Homily at Requiem Mass for Fr Charles Owen CP

Fr Charles Owen CP

Fr Nicholas Postlethwaite gave the following homily at the funeral of Fr Charles Owen CP on 21st April 2017.

Music has always been important to Father Charles. On 20th March shortly before he died, Charles telephoned me to suggest we listen together to a Radio 3 music programme. It was one of his favourite composers: Edward Elgar’s musical setting of the poem by Cardinal Newman - The Dream of Gerontius. It begins with his friends praying for Gerontius as he is dying. The music carries him through the moment of his death as he journeys “beyond” in company with his Guardian Angel. The climax in the music comes when choirs of angels burst into a great song of adoration – “Praise to the Holiest in the Heights and in the Depths be praised.”

We are gathered in a church too small to hold all who would like to share this Requiem. We gather to thank God for the gift of a brother and dear friend - Father Charles Owen. We mourn his loss as we too sing our hymns of Praise to the Holiest and to thank God for the love – for the inspiration –for the encouragement – for all the smiles and laughter –given us by Charles. We come to pray for him and to celebrate all that God so wonderfully achieved through of this truly great man.

Canterbury is special in history. It is where Gospel seeds were first sown in England. Down the centuries, since then the seeds spread and flowered throughout the land. Jesus solemnly tells us that unless a seed dies, it remains only a grain: but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. Canterbury is where Charles lived out his final weeks of life and where on 8th April he died. We come to mourn and to celebrate someone in whose life a Gospel seed was planted and flowered wonderfully.

We will treasure memories of final conversations with Charles. On my last visit we talked of old times and laughed as he planned watching Cheltenham races on TV the next day. Before leaving he told me he trusted me to speak on his behalf at this Mass and gave me a message to pass on to you. “Tell everyone” he said “I know you will all be sad – you my own family –especially you Barbara my dear big sister who has been my constant companion since the day I was born – as well as you John my brother. You too, my Passionist brothers will be sad - especially you Patrick – we travelled the road together from the beginning – thank you for caring for me to the end.”

He continued: “Say Thank you to all my good friends come from near and far to be at my Requiem. Thank you, not just for coming today but more especially for your love and friendship shared down the years and particularly over these last weeks. Tell everyone it was your love and friendship that kept me strong and able to prepare peacefully for my death. “Through your tears today, please remember all those times when we were smiling together. Remember those fits of laughter – usually you laughing at me because of something silly I had said or done! Ask everyone to make these memories our Mass offerings – carry them as gifts with bread and wine to the altar –returned to God in thanksgiving from us all for blessings shared as we wandered our ways together. As I reach the end of my life I realise more than ever before just how much I – and all of us - have to be grateful to God for.”

I shall not forget my last conversation. Leaving I found myself in tears. I suspect I may not have been the only friend feeling that as we said goodbye.

Something extraordinary and wonderful seemed to be happening in the Pilgrim Hospice where Charles was so well cared for. Despite his increasing weakness as his body was failing, the paradox was that Charles seemed to be growing in spiritual stature as he approached the end. How do we explain this apparent paradox?

In his final instruction Charles points to an answer: “I have talked to Father Mark” he told me “about the music and hymns I want for my Requiem. Please ask Deacon Barry to read the Gospel with St Luke’s story of Jesus and the children. I know it is not a Gospel used at funerals - but it means everything I believe and how I want to be remembered.”

We have done as you asked, Charles! We stood together to listen to the proclamation of this Gospel story you requested of just three simple sentences: 1) – children trying to come close to Jesus: 2) – disciples as self-appointed officious organisers blocking them: 3) – Jesus insisting: “Get out of their way: let the children come to me”.

