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Feature
The Day My Brother Was Murdered
Memoirs of a shattered hope.
(Page 9 of 10)
He continued:
This past week has found us all at Le Mans. For the 3 days after the Mission, the 4 of us csc’s visited Arras, Lille, Rheims and Paris. Ah Paris. In my two visits (before and after the Mission) I saw an opera, 3 presentations of the Comedie Francaise, the film Dialogue des Carmelites (Gertrude von Le Fort and George Bernanos), spent 2 days in the Louvre, another at the Museum of Modern Art (the French Impressionists) and the rest of the time visiting St. Sulpice and the Catholic art shops, Montmartre, La Madeleine, Notre Dame de Paris, la Sainte Chappelle, etc. I really got around in 5 and a half days, and I’d really looked for sleep on returning to Le Mans.
But instead it’s been 5 straight days of tearing off wallpaper and washing off water, paint and plastering. Next week we begin painting….
Dick’s own room was painted to his taste, as best they could manage:
The window wall is a beautiful deep maroon-red, and the other walls silver grey, with a pale yellow ceiling. With the floor waxed it looks like a castle. The other rooms are various shades of green, grey, blue, salmon, etc. Sorry, no beige. But it will be bright and clean and refreshing during the rainy season.
In December, Dick was ordained a subdeacon in a church in Le Mans whose origins went back to the sixth century. “I didn’t find it very romantic, however, as these long-drawn-out ceremonies leave me cold literally and sensitively…”
Mother and Dad, meanwhile, were already planning to visit Europe for the ordination in June.
THE PRECEDING AUGUST, Jim, then a senior at Boston College, had married Patricia O’Reagan of County Galway, Ireland. Since Pat had no immediate relatives in the U.S., my parents offered to hold the wedding in Johnstown. That was the first major family ceremony to be held in Our Mother of Sorrows, our beautiful, quiet English-Gothic church in the suburb of Westmont. Dick, of course, could not be there.
But the next summer Dick was back, a priest. On June 29, 1961, in the parish church of Notre Dame de Sainte Croix in Le Mans, Archbishop Lawrence Graner of Dacca, a Holy Cross man who happened to be in Europe, ordained Dick a priest. Mother and Dad participated. While Dick was on retreat before the ceremony, there had been hours of long conversation with the other boys, the priests, the Archbishop—and the bottles of wine in festivity. By the day of the ceremony, all were one at heart. At the mass of the ordination, then, turning to descend with communion to my parents, the Archbishop tripped and the new white hosts, which Dick had co-consecrated, were strewn across the sanctuary floor. There were tense moments till the Sacred Breads-become-Christ were recovered, and the ceremony could proceed.
After traveling through France to Rome and back with Mother and Dad, Dick returned to Le Mans. He followed them later to the States, and said his first Mass in Our Mother of Sorrows Church in mid-August. The church was full of well-wishers, relatives and friends. The day was clear and bright. They gray-blue flagstones of the church floor, and of the sidewalk outside, remain fixed in my memory. I was master-of-ceremonies on the altar, putting to good use the knowledge I had acquired of such things. After Mass, the procession of visiting priests, pastor, and servers wound around to the new parish hall, where a lovely breakfast had been prepared. The mood was happy. The women wore summer outfits and flowers; flowers decked the room. Relatives who had not gathered for many months, even years, were present. There was great pride in the family. Dick, we knew, was a true priest. Compassionate, open, honest, thirsting after justice. Ben and Jim, who are suspicious of all outward piety, were also proud of him; for him, they could swallow their anti-clericalism.
To the despair of all of their children, Mother and Dad insisted on calling Dick “Father Richard,” and even tried to make us do it. Dick let them have their way, without open protest, though he made plain by ironical winks to us that it was only not to mar their joy.
At the reception, Dick shrugged off all ceremony and fuss. He was uniformly “present” to everyone who came to greet him in the receiving line; he gave of himself, effortlessly. His chalice, a tiny silver one modeled after a tenth-century chalice he had seen in a museum, was as honest, solid, and traditional as his own personality. He was not a “regular guy.” He was trying to restore in himself a long tradition. He hoped it would shape him in such a way that he would only need to be himself for it to speak. There was no gimmick to his affability. He was himself.
While he was still in Le Mans, Dick had written several poems for Colloquium, the international student publication of the Holy Cross Fathers. One of them seems especially revealing.
I AM NO LAZY LOVER
I am no lazy lover
With sweeping
grandeurs
of small talk. Words, you discover,
are passing; love endures.
