I said goodbye to a dear friend today.
We met at daily mass a few years back. I had seen him there
for many years before I had ever stumbled on any of his works or writings. Most
of what he spent his time doing with his whole life would have gone way over my
head anyway, so it didn’t really matter that I didn’t understand. But
friendship is a funny thing. It often looks past the things everyone else gets
stuck on. My friendship with Germain was like that.
I’m not sure how the most deliberate, clear-thinking, man on
the planet ever wound up calling this home-schooling mother of ten children a
close friend, but in fact, it’s true. The times I spent with Germain were
special and treasured. Our lives were as opposite to one another as possible
but we found common ground on many levels and I believe we had an understanding
of the heart.
It came about in a strange way when I look back. Having decided
to make better use of my summer reading a few years ago, I began researching
the internet for good Catholic substance. I remember having typed in a question
about Catholic marriage and finding an article that spoke to me so clearly and
authoritatively that I stopped midway to find the author. It was Germain
Grisez. That afternoon I poured over his website, The Way of the Lord Jesus (
http://www.twotlj.org/) and felt like I had
just stumbled upon a spiritual gold mine. I kept stopping to ponder that I had
seen him in church every day for so long, yet had never known what was there,
below the surface. By the end of the day I knew I was going to have to speak
with him in person.
The next day after mass, I approached him outside of the
chapel. I told him I had found his website and that I loved his work. The
following day he asked me to come to his office over in Bradley Hall hidden
away in a back corner. We sat and chatted that afternoon about my life, his
life, and his writings. He gave me a copy of Personal Vocation and signed it for me. I knew that afternoon I had
met someone important in my life. I finished the book in a few hours and wanted
more.
And so our friendship began; me, asking a million questions
and Germain smiling and wondering why in the world a housewife from down the
road with almost no education at all was interested in what he had to say. He
was patient with me and often laughed at how my questions took their own path
into other areas of life. I trusted him immediately and told him if he ever
needed anything I was nearby with my small army of a family to help him out. I
doubted he ever would.
One afternoon, he did need me. The phone rang and he was asking for just
that. He needed a ride somewhere and, as it turned out, I was not available (I
almost wept knowing I was missing this opportunity to pick his brain about faith
and life). My good husband offered to do the driving instead, knowing I was
completely taken with Germain. So off Fred and my son John-Paul went to spend
an afternoon chauffeuring. Fred and John-Paul came home having hit it off with
Germain as well. Fred did better than I had by inviting him to dinner. I
couldn’t quite imagine how Germain was going to manage dinner at my house with
all my kids around but I left that piece to God. It’s a good thing I did,
because my older boys still talk about those conversations with him around the
dinner table, which felt like small sermons on how to find Gods will in your
life and follow it.
When he told me he would be moving from Emmitsburg to
Pennsylvania, I felt my heart sink a little. He wrote to me to ask if Fred and
I would come to help him figure out his building design for his new living
space in his son Paul’s house. I was crafty enough to make a deal with him. I
told him Fred and I would come over and talk about building, if he would find
time to talk to us about heaven. So it went that way for a few months. Fred and
I sitting with him to go over his designs, and then another evening drinking
limeade (he loved limeade and I’ll never drink it again without thinking of him)
while sitting at his house talking about citizenship in heaven.
My own house is a chaotic, frenetic mess of energy all the
time. It’s noisy, messy, piles of books and laundry baskets splattered
everywhere you look. Germain’s house was ordered, and peaceful and neat. I
could feel my blood pressure drop just walking through the door. By the time I
would leave at night, it would be as if I’d been on a weeklong retreat. He
didn’t just live an orderly life, he brought order to the life of a fallen
world. His thinking was clear and his explanations clearer. If I got stuck on
some troublesome question arising within the church, as seems so often to today,
he’d say “Don’t worry Ellie, that’s not
necessary for you to worry about, God hasn’t given you that problem to work on
so you just focus on what he’s asked of you.” I would sometimes remark to Fred,
“Do you realize Germain has done more with his life then several thousand men
have done with their own?” What was more remarkable to me was how he did so
with such a slow and deliberate approach. He knew he wasn’t great at
relationships and friendships, and he knew people sometimes misunderstand him
as a consequence. He also was quick to give credit to others for their
contributions to his work over the years. Early on he wrote to me “You should
take into account that most of what I’ve published has benefited greatly from
the help of many able and good people. So the person you encounter in my
writing is not the usual me—it’s someone quite a bit better than the usual me,
not that I want to pretend to be better than I am, but that I want to be a
better announcer of the truth of the gospel than I ever could be by myself.” This is true
humility.
