Jesuits Die In Threes

“Jesuits die in threes.” Again the old adage has been verified. Within two weeks we Philippine Jesuits lost a dedicated pastoral worker in Fr. Rey Ocampo, an internationally known spiritual director and writer in Fr. Tom Green, and an “institution” in Fr. Miguel Bernad, historian, prolific writer, professor and lecturer.

Reflecting on the “empty places at table” left by these three friends, I turned to some lines written by another esteemed Jesuit now deceased, Fr. Walter Burghardt. The lines go as follows.

“In Chapter 12, I confessed that I am fearfully aware of death’s darkness, the blank face of death. Death breaks the whole person. In death a unique ‘I’, an irreplaceable ‘thou,’ is destroyed, a wondrous wedding of spirit and senses. I who lift my eyes to mountains and the moon; I who catch with my ears the tenderness and the thunder of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ and throb to the music of a loved one’s voice; I who breath the life-giving air in the smog of Washington and whose nostrils twitch at the odor of spaghetti Bolognese; I who cradle Christ on my tongue and gently caress the face of a friend; I whose mind travels over centuries and continents to share Plato’s world of ideas, Augustine’s vision of God’s city, and Gandhi’s passion for peace; I who laugh and love, worry and weep, dance and dream, sing and sin, preach and pray — this ‘I’ will be lost to the world, this ‘thou’ lost to those who survive me.”

Read the rest of the Jesuit Fr. John J. Carroll's article entitled Where will you spend your Holy Week? in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (here)

Photo is of Fr. John J. Carroll, S.J.