by Stefani Manowski
March 19, 2012

Father Thomas Ryan, CSP, has just released his new book, titled Remember to Live! Embracing the Second Half of Life. Readers experience stories, poetry, reflection questions and more as they read through the book, all geared toward engaging the realities of aging, illness and death and “grow through our encounter with them,” said Father Ryan. Father Ryan – a prolific author, missionary and director of the Paulist Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations – answered a few questions about his latest book.

The theme of this book seems to be relevant to all ages (we should all remember to live, and that death is a part of life), so why do we need that reminder when we get older?

The question is: How will we engage with the realities of aging, illness, loss, and death in the present season of our lives – with fear and trepidation or with a desire to learn the lessons they have to teach and to thus grow through our encounter with them? The book’s exposition of these themes is an invitation to deeper and fuller living. 

The book has poetry, reflection questions, stories, prayers, graphs. What was your thought process in bringing these materials together to support the themes the book presents?

The various exercises used to enable the reader to engage personally with second-half-of-life themes have evolved over the past 15 years. It all began with a retreat weekend that I decided to lead on the occasion of my own 50^th birthday on the theme of “Savoring Life by Facing Our Mortality.”

“Keep offering this!” the participants said. “There’s so little in our culture that supports our facing squarely the fact that one day our lives will end. And the clearer-minded we get about that, the more it will help us to keep the use of our time and energy aligned with our priorities.” 

So I’ve continued to offer the retreat annually, gradually lengthening it to five or seven days to provide people with more time to work through their inner resistance and engage with these themes in a significant way (many of their inspiring stories are shared in the book). I continued to learn from their feedback as well as from my own study, reflection and the experience of living. So the book is the slowly maturing fruit of all that, now able to be shared more widely. Readers can now have that retreat experience at their own pace and place. 

How do you personally remember to live?

Spiritual practices that play an important role in keeping me mindful are journaling, a nightly review-of-the day, a weekly Sabbath, a monthly quiet day apart for prayer and reflection and an annual weeklong retreat during which time I review the year past with the help of my journal and align my priorities for the year ahead. Things anyone can do! 

 

About the author

Father Thomas Ryan was born in Minneapolis, MN, in 1946. His father and grandfather worked together to run Ryan Grand and Feed Elevator in rural Minnesota, with his father eventually becoming a district sales manager for Ralston Purina.

The Ryan family (which included four sons and a daughter) prayed together before meals and bed, and prayed the rosary during May and October, the months of the year dedicated to Mary. The Ryan parents attended daily Mass, with Tom becoming an altar server during his years in Catholic grade school.

In fact, it was during the fifth grade that young Tom first thought about becoming a priest. He entered the novitiate of the Paulist Fathers in 1971, and was ordained on May 17, 1975 at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, the Paulist mother church located in Manhattan.

“I was attracted to the Paulists by the wide variety of ministerial opportunities – parishes, campus ministry, radio, TV, publishing, mission preaching,” recalled Father Ryan, an avid swimmer, cyclist, skier and writer. “And I saw them treating their seminarians like adults – giving them responsibility without micromanaging them, and expecting them to be responsible.”

After his ordination, Father Ryan served at the St. Thomas More Newman Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus form 1974-77 before taking up a new post at the McGill University Newman Center in Montreal, Quebec from 1977-80. He then engaged in post-graduate studies in ecumenism in England, Switzerland, Egypt, Israel and Greece.

Father Ryan returned to Canada in 1981 as the director of the Canadian Center for Ecumenism in Montreal, where he served until 1995. He then served as the founding director of Unitas, an ecumenical center for spirituality and Christian meditation in Montreal from 1995-2000. 

In 2000, Father Ryan became the founding director of the Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, now based in Washington, D.C.

“The comfort and challenge of life in community with other Paulists,” sustains Father Ryan in his priesthood, as well as daily prayer and spiritual reading and, “the rich and fulfilling experience of serving God’s people in a variety of ways.

To download a digital version of Remember to Live or to order the print edition, log on to www.paulistpress.com or call 1-800-218-1903.