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Rev.
Mark Link, S.J.
 “What
makes you think you have so much to say?” The question caught
Mark Link, SJ, completely off guard. He was a 31-year-old Jesuit
scholastic who’d just begun writing the first of his more
than sixty books, Prayer for Millions.
“I
was pretty excited about the project,” Fr. Link recalls, “but
one of my professors there, Fr. Edmund Fortman, SJ, wasn’t
as impressed. When he heard I was trying to write a book, he asked
me, ‘What makes you think you have so much to say?’”
Fr.
Link can’t remember exactly how he answered, but he still
remembers being excited about writing at that time. That same excitement
still animates him —and his many writing-related projects—
almost 50 years later.
Fr.
Link will be 80 in April. He’s now the writer-in-residence
at Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington, IL, where he also
directs retreats. Bellarmine, a serene retreat center tucked away
in gently rolling hills some 40 miles north of Chicago, seems the
perfect place for Fr. Link to ease out of the hustle and bustle
of more than half a century of ministry in the Society of Jesus.
What
excites Fr. Link most is discovering God’s presence in the
world: through prayer, in the news, in the stories he hears, in
the lyrics of a song, or in the seemingly mundane occurrences that
populate each and every day of each and every one of our lives.
In fact, he can actually remember one of the first such “discoveries”
he made. “I was a sophomore in high school. We used to ice
skate at Lake St. Mary’s, which was at that time the largest
artificial lake in the world. That’s where I was when I first
experienced God. I’ll never forget it. It was a really a nice
evening, and we had a big fire going. There was about an inch of
snow on the ice. When I was out there all alone skating, I said,
‘wow! this must be what heaven’s like’.”
That
experience stayed with him as he competed on a state tournament
baseball team, earned the lead in two of his school plays, graduated,
entered the Air Force, served for three years in the Pacific Theater,
and won three battle stars. When he returned, he put the GI Bill
to work and enrolled in the architecture program at University of
Cincinnati.
During
his last three years of school, Fr. Link split time between classes
at University of Cincinnati and the city of Cleveland, where he
did co-op work with the Austin Company, an architectural firm responsible
for the designs of the Atomic Energy Plant in Oak Ridge, TN, and
the Cincinnati Chemical Company. While golfing in Cleveland, Fr.
Link met Len Schostek, who invited him to his house for some company
and a home cooked meal. Len’s son Don was a senior at St.
Ignatius High School and had just won the role of Edmund Campion
in the school play. “I remember hearing about the play, hearing
about Campion’s life, and being intrigued by the Jesuits,
even picturing myself as a Jesuit,” Fr. Link recalls.
The
real clarity came later. “I was at a benediction and there
was a 15 – 20-minute meditation. That’s when it really
hit. I was looking for something significant in my life. There was
a hunger. And then it was clear. I should become a Jesuit. It’s
hard to explain, really, what I felt. I just knew I should become
a Jesuit.”
Days
later, he boarded a bus to return to Cincinnati for more classes.
For most of the ride he slept, then, suddenly, awoke. Outside the
window, flashing past almost too fast for him to read was a sign:
“MILFORD 7 mi.” Milford, he knew, was the location of
the Jesuit novitiate. He made a few retreats, and two years later
designed a retreat house for his senior thesis. He graduated in
1950, and then entered the Milford novitiate.
Fr.
Link had long been a writer —as a high school student he covered
a variety of high school sports for his local paper— but during
his studies to become a priest he began writing more seriously.
During his theology studies at West Baden College he wrote a weekly
column for the Indianapolis archdiocesan newspaper and also began
work on Prayer for Millions. By 1960, the year he was ordained for
priestly ministry, he’d published his first book and was already
hard at work on the second and third.
Soon
after he was ordained, he asked then Provincial, Fr. John Connery,
SJ, if he could enroll in a writing program at the University of
South Carolina. “You don’t need to go to writing school,”
Fr. Connery said. “You write just fine. You’ve just
got to figure out something to say.”
“Instead
of the writing program,” Fr. Link says, “the Provincial
sent me to Lumen Vitae, an institute in Brussels, Belgium, devoted
to the study and popularization of theology.”
While
there, he learned among other things that he definitely had something
to say. In the 42 years since, he’s published more than 60
books, including Path Through Scripture, Path Through Catholicism,
The New Catholic Vision, and the “2000” Series, that
includes Challenge, Vision, Mission, Action, Bible, and Psalms.
He’s also produced a 9-tape video meditation series called
“Walks with Jesus,” and written a weekly column, “Faith
Connections,” which goes into 250,000 church bulletins. He
scripted and was featured in 20 “Prayer and Scripture”
TV shows produced by the same company that produced the children’s
shows “Barney” and “Wishbone.” He’s
given retreats in five English-speaking countries and lectured in
nearly every major city in the United States. More than 700,000
of his books have been distributed in 800 prisons around the United
States by the group Victory 2000.
During
his prolific writing career, Fr. Link has also remained active as
a teacher and pastor. He taught at St. Ignatius College Prep in
Chicago for 17 years before co-founding the Loyola Pastoral Institute
at Loyola University, where he taught for another eight years. He
taught at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary and the National Institute
for the Formation of the Clergy.
In
2001, Fr. Link retired from teaching and moved to Bellarmine. To
say that he’s retired, however, is at best inaccurate. Fr.
Link rises around 4:30 each morning, spends half an hour on a “prayer
walk,” says the liturgy of the hours, and then celebrates
Mass for some folks who live near the retreat house. Then he begins
writing. He’s able to write for 6-8 hours a day, seven days
a week.
“Writing
is just something I feel compelled to do,” Fr. Link says.
“It’s one of the greatest ministries. You see things
aren’t the way you think they ought to be and you want to
change them. And there are so many stories out there. As Christians
we’ve got one heck of a story to tell. That’s what I’m
trying to do.”
Excerpted from a Spring, 2004, article in PARTNERS
Magazine.
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