Pascal Schaller, OFM Cap

Transcription

1 Pascal Schaller, OFM Cap Our brother, Pascal Schaller, OFM Cap., peacefully went to the Lord on Thursday, February 24, 2005, at Vincentian Home, Pittsburgh, PA, where he had been a resident since He always shunned attention (though he loved nothing more than friends around him to lighten the days and share "deep" thoughts). What follows is a small tribute to this man who was a prolific poet, a consummate artist and an eccentric lover of all Art, human and divine. What follows is a homily he had originally written in 2000, expecting that his death was near (and also never wanting to leave to someone else, the last word on his life). It was read by our brother Leon Leitem, OFM Cap., at his funeral Mass on Monday, February 28: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friend. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father." My dear friends, Hearing the quotation just read from St. John's Gospel, we should keep our Faith in mind and be aware that these were words of the Son of God. Jesus is God speaking. To those gathered around Him that last supper the night before He died among the most touching words were: "I no longer call you servants; I called you friends." Our good God wants us to see Himself as our Friend. Friend is such a wonderful word! When the Son of God used it as He did, He sanctified and consecrated the word for us in whatever language we speak. The word friend is a generic, a cover-all word for an individual who is involved in a good and noble, and sometimes an exalted love relationship. Such is the case whether it be between teacher and student, health care giver and patient, counselor and client, between spouses, between parent and child, even between God and man.

2 Friendship is a tie that somehow equalizes friends: instead of vertical it is horizontal, putting friends upon an equal footing. Instead of arising from responsibility, it springs from mutual admiration and regard. With a mind in search of beautiful truth, it knows the persons' merits whom it sees. With increasing warmth, it freely chooses moving in their direction. That is love. Should there be obligation and commitment, they too emerge not by some rigid order from without but from a freely chosen bonding deep within. That is the love of friendship. It is encouraging and reassuring to recall that at His last Supper, Jesus who is Son of God, our Creator, chose to call us friends. Friend is a charmingly profound word with implications even more profound. It teaches fulfillment of our good God's second great commandment: that welove our neighbor as ourselves. That includes us all, even those we sometimes think are enemies. They too are creatures of our good and loving Father in heaven, brothers and sisters in our family that is also His on earth. Friend has been used as a word to describe a person who is like another self, one we treat the way we wish another would be treating us -- with all the understanding, sensitivity and warmth, with generous and selfless kindness, and support that is constant, loyal, full to the brim with love. These are things we learn from friendship; then, we make some input to it of our own. Once we learn the way to love the friends we see, we come to know the way to love our good God whom we cannot see. We are comfortable when present with Him in our thoughts and prayers; we are happy pleasing Him by doing things we know He wants and in the ways He wants them done; we read with joy the written words of Scripture that the Holy Spirit has inspired and listen with interest to spoken ones His representatives still teach. It is thus we show we love Him and keep His greatest and His first command to love Him most, above all else, with all we have and are. These, dear friends, are things I learned from you, like lovely wrap around the fragrant gifts of your own dear friendly selves.

3 Here let me say I am sorry and I ask forgiveness for however guilty my own narrow self has been for having kept at bay some friendship and, I forgive in others any guilt not mine to bear. Now all that is left for me to offer you are heartfelt thank you's and the warm recall of our precious memories. My farewell wish and prayers are that you keep on making new good friends of the sort that we have been. Match their love for you with grateful love for them. Learn to spread your love to others who may seem least likely that they be your friends. If my wish come true and my prayer be heard, your journey will be happier beside the unseen, greatest, and our dearest Friend along the road to where our Father, the friendliest of all, is awaiting us at Home. A Chronology Fr. Pascal was forever at the computer, keeping data, doing translations, taking notes. He was quite taken with "the beast," as he called it. Here's a Chronology of his life that he had put together in 1999, prior to his residence at Vincentian Home in Pittsburgh where he lived out the final years of his life Apr 24 Arrival on Planet Earth 1933 Sep Pittsburgh, Kindergarten 1930 Sep St. Walburga 1st grade 1936 Sep Corpus Christi 7th grade 1938 Sep Central Cath. HS frsh May 30 Mother died 1939 Sep Herman, St. Fidelis 1944 Fall Fenestration 1945 July Cumberland (novitiate) 1946 July 14 Profession as a Capuchin, Kansas 1948 July DC Cap. Coll. (theology) 1951 Aug 28 Ordination 1952 Sep DC CU Library School 1953 Sep Herman Seminary (teach.) '60s Two stapeoplasties 1970 July DC Cap. Coll. (libr. WTC) 1975 May Herman Seminary (teach.) 1979 May St. Francis Chaplaincy 1985 Dec 28 Dad died 1986 June Left S. Francis 1987 Mar Began Oakland VA Chaplaincy