Charles chose this deceptively simple Gospel because it represents his deepest intuition about the mystery who is God. As the years passed Charles has learned to listen ever more attentively to the sound of God’s music playing in his unique self. He has penetrated below the surface and gone to the heart of this deceptively simple story. Learning to appreciate God’s music in his own life he learned also to rejoice and witness it equally in every man, in every woman and especially in every child he would meet along life’s path. The miracle unfolding in a Canterbury Hospice before his death was the music of God reaching its climax and final resolution in the life of our brother and friend, Father Charles. As T S Eliot explains it:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive back where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

But the journey on which Charles had embarked which eventually brought him gospel wisdom was a long and tortuous one. Often he found his path hard and cold.

To join a religious community or train for priesthood in our mid twentieth century Church meant facing some intimidating institutional structures. In the early 1950s a vulnerable eleven year old Philip Owen found himself in Blythe Hall the Passionist junior seminary. Looking back later, he would often share with us something of the emotional anguish experienced in those early years. He was living apart from family and trying to cope in a boarding school environment with strict institutional demands of that era. In his novitiate in 1956 he changed from his baptismal name to become Charles. After taking Passionist vows in 1957 he spent seven years studying philosophy and theology in the rural setting of Minsteracres.

Reflecting on all those early years Charles was disappointed that his passage from boyhood through adolescence into early adulthood did not seem to provide him with the key to unlock his deepest hopes.

Charles was ordained a Passionist priest in 1964.

Three years ago some may remember a joyful Golden Jubilee celebration when this Church was again full as we congratulated Charles and Father Patrick on their combined 100 years of faithful priestly ministry. It was as a priest he began to find more freedom from too constraining institutional structures. Charles began to breathe more freely. Slowly and very tentatively, he began to gain in confidence looking for the key to Gospel wisdom for which he was searching.

Over more than fifty years as a priest, Charles has served in practically every Passionist parish and communities: St Non’s, Minsteracres, Ilkley, and Broadway - his happy years in St Joseph’s Highgate and most importantly his final happy years here in Herne Bay. The fields Charles plunged into with his zest for life and enthusiasm were ready for the harvest.

It had not been an easy journey. Often he told us he felt like running away. But he didn’t. He kept on going. He lived out the words of a poem: “There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. While you hold it you can't get lost…..You don't ever let go of the thread. Charles never let go of his thread. And in that last conversation together he told me to tell you that the strength he found to keep going till the very end came from– ALL OF YOU – FROM YOU AND ALL THOSE OTHER FRIENDS WE ARE REPRESENTING HERE TODAY.

His room in the Hospice was filled cards you sent him. Each was a consolation to him. On that last visit he pointed to one and asked me bring it over so he could show me to me. It was a large, folded homemade card. It was sent by the children and their teacher from St Mary’s School community into which Charles had felt so welcomed. Opening it, he showed me inside the dozens of personal drawings and messages in which each child told him how much they loved him and how much he was missed. For me it was a wonderfully privileged moment with him.

Charles had found the key to unlock God’s music within his soul. It was concerto music in which the sound of his individual self was in harmony with the voices of all those he loved and who loved him in their turn. He devoted his life to encouraging all his friends – and especially his friends who are children – to be confident in exploring our own unique journeys into human mystery. Whether visiting classrooms, standing at school gates, being with families, sharing with those who are grieving, or rejoicing at weddings, sitting at a hospital bedside or walking to the graveside with those who mourn Charles message would always be the same: listen for the sound of God’s deep music in your own humanity. He encourages us all: let the child in all of you run free to search for and come near to Jesus. Rid ourselves, our church and our world from artificial barriers that restrict what it means to be human then we will know we are coming closer to the gate leading into God’s Kingdom.

Thank you Charles for being you. Thank you for sharing your love with us. You remind us that: “With God on our side, who can be against us?” Our prayer for you now is that you are singing, not Mahler in the Albert Hall, but with the choir of angles in their triumphant hymn: Praise to the Holiest in the Heights.

Eternal rest grant unto our brother Charles O Lord and may our good friend rest in peace.

See also Fr Charles' obituary: www.indcatholicnews.com/news/32396