In preparing a eulogy for Geoff’s Vigil Mass at Hawthorn, I was reminded of that marvellous passage from the novel Zorba the Greek where Zorba is saying, ‘One day when I was a child, an old man took me on his knee and placed his hand on my head as if he were giving me a blessing. "Alexis", he said, "I’m going to tell you a secret. You are too small to understand now, but you will understand when you are bigger. Listen, little one. Neither the seven storeys of Heaven nor the seven storeys of earth are enough to contain God, but a person’s heart can contain God. So, be careful, Alexis—and my blessing be with you—never to wound another person’s heart".’
To me, Geoffrey James was a person of extraordinary heart—a heart that could easily contain God and those countless people, often caught in grief and tragedy, for whom he cared so generously. I recall with affection his love for his priesthood and the Eucharist, his earthiness and mischievous sense of humour, his enigmatic blend of the rebel and the feisty conservative.
Threading
its way through all these qualities, however, was his capacity to stand
alongside and support people in crisis. His compassion, his large-heartedness,
his deft pastoral touch, his honesty, stamped him as someone without peer
as a companion and guide in the tragedies of life. With great confidence
that he now enjoys the fullness of life in the God he loved so much, I
could bid Geoffrey ‘Adieu’ with those wonderfully intimate words
borrowed from another place: ‘Goodbye, Geoffrey, for now’.
‘For now.’ We Christians believe that death is a temporary parting only. Indeed, the Preface in one of the Masses for the Dead claims that ‘life at death is changed, not taken away’. It has been said many times that death is but a horizon and a horizon is only the limit of our seeing.
In this context it is worth trying to picture ourselves standing on a dock alongside one of those great old-time sailing vessels, with its sails folded, waiting for the wind. Suddenly a breeze comes up. When the captain senses the breeze as a forerunner of the necessary wind, he quickly orders the sails to be let down and sure enough the wind comes, catches the sails full force, and carries the ship away from the dock where we are standing.
Inevitably, someone on that dock is bound to say ‘Well, there she goes!’ And soon the mighty ship, laden with its crew and goods, is just a speck on the horizon before it disappears.
We are left standing on the dock quite alone. But on the other side of the ocean, people are standing in anticipation, and as that speck on the horizon becomes larger and larger they begin to cry something different. They are crying with joy, not abandonment. The cry is ‘Here she comes’. And at the landing there is welcome, joy, embracing, and celebration.
Just as we farewelled Geoffrey James with great sadness, we believe in faith that Jesus the Good Shepherd is waiting to greet him on the eternal shores. The cry is: ‘Here he comes. Welcome, Geoffrey. Welcome home’. Death is but a horizon, and a horizon is only as far as we can see.
There were many wonderful moments surrounding the celebrations of gratitude for Geoffrey’s life. While I was standing at the graveside with a dear friend of Geoff’s, Mercy Sister Barbara Broad from Adelaide, a beautiful little girl nestled alongside us with a fine bouquet of flowers. Her young mother, following close behind, said: ‘You are Barbara, aren’t you? Geoffrey often spoke of his love for you. These flowers are from Geoffrey to you’. Then mother and daughter withdrew hand in hand to merge with the crowd of friends standing around the Jesuit plot at Melbourne General Cemetery.
‘For now.’ St John Chrysostom said once, ‘Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now forever wherever we are’. Similarly, in Hallowed Ground, Thomas Campbell wrote: ‘To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die’. Death might end a life, but never a relationship.
I am sure that Geoffrey James would have resonated with the sentiments behind Dr Johnson’s famous words that ‘the prospect of being hanged in the morning wonderfully concentrates the mind’. Geoff often spoke about death and cared for people struggling with its sad and tragic circumstances.
Yet not even Geoffrey in his most fertile imaginings could have dreamt of his being included in the illustrious company of sporting giants like Don Bradman, Jack Dyer, and Bobby Rose. Referring to the recent death of Australian Rules Football hero, Jack Dyer, Melbourne Age reporter Greg Baum wrote:
‘There was another funeral this week, for priest, confidant and philosopher Father Geoff James, who never set foot on a professional sports field, but on whose account a record crowd came to his church in Hawthorn on Thursday. In it, a eulogist said that long after the memories of what Father James looked like, said and did had faded, what would endure was "how he made people feel". It is an epitaph most could live with for a long, long time.’
Goodbye, Geoffrey, for now.
Christopher Gleeson SJ
