‘I’ll be there!’ - Chris Gleeson SJ

During the last fifteen months, our Toowong Jesuit community has lost two of its greats.

In May 2009, Norbert Olsen died rather suddenly without our being able to wish him ‘God speed’ on the journey, and almost a year to the day later John Drury returned home, but this time well and truly farewelled beforehand by many of his friends. Both of them I had known for over fifty years since my school days in Melbourne, and both left different, yet significant footprints in my life. Norbert had his space last year, but now it is John’s turn to come under the writer’s spotlight.

I first met John Drury when I was a fresh-faced Year 11 student at Xavier College in Melbourne in 1959. The Xavier First XI, for which I had been prepared by the capable and shrewd Under-15 coaching of none other than Toowong parish priest, Peter Bernard Quin sj, had travelled to Sydney for the annual Easter cricket game against our Jesuit brother school, St Ignatius’ College Riverview, where John was the First Division Prefect, Master-in-Charge of 300 boarders, and sportsmaster.

He was also a wily coach of their first eleven, and our own coach, the famous Joe Plant, had warned us to refuse any invitation from Father Drury to accompany him on a circuit of the gymnasium prior to the game. It was no accident that the Riverview students called John ‘Jack the Man’. The invitation was duly offered, but being too polite to refuse, our tender Melbourne bodies were exposed to all sorts of exhausting physical jerks by the super fit and very disciplined John Drury sj. As I reminded him years later, the ploy failed, and Xavier returned to Melbourne with an outright victory over our Riverview colleagues. He would suggest that the event was a figment of my very fertile imagination.

In the last few weeks of John’s life at Canossa, he grew weaker by the day and conversations with him were no longer a possibility. On the weekend before he died, however, two members of his CLC group visited him and Ann Hoare, our Faber Centre administration manager, wrote movingly of their time with John to our local Jesuit Superior, Father John Reilly:

Ros and I went to see John Drury again yesterday. He opened his eyes briefly when we arrived and then lapsed back into sleep. I held his hand as we said the rosary and then we decided on a second time. When we had completed this, Ros asked would we say it a third time and I said ‘Why not?’

Half way through it Grace, the registered nurse, came in and turned on the light. He opened his eyes and smiled at us. It was a real smile of recognition too, and we started talking to him. Ros told him we were having a CLC meeting in the evening and I asked if he would like me to pick him up. He looked at me and said ‘What time?’ I said the usual time of 7.30 pm and he said ‘I’ll be there’. We lit a candle for him at our meeting and knew that he was there with us, in spirit, celebrating Pentecost. A very emotional time for us.

‘I’ll be there.’ Availability is such a God-like quality. Indeed, there is a saying from the Talmud which suggests that God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. Availability, of course, is much more than a physical presence. To be fully available, is to offer ‘real presence’ - to set aside all other claims and urgencies in order to be fully present to another person without measuring time. It is to listen to the words behind the words, to hear also what is not being said in a conversation. Availability that flows from such ‘real presence’ can provide great healing. We can all be healers.

Those three words ‘I’ll be there’ capture beautifully the life of John Drury. During the last thirty years or so of his ministry of the Spiritual Exercises in Queensland, he was utterly available to hundreds of people seeking his spiritual direction.

In my two years with him at Toowong, our dinner table conversations about The Bill, the Wallabies, the vagaries of the Australian cricket team, the foibles and free spirit of the parish priest, would be constantly interrupted by the ringing of the front door bell by people wanting and needing his wise counsel. John had time always for the broken reed. ‘God is interruption’, the German theologian J. B. Metz once said, and John Drury not only believed that but acted on it faithfully.

When the Faber Centre of Ignatian Spirituality was launched in August 2006, at the ACU Banyo campus, some 300 people came to hear Father Richard Leonard sj talk about the media and Ignatian spirituality. While it was a great night with the customarily splendid address by Richard, it was also effectively a celebration of John Drury’s ministry of the Spiritual Exercises throughout Queensland and, indeed, Oceania.

It was quite extraordinary to meet on that occasion so many people who told us that John had accompanied them through the full Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Resplendent in his grey suit and Jesuit Province tie, John enjoyed himself thoroughly that night amongst so many of his friends. It must have been of great comfort to him to know that he, together with his dear friends Sr Delphine O’Shea mss and John Borger, had built such a strong platform for the ministry of the Exercises that would continue to thrive long into the future through the Faber Centre network.

John Drury has been there for many people for many years. Through his wonderful legacy he will continue to be there for many more. Farewell, John, for now.