Falling into the arms of the Lord
Published: 6 December 2009
By: Selina Venier
Inspired by young people: Missionaries of God's Love founder Fr Ken Barker
AN hour with Missionaries of God's Love founder Fr Ken Barker is good for the soul.
And others know it.
Wherever the popular Canberra priest goes, a crowd follows, and that's what happened during his recent trip to Brisbane where he found time to speak candidly and refreshingly with The Catholic Leader.
Honing in on the "big questions of life", Fr Ken was asked "what the world needs most".
"When you listen to the cry of the heart it's coming out of woundedness," he said.
"There's a loss of hope through hurt and a lack of reconciliation and peace in people's hearts because they are troubled and worried about so much."
The inspiring author and teacher said the answer to such complexities "is always Jesus".
"Jesus brings the Father's love," Fr Ken said.
"And people need that healing touch of the Lord so desperately ... it's what the human heart longs for most."
During the Brisbane visit Fr Ken spoke at Camp Hill parish about "the grace of the new evangelisation" and "the sovereign action of God".
"New movements have come forward," he told The Leader.
"In 1998 Pope John Paul spoke to a gathering of leaders of the movements and he encouraged them to be really open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
"He believed in a new 'spring time' of the Church as a result of the movements."
Fr Ken, a priest of 35 years, said this was "an exciting time to be in the Church" to "take hold of the grace that is available".
"In every age where there's a crisis there's a new opportunity of grace," he said.
"The challenges of secularism and Godlessness of our age is being answered by the Lord himself - by a new sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
"In the midst of the crisis there's a new active spirit."
Fr Ken said this "new activity of the Spirit" was evident in young people especially saying they "want to serve in lay ministry with energy and enthusiasm".
"There needs to be 'labourers in the vineyard' and those labourers are new forms of consecrated life - but even more so, lay people," he said.
The Missionaries of God's Love work with such young people to encourage their enthusiasm for evangelisation and they have been doing so in Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Bathurst and the Asia-Pacific region, beginning two decades ago.
Youth ministry in Canberra "birthed" the Missionaries of God's Love, Fr Ken said.
"We started in 1986 as three young men who had experienced the Charismatic renewal," he continued.
"We became members of the Disciples of Jesus and wanted to be priests but also wanted to stay under this grace.
"We said we'd pray about it and did that for a year ... in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament ... with deep trust in the Blessed Virgin Mary and a desire to take on a way of poverty and have a servant heart to wash one another's feet and others in service.
"God put our hearts on evangelisation."
Before that, Fr Ken had served as a diocesan priest since 1974.
Born in Murrumburrah, New South Wales, with a "perfectly rounded personality" (he said jokingly) because he's the middle child of five, Fr Ken's dad was "a good man" and a Methodist and his mum, "a faithful Catholic".
His decision to join the seminary came almost by surprise.
"I was losing interest in my degree and wasn't sure what I was going to do with life," Fr Ken said of his late teens.
"I was sitting in a park a week before starting third year (of university) and reading about a priest doing missionary work.
"I finished the book and thought, 'That's what I'm meant to do with my life'."
Fr Ken said he then "had to consult God", admitting he "didn't know how to talk to God about it".
"I went to the nearest church and lit up all the candles in front of Our Lady's statue," he said, adding whimsically, "I didn't pay for the candles either."
"I believed I would know for sure by the time they went down," Fr Ken said.
"The next day I hitchhiked down to Canberra because I didn't know any priests but I remembered a priest who visited our family and I rang him up and told him I was coming into town."
The priest friend thought the lad was "in trouble".
"I told him I've got to be a priest," Fr Ken said of that conversation.
"He said, 'Why don't you finish your degree?'
"I said, 'If I don't go now I'll never go'."
The two went to see the archbishop.
"Now I'm standing before the archbishop the day after I get the idea and he says, 'Why did you want to become a priest?'," Fr Ken said.
"I hadn't thought about it and I blurted out, 'I want to serve God and serve my fellow man'.
"He said, 'That's good enough for me'."
The archbishop asked the young man if he "owned a soutane" but the response was, "What's that?"
Fr Ken "walked out with the archbishop's secretary's soutane" and went to share the news with his parents.
"I arrived home and tackled Dad after dinner," he said.
"It was night time and he used to sit on a box and look at the stars.
"I said, 'I've decided to become a priest' and the cigarette dropped and he let out an expletive.
"I told Mum and she burst into tears and then later on Dad came in and said, 'If you're going to be a priest be a bloody good one'."
Fr Ken's dad died in 1970 but his mum still lives in Canberra.
Of that decision Fr Ken said "it was a decisive grace", adding, "I never looked back".
Finishing the science degree during the course of seminary studies, Fr Ken said he eventually "fell into youth ministry".
It was the witness of young people that further inspired his own faith walk.
"Their love of the Lord drew me to seek that grace as well," Fr Ken said.
"At a retreat in 1983 I opened myself up to that grace of baptism in the Spirit and it released me in a new powerful way in ministry.
"My youth ministry became centred in Jesus and moving in the gifts of the Holy Spirit."
Fr Ken continues to "not look back", writing Becoming Fire (an introduction to spiritual life), A Radical Way of Love (on consecrated life) and Young Men Rise Up (based on the Young Men of God movement).
A pilgrim of every World Youth Day since 2000, Fr Ken may not go to Madrid in 2011 so that "other missionary priests can have the same opportunity".
The "secret" of his life and ministry is a deep desire to commune with God in solitude.
"Every month I take three days in a hut," Fr Ken said.
"I enter into a deeper encounter with God in a beautiful setting and in the silence I hear the Lord.
"It's like falling into the arms of the Lord.
"I got that (idea) from St Francis of Assisi, he's my hero."
At the end of each day the likeable, humble man of God asks himself, "Have I been moving in the Spirit today or have I just been driven by my own flesh?"
It's a poignant, soulful question for each of us.
