Sorry I Missed You

I enjoy obituaries, not because I delight in reading of my fellow man shuffling off this mortal coil (although, depending on the man, that surely is a temptation), rather, they often shed light on those whom I previously knew little or nothing. Such is the case with this obituary for the Rev. Stanley L. Jaki (1924-2009) . I post a paragraph from it below, confident it will move you to read the whole thing.

Like his two surviving brothers, he was a Benedictine of the tenth-century Archabbey of Pannonhalma, where he lived through World War II, being ordained in 1948. After receiving a doctorate in theology in Rome, he came to the United States and taught in Pennsylvania, but that ended when he lost his voice after a tonsillectomy. His speech returned, unforgettably, a few years later, but the voice was raspy and must have been a trial to him. No longer able to teach, he studied at Fordham for a doctorate in physics with Victor Hess, who had received the Nobel Prize in 1936 for his discovery of cosmic rays. Then he founded, with six other Hungarian priests, a priory in Portola Valley, California, where he was bookkeeper from 1957 to 1960. He did further studies at Stanford and Princeton and went on to lecture in universities around the world, publishing some 40 books, including his brilliant Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh.

Now there is someone I would loved to have known. Deo volente, I shall.

(Thanks to Fr. Rutler.)