4 1987 Fall Began Aspinwall VA Chaplaincy 1988 Spring Added Hiland VA 1990 Mar 1 Moved to Swissvale 1990 Aug 1 Moved to Brookline 1998 Apr 2 Last day at VA This picture was taken for the campaign of the National Retirement Fund for Religious which focused on our Province in The picture was shot at Vincentian Home and includes Br. David Nestler, OFM Cap., Novice Director (l) and Urbano Vázquez, OFM Cap. (center), now stationed in Washington, DC. Quotes Here are some of Pascal's favorite quotes which he had recorded to inspire himself - and us Jesus didn't have to and wasn't trying to, come down from the cross to prove who he was to his friends or even the Devil. They were asking the wrong questions about what he was doing there.(1) Their questions by-passed the point of everything he had done. There was no way he could explain in their terms then what we still have understanding now about the way his mind thinks. (Isaias quoted God as saying: your thoughts are not my thoughts; nor your ways, mine. Is. 55:8,9). But he hinted at his mind with some of the last words he spoke before he breathed his last; beyond that, He was silent and seemingly did not answer them at all. Cfr. Capon's Third Peacock, p.45. "Why in God's name won't you show up? [Prove yourself the {Son of} God.!] And the answer came back as supremely unsatisfying as ever: To show up would be to come in your name, not mine. O show, then. And, of course, no answer. ibid, p.45. Suffering

5 To suffer and not to die. -- Teresa of Avila "If I never get to heaven, I'll be the only one in hell who loves You." -- Therese of Lisieaux The proof of love is to suffer for the one you love. -- Padre Pio There's so much good in the worst of us And so much bad in the best of us There's just no reason for any of us To fuss at the faults of the rest of us. Anonymous I walked a mile with pleasure, She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But, oh, the things I learned When sorrow walked with me. Anonymous [PERSONAL THOUGHTS] The best you gave me were not the material things such as money, favors, help. What I enjoyed most from you was your company, your presence. You were interested in me, pleasant; I learned things from you, you inspired me on occasions, the way you thought was a pleasure in its own right, you were gracious, patient, kind, These are all spiritual things. Know that there's always something new to learn when the world turns round to face another day that also sheds some light for understanding mysteries of the dark side of the one it left behind Sit on top of Your shell of sorrows. It's a vantage point for viewing much that's happy and to smile about to keep You from crawling back in just to lick your wounds

6 Our love of God is similar to the way we love our friends. He is absolute goodness. His material creation is fabulous to behold. The world he made for us to be lived in, that has provided for our needs since he first planted us on this planet. What we have done with it with our God-given intelligent is even more remarkable, but is still material. But the real and greatest goodness He has shown is beyond even all that. He has loved us. He sent His Son in our human nature to suffer and died a horrible death to regain for us the union with Himself that we had lost and for which He had made us in the first place. And all the wonderful spiritual things we experience with friends here on earth we will experience with Him forever in Heaven to beyond the nth degree not for passing moments so that we have to wait a while for the return of such ongoing-ly forever, and improving as it goes and never ending. Such is heaven with our good God the personification of all goodness, that is enjoyable because it is a mutual exchange with the most love in and most lovable Trinity of persons. 1 may The Holy Spirit seems to be getting through to me in my old age, helping me what ancient Greeks so wisely promoted: Know yourself. I keep finding out things about myself I should have learned long long ago. Thank you, wise and good dear Spirit of Holiness! A Poem Finally, Pascal was a poet who loved to muse and express his spirit in the beauty of words. He worked long and hard at them, and they were never really "finished." This is one of his poems (we have no idea if it was revised later!).

7 CENTURY PLANTS (A Love Story) flowers grow seeds die and waken deep sown in the dark await a while the sprouting time then struggle up for stalking upward even more they spread to leafing for their drinking in the sun and rain and gather energies for the throbbing budding time and only then they burst to blooming in a rhythmic movement gone unseen with all their loveliness not merely happening the flowers slowly grow they heard their Gardener well; before you were I loved you in my mind I planted you and whispered you My secrets how to grow so slowly and with care for you to share in your becoming beautiful how good it is you are I love you now I love you dearly and I love you much the long, long while I wait both with and for you as you grow await that rapturous endless moment of our loving face to face Pascal Schaller, OFM Cap