MINISTRY, PREPARATION FOR

Shortly after a recent seminary graduate had assumed his first pastorate, he and his wife went to visit his family one Saturday. His mother sensed that her daughter-in-law was unhappy, but—not wishing to be meddlesome—pretended not to notice. As they departed, she heard her daughter-in-law say, “All right, we can go by the church and you can practice baptizing me just one more time. But remember this—when you have your first funeral, you are not going to practice burying me!”887

“If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder” (Pope John Paul I, September 1978).888