You write back, describing what you were doing on the day of the old priests passing—the conversation you had with your students about “the world of guilt and sorrow” just moments before reading of the old priest s death—expressing regret that you were not present and asking the obvious questions. What you really want are the details that will allow you to form a resolution—the resolution that will allow you to close the book. '
(Salutation,)
The viewing was in Philadelphia at Manresa Hall on Friday, October 27th. A place for old and dying priests. There were about 10 really old priests in walkers and wheelchairs, as well as former student Y and former student Z and myself from the class of 1982. There was also one gentleman from Gonzaga’s class of 1961, who is an architect in Bryn Mawr now, and one other impaired middle-aged man present. I overheard the gentleman with a short leg and hearing aid tell another priest that when he was at Georgetown Prep he was bullied because of a speech impediment and his limp, and Fr. helped put an end to it. The day was cloudy, cold, and drizzling wet. After the viewing he was taken to Baltimore. Fr. Lemmon did the ceremony (I was not there) at St. Ignatius Church. Apparently, there is a Woodstock cemetery in Baltimore, and that is where he will be buried.
As for not seeing him.. .no one knew how sick he was. I saw him in mid-September. My wife Susan (I recently got married) and I went to the Provincial’s House in Baltimore where he was living and took him out for lunch. We showed him our wedding pictures. Of course he had his cigarettes and martini.
He was frail. When I inquired to his health, as I always did, he said “not bad for a man of my age, don’t you think?”
In early October, he was sent to Manresa Hall in Philadelphia. They could not care for him at the Provincial s House in Baltimore any longer; for the last year he had been struggling with throat and neck cancer. Yet even his sister and niece, nor anyone close to him knew until a week or two before he died.
He was in Philadelphia, 15 minutes away from me, and I did not even know. His sister remarked that it was the typical Irish
way, not to talk about illness and dying. That is all she could understand of not knowing, and she would be likely to do the same, if she was dying.
As for the world of guilt and sorrow,” remember Flannery O Connor also said “All is sacred, nothing profane,” and as Fr. used to quote to me from Teresa of Avila, “All is well, all manner of things are well, and all manner of things will be well.” Fr. would not want us to spend any useless time on guilt and sorrow.
In the last month, the cancer became extremely aggressive, and he developed a large tumor on his neck and left chin. It was visible, although I did not see it a month ago. On his last day, Friday, October 20th, he got up, although hard to eat and talk at this point. He got dressed. At lunch went outside to smoke and had a drink while reading the New York Times. After lunch he told the head nurse he was going to take a nap. She went in to check on him, because that was not typical, and after a time, he appeared to wake up abruptly, got halfway up from the bed, looked her way, collapsed to his side and died. He went without pain, quickly, doing what he loved—smoking, drinking, and reading. He said to me, he thought of death as a perfectly open door, with bright light radiating, and that one day he would casually walk through the door. He also told me he cared about this life, and that he did not give a shit about death because it was completely unknowable.
It is particularly strange that you were teaching Flannery O’Connor and the underpinnings of theology. I am sitting here with Fr. s Master’s Thesis from Louvain completed April 2, 1954, entitled “Theology and Prayer.”
In it Fr. writes, “A book is a machine to think with. In a good book this statement is verified both for the reader and writer alike. I do not flatter myself that this short paper offers that advantage to any reader it may have. My problem is too personal, as is the solution I have worked out for myself. This paper is a nothing more than a machine for thinking out a problem that has long troubled me. It were better compared to a loom upon which I propose to weave some of the unraveled elements of science, service, and prayer. My problem in its simplest form was this: how to integrate the elements of prayer, theology, and daily routine into a unified whole? Or more exactly, what is the point at which theology can become
the living source, the principle of prayer and action? If such a point of insertion existed, and I did not for a moment doubt that it did, I wanted to find it and to formulate it as accurately as possible. Because, above all, my solution had to be a piactical solution. I wanted a principle that would be operative beyond the walls of the Theologate, that would prolong, not only the effects of our four years of study, but would keep theology as the central point of reference from which all flowed and to which all returned, so thht no phase of my life as a priest would not know its permeating presence. I think I have found such a principle in that method of theological reasoning we call the ‘Argumentum ex Convenientia.’ I look upon the ‘Agumentum ex Convenientia’ as the summit of theological reasoning, that towards which all the rest of theology is ultimately oriented; and I find that it is at the same time a form of prayer, a method, if you want to place it in a category, which partakes of the nature of contemplation.
“If the objection were raised at this point that I am assigning too large a place to Theology in the life of prayer, that the spiritual life can be lived on the highest level without any reference, explicit at least, to theology, I would reply that although this might be true, it should not be true in the case of a Jesuit.”
Fr. goes on to say that “To highlight one aspect of this interdependence of Theology and Sanctity is my purpose here.” Much of the writing is in French and hence I am unable to translate, given my poor skills as a French student.
As for my life, I am a tenure track assistant professor of counseling at Community College of Philadelphia. I love my work. I hear Fr. in my work every day as a teacher and counselor. I got married in June and live in Collingswood, New Jersey with my wife Susan, a medical writer from a Nebraska farm of strong willed German stock. She has a Ph.D. in food science and an MBA, was in the Peace Corps in Ghana, and lived in Tunisia for a year doing research. She is a fascinating woman, and she makes me a better man.
I struggle eveiy day with good and evil in my life, but it is a worthy fight. I am not a very good Christian or Catholic, but I never give up the fight. Sometimes I make the fight harder than it needs to be, but I guess I fight better as an underdog.
Life is beautiful, fleeting and tragic, and I love every minute of it.
I have attached a picture of Fr. a little less than a year before he died, and a wedding picture.
I hope you are well. Thank You.
Your brother through Christ,
(Former Student X)