He was the quintessential tortoise in the tortoise and the
hare story. His slow and steady progress on any work he took on, wound up
becoming an avalanche of truth that benefitted the mystical body of Christ. His
thinking will shape the church for years to come. Who can say that of
themselves?
Perhaps my favorite memory of Germain comes though when he
asked me one day to help him pack up his files in his office. He said he needed
some good strong hands to do the work, and wondered if I might bring along one
of my boys. My son Matthew got the honor
for those days. When we arrived he showed me a wall of file cabinets. All
alphabetized. He then showed me a stack of boxes and packing tape. We had to
put the boxes together first then makes notes of what files were getting put
in, then pack and tape them, number them, and add the address label.
After one box I knew I had to take over. The work simply
wouldn’t get done without a huge effort on my part. He told me when I was
taping a box that I had put the tape on wrinkled, I looked at him and said
“Yes, Germain, it will all be wrinkled from now on, but you’ll have this mostly
done when I leave here today and then you’ll be happy.” He sort of took a deep
breath and then nodded in agreement. So
Matt and I took over the work and he catalogued from his computer. That day he
started calling me “his speedy friend”.
Each file I opened contained hand written letters from
Bishops, Popes, Cardinals, cardinals-not-quite-yet-popes, theologians, philosophers
and the most important thinking minds of this century. Germain would have both the
letter, and his response included in the file along with any documentation. If
you emailed him he’d print out the email before answering your question and
then include his response and file it away. I wondered that day if there was
anyone in the church that hadn’t written to Germain and asked his advice at
some point in time. What was more striking was that he replied to each and
every question with care and attention. If you asked him a question, he felt
you deserved the attention of his answer and it was always thoughtful and
cordial both.
At one point when he and Matt took a short break, I found
myself unable to leave the room and instead stood quietly praying in front of a
wall of file cabinets with the distinct feeling I had my ear pressed closely
upon the heart of the living breathing church. It was all there, the history of
the mystical body hidden back in some obscure corner office no one had any idea
existed. It was so clearly Gods way to do this. To hide this prized jewel in
obscurity. We packed 13 boxes together out of a total of 30 that eventually
were sent to Notre Dame for archiving. He laughingly wrote to me later that
night to let me know he realized he had really needed me that day, as after I
had left it took him 3 hours to pack the next 2 boxes alone. The tortoise and
the hare.
I thought of
Germain’s advice not to worry about the church and how he told me it wasn’t Gods
work for me to have to figure these questions out. Of course I realized that day
he knew that because it was his work.
It was the work God gave him to do over the course of a lifetime. He wife,
Jeanette knew this too and was so humble and good that she worked tirelessly
beside him until her death in 2005. He missed her desperately. He thought for the church, he worked for the
church, he collaborated with other great thinkers for the church, and he fought
for the church. He was so filled and focused on truth that he didn’t worry about
who he might offend by it, so long as he pleased God with it.
He was afraid of no one, and spoke his mind, but he also was
quick to point out even when someone has done or said something wrong, we
mustn’t judge them, only their words and actions. He was full of mercy in that
way. He knew that Truth was a strong enough weapon to fight anything that came at
it and didn’t need any bravado.
When moving day finally came, Fred and I sat with him the
night before as he drank a glass of wine and let a few tears spill out as he
closed the door on a chapter of so many years of his life. He promised to keep
in touch and he did. Fred and I visited him several times, the most recent this
past fall in November where we went out for Japanese food locally. He was so
happy and comfortable and well cared for with Paul and Linda that it never
occurred to me it would be the last time I saw him alive.
May all who follow in his footsteps be as brave and bold and
deliberate Germain. The world has lost a giant. Heaven has gained one.
