March 5, 2025
Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray
T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
Remembering Rev. John Laurence Donovan (May 27, 1927-March 5, 2019) on this Ash Wednesday, which is also the anniversary of his death.
Dust thou art…
On Septemer 4, 1975, in a letter to me while assisting in the capacity of a Catholic priest and probation officer in the varigated human circumstances of the West Roxbury Municipal District Court, he reminded me of the Scholastic axiom, “Whatever is received, is received in the manner of the receiver “(Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur). It was another way of telling me, as he was trying to tell himself, not to let those critical of him bother him and that people are open to anything you say to them in the way of guidance or advice only to the degree they are disposed to receive such advice or guidance. He –like all of us — probably found himself speaking to brick walls on occasion — but also having the joy of seeing people, formerly bricked up in their personal very negative predilections, come around to right reason.
I guess we hope we ourselves will always come around to right reason. Fr. John was always working on me in that regard.
On November 23, 1980, he wrote me in Florida saying, “a week ago Monday we laid to rest our dear friend Fr. Robert David O’Brien. he left us quite suddenly…I am sure he is with God. He loved to quote from the life of Cardinal Voughan of Westminster who when he was dying was approached by his secretary who inquired how he felt. He answered, ‘I feel like an English schoolboy going down for the holidays.’ To which I say, blessed the man who views his leaving this world as going home.”
J.L.,as those close to him also liked to call him, went home to God on this date six years ago just shy of his 92nd birthday.
Requiescat in Pacem.
And in the spirit of the river, spirit of the sea
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee
T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
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