.

Jimmy's schooling was much interrupted and little hope was held out for any academic achievement. Jimmy had always maintained he would be a Priest and this likelihood drifted further and further away from him as he struggled to keep up in school, and lost much time due to hospital appointments. All his doctors, bar one, told Mom and Dad that he wouldn't achive much academically. He left school at 16 with no accreditations or certificates and no prospect of ever seeing inside a college or university.

He got a job in a menswear store and in 1971 Dad retired and Mom, Dad, my youngest sister and I came to live in Ireland, me to get married and our Ann to finish off her schooling. Jimmy and our next brother Gerard stayed behind as they both had their own jobs. By the following year both had packed up and arrived in Ireland. Both boys got work, Gerard settling in the world of advertising in Dublin and Jimmy eventually as a storeman in a multinational computer company here in Galway.

By the mid 70's Jimmy's desire to enter the priesthood became so strong that he started to approach some of the Orders. He was accepted into a missionary order here in Galway but spent only 7 months with them. It was not for him and he reckoned that was the end of it and that his dream of priesthood was over. But God had other plans and wasn't going to let go so easily.

He returned to Digital Equipment Corporation and became involved in voluntary community work, working with the homeless in Galway City. This led him to take a year out and work voluntarily with AFRI, a voluntary aid group based in Dublin. His 'call' was becoming stronger and stronger again. On his return to Galway he was led, through his music ministry in the Charismatic Renewal, to pay a visit to one of the Priests in the Galway Diocese. This was to open a door to the most amazing of journeys for him. Fr. Lee met with Jimmy a few times, discerned that his pathway to priesthood was indeed spirit-led and wrote to his good friend, a Bishop in the Hamilton Diocese in Canada.

Jimmy was accepted in Saint Patrick's Seminary in Thurles, Tipperary, sponsored by the Hamilton Diocese. His studies were difficult for him, more so because he had an insecurity within himself about his own ability. Each set of exams proved successful and at the end of his second year he had to make the choice - stay on in Ireland and complete his studies or move to the Canadian Diocese to finish.

He was led to choose Canada. Jimmy was ordained as a Catholic Priest on May 9th 1992 and said his first Mass on our Dad's birthday, two years after Daddy's death, and in the parish in Birmingham that we had left in 1971. The blessed example of our old and very spiritual Birmingham Parish Priest had inflamed Jimmy with the desire to become a priest so many years earlier. (My parents had returned to England in the mid-80's.)

Jimmy went on to become a Parish Priest in Canada. He has an under-graduate Arts degree, 2 graduate degrees in Theology, covering Early Church History, Biblical Studies and Classical Languages, and since September 2000 is enroled in a Doctor of Ministries post-graduate degree. 

His journey with God continues and in June 2002 he left diocesan work to join the Carmelite Order in London, Ontario. And so, from July 2003 for the next two years he begins Formation in Carmelite Monasticism as a Novice in Hubertus, Wisconsin.
 

Fr. Jim

The Carmelite Community London. Ontario, Canada

Fr. Jim

Mam and Dad's surrender to the Will of God left the Lord to guide and direct His beloved son through the most amazing and spirit-led journey and we all await the exciting road ahead of him, as, for sure, this amazing journey is not yet finished. Thanks and Praise be to God!

Mary Mullins in Galway, Ireland

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