About the Author
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He wishes to express his indebtedness to his sister, Mary Ann Novak, for her tireless researches, which have uncovered many heretofore unknown facts.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (15) | Leave a comment
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David Govett| 12.24.08 @ 11:38AM
Perhaps you are starting a tradition by telling a Christmas Eve murder story. Whatever next, I wonder.
Matthew M.| 12.24.08 @ 12:18PM
David, it is said that the wood that cradled Christ in the manger was the wood of the cross upon which he was crucified. This story is a sobering balance to an overly sentimentalized Christmas.
Ken| 12.24.08 @ 6:41PM
A tale of family loss, set against the hope and glory that is Christmas. You can't expect people like Paddy or David G. to understand or even appreciate such a story. In their world, personal sacrifice is anathema to them. It is for people such as Paddy and David G. that we should pray. Merry Christmas.
David Govett| 12.24.08 @ 10:36PM
Ken: You evidently derive satisfaction from flaming complete strangers on the Web. If indeed you are as callow as your behavior evinces, experience probably will remedy your boorishness. If not, not. In either event, please consider behaving civilly toward your fellow humans, even though they are not you.
wanda keith | 12.24.08 @ 11:05PM
Mr. Novak,
Thank you so much for sharing your sad, yet beautiful story. It is clear your family has many happy memories of your brother. The world is poorer for having lost him.
Stephen Eakin| 12.25.08 @ 4:18AM
Mr Novak
I was educated by the Dominicans, the Christian Brothers and the Jesuits.
There were a few loonies in all those groups, but the majority were straight up and down, with problems, as described about your brother.
I am a better person to having been through the system. It didn't scar me. It made me a better person (for which I am truely thankful).
We are Anglo-Celtic stock full of Catholics, Anglicans, Hueguenots, Presbyterians, Welsh, Maronite Lebanese, left and right Oz's, and the only punch-up's (metaphorically) are are birthday
parties, weddings, christenings and funerals.
Why can't other groups accept the way that we do it?
Our story is the story of your family.
We have been so fortunate that we have not had to have undergone your family's bereavement.
We just have a refeeeeend punch up because of our Celtic female backround.
Our attitude is that you do your own thing. Your are on your own from the time you pop.
However, in our family there are squillions of
rellos to provide support.
Is this not the reason why God invented the extended family?
God works in misterious ways.
'Tis a pity that your brother was not here to listen to such a brilliant eulogy.
lillith| 12.26.08 @ 8:01PM
Father Richard gave his life doing what he knew he needed to do.
We are lesser in the lose, but he is in a better place.
My your family receive the peace the passing understanding.
L
Peregrinus| 12.26.08 @ 8:02PM
I write this from a place just a few miles from Stonehill, and, like Mike and Dick, as someone who, in "the old days," went very young to the seminary of an Order that drew into Community the most diverse group of individuals and made us a remarkable, if somewhat "weird" family of brothers who, across the years and miles and myriad changes are still in touch today (thanks to email and the Internet!).
The week of the Christmas Octave features in the liturgical calendar, the Saints who are dubbed the "comites Christi," the companions of Christ, a royal retinue for the newborn King, Saints who suffered: Stephen, John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents, Thomas Becket.
What a worthy addition to that procession your brother Dick is, Mike! Thanks to you - and to your sister - for letting us share the story.
And, as TS Eliot wrote of one of those Christmas Saints in his Murder in the Cathedral: "It is this which forever renews the world, though it is forever denied. For wherever a martyr has shed his blood, there is holy ground, and the holiness shall not depart from it."
May his intercession help bring peace to the land and people he loved - and to ours!
Tim Allen| 1.9.09 @ 7:27PM
A sacred thing, this story. I am reluctant to even slightly touch it with comments, so I'll simply say thank you, Mr. Novak.
Irving M.Levine| 1.12.09 @ 10:19PM
Friend Michael. What a moving and fascinating tribute to a brother long gone but well remembered Once again, in our episodic history of knowing one another, I owe you gratitude for sharing from a rich Catholic life to this unreconstructed, but sober liberal who reads you with occasional disagreement but with abiding affection .
G| 1.28.09 @ 7:47PM
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Angela V. McDonnell| 2.26.09 @ 2:02PM
Dear Mr. Novak,
I am Johnstown Catholic High School classmate of Dick's.
I talked with your Dad once when he called to ask me to organize with him a reception for Dick after his ordination. I was sorry that I could not help, as I had recently had a third child.
Later, the news of Dick's slaying was too sad.
His was a unique personality; many of us knew him in such different ways. I enjoyed his droll sense of humor; I saw him as laidback, carefree. I was in many classes with him, he seemed always to be prepared.
Angela v. McDonnell
guo | 7.1.10 @ 5:06AM
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