Even if they are not committed to any specific religion, men and women everywhere have a deep desire to come into contact with the transcendent".When he wrote these words in his bestselling book, The Gift of Peace, Cardinal Bernardin was too modest to recognize that this unadorned description of the appeal of transcendence captured his own charismatic hold on people across the world.A friend of Joseph Bernardin for more than three decades, Eugene Kennedy contemplates the spiritual meaning of the Cardinal's life, looking especially closely at the last three years.