I remember when you brought this back from Ireland. Even for me it was an outrageous tie, and I consider it the gem of my collection. I wear it only for special occasions. And this is the best occasion for which I've ever worn it. The blue peacock with his iridescent green tail and orange eyes in the feathers is striking enough, but yet more striking is the message he conveys. It was commonly believed in the ancient Greco-Roman world that the flesh of the peacock did not rot on his death. Early Christians thus adopted the peacock as a symbol of immortality and Christian artists used it for centuries to proclaim their faith that at their death they would live on forever: "for those who believe in you, Lord, life is not taken away it is changed" said the old Mass for the Dead that you heard a thousand times in your childhood and seminary days. 

      And from a thousand conversations with you I know that was your faith. And now, there you are. Or here you are. You live now in the presence of God, and he is everywhere. You are closer to us now than we are to ourselves. We used to have to wait till we saw you to have a conversation with you--since notoriously you disliked voice-mail and e-mail-but now we can have a conversation with you anytime and anywhere. 

      I envy you, Phil. It is easy--effortless, now--for you to hold this all together--that is why they call it "grace." But it is so hard for us to bend our minds and feelings around the paradox: the you that we knew is now a pile of dust, yet the you that we loved is alive and well and happy and present to us forever. It takes strong faith to accept that paradox, and hope, and love, and then maybe even these are not enough for some of us to hold together that incredible tension across the boundaries of life and death. 

      But then, wasn't that you all over? Didn't you hold together the most incredible of paradoxes in your personality and your life with us? Maybe that is one of the reasons why many of us were attracted to you so powerfully. 

      Oh, you know what I mean. We all know, for instance, that you hated the principles of the Republican Party like the gates of hell, but the staunchest of Republicans was as welcome in your house as St. Patrick himself, and the strength of your political principles never interfered with the warmth of your human relations. If the devil himself showed up on your doorstep, you'd invite him in for a few beers and he'd leave feeling a little more kindly about human nature. 

     What a paradox you were as a parent and as a teacher. Scornful of modem theory and psychology, pugnaciously old-fashioned, rigorous, demanding, relentless in your expectations. 

Yet was anyone ever more devoted to his children and his students than you, Phil? Did anyone ever give more of himself to them? Was any one ever more supportive and encouraging and understanding, a rock of refuge in times of difficulty? I see a lot of faces in this crowd answering those questions, Phil, and you will recognize more than I can, who revere you as father, teacher, mentor, credible role model, and who have come from far and wide to say so. 

      People could think that you were a cynic, Phil, if they did not know you well. Everyone knew your loudly proclaimed loathing of bureaucracies, your distrust of government and dogmatic social theories, and the profound skepticism with which you viewed the administration of the university system. But those who saw you day in and day out knew how generously you invested yourself to make society work on the campus and in your community. They knew how passionately you believed in freedom and human dignity and social justice and how tirelessly you struggled for it. Yes, you were yet another paradox: you were a realistic idealist. Neither the campus nor the country has ever had a better citizen. 

      No Protestant reformer every castigated the Church more scathingly for arrogance or stupidity or un-Christian rigidity, yet few have loved the Church as much as you did, Phil. You were devoted to her because who you are was rooted in her best teachings, and few have given such a healthy example of what it means to live out the life of a Catholic Christian. 

      What a friend you were, Phil! Everyone here remembers the day he or she met you. You are hard to forget. For me, it was on a plane from Minneapolis, almost 23 years ago to the day, as we were coming to our job-interviews with the Foreign Languages department. Amid the sheepskin jackets and cowboy hats, you were the only person on the plane reading the New York Times. I asked you if I could have it when you were finished, and you asked me if I was heading for the University of Montana. We had a beer during a layover in the Billings airport, and thus began the friendship of a lifetime. 

      And you were as paradoxical as a friend as you were in every other aspect of your life: undiplomatic and blunt, honest, outrageously opinionated and adamant in your convictions, but a rock of faith and trust and hope and humor and kindness and acceptance to everyone who dealt with you. I will never see the likes of you again, Phil, and I think that I speak for many here today. 

      Maybe that is it. Maybe that is how you could hold it all together. Maybe it was because you took the most basic truths so seriously and held to the most fundamental values so unswervingly that you could look at the world with a twinkle of dare in your eye and laugh at whatever life held, because you knew it could be no threat to you. I wish I had your faith, your hope, your love. Thank you for sharing them with us. Your life on earth was a girl to us, Phil. We are all the richer for having known you. 

      And the beauty of it is that we can keep on knowing you. The conversation I began with you 23 years ago in the Billings airport, and the conversations all of us have had with you, need never end. I'll keep talking to you till the day I die. It will just be a little harder to hear your responding voice. For a while we'll have to use memory and imagination to fill in the gaps, but one day we will pick it up again face to face, and we will all join you at the last and biggest and best of all parties. 

      Deducant te andeli in paradinnm Philipe. Requiescas in Pace, Amice mi! 

© 1998 by John Madden