I can imagine that once God looks at Jim’s resume
and sees his expertise and experience in art and
architecture, God will immediately appoint him to
the building and design committee! He served on that
committee for the Diocese of Oakland for several years
and was involved in the design of the cathedral.
In this house of light, he will see the banquet
where God will provide a feast for all eternity. In this
house on God’s holy mountain described by Isaiah in
today’s first reading, God “will provide for all people
a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food
and pure, choice wines.” Some of my best memories
of Jim were dinners at good restaurants—the most
recent one was in late May when after giving a day of
prayer in San Rafael, I picked Jim up at Nazareth and
we went to his favorite Italian restaurant.
Conversations with Jim were easy, never forced.
There was a gentleness about Jim. He was a gentleman,
a gentle man. When you were in his company there
was always humor. As his nieces, Mary Ann, Betty, and
Judy told me, there was always laughter as their Uncle
Jim had a wonderful sense of humor.
His good friend, Father Jim Franck, was provincial
when Father Jim Sloan was completing his time as
pastor at St. Barnabas. In a letter, Father Jim Franck
expresses his gratitude for the excellent leadership
that Fr. Jim Sloan provided the parish. “What I feel
best about is the wonderful spirit in the parish,” Father
Franck writes. “I attribute this to your gentle and lov-
ing care. It is hard to resist. Personally, I am grateful
for your authenticity and your unique good humor.”
Soul Explorer
When I was on sabbatical in 2001-2002 and lived
with Jim at Sonnino Mission House in Berkeley, and
then when I moved there in 2009, I would sometimes
accompany Jim on his Saturday morning ritual to
walk at Crissy Field in San Francisco. We would walk
to the Golden Gate Bridge and afterwards sit at an
outdoor café and have a cup of coffee and a Danish.
When he went by himself, he told me he would watch
people and wonder about their story—where they
were from and how they made their way through life.
This was his nature. He was an explorer of the
soul—a good temperament not only for an artist and
a priest but for a spiritual companion and friend. One
of our brothers, a former student of Jim’s, emailed
me when he found out Jim had died and told me that
when he was in high school, he remembers Jim saying
“the focus of his prayer since the seminary and every
day since was a verse from Psalm 27: “One thing I ask
of the Lord and this I seek, that I may dwell in the
house of the Lord all the days of my life.” This was
his mantra and we celebrate how Jim’s prayer was
answered early Wednesday morning when he asked,
“What’s next?” and the angel of God took him by the
hand to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of
his eternal life.
This seeking, this searching, this exploration of the
soul began early in J im’s life. In a letter to the direc-
tor of the seminary at St. Joseph’s College on August
4, 1953, one month before he entered the seminary
program, 19-year-old Jim Sloan writes, “Hello, Father,
after long and serious thought, I have decided that I
should like to join the priesthood, the Precious Blood
Fathers, if you will have me.” Jim notes this isn’t a
“passing whim” but “something I’ve known ever since
eighth grade.”
He says he told his Dad he wanted to be a priest, but
his father told him “to put such foolish thoughts out of
my mind.” But he tells the seminary director that since
he left St. Joe’s, he’s “gotten practically everything” he
could possibly desire. “I have my own apartment, an
excellent position where I work and just about every-
thing this old world has to offer to a fella my age. I even
went to a year of art school like I always wanted.”
But ultimately, Jim writes, “it just didn’t give me
any satisfaction or bring me any happiness. All along
I’ve known why: it just wasn’t what the good Lord
meant for me. It seems I’ve tried everything, Father,
except what I knew in my heart was the only way to
happiness and peace of mind. I’m through kidding
myself,” he concludes, “I know what I want, and I
pray that nothing will stop me.”
And so, Jim found happiness in the priesthood
because he knew in his heart what Jesus tells Thomas
in the gospel, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Speaking the Truth
Jim knew how to speak truth. One of the most
memorable truths he ever spoke to my province was
continued on page 12
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