In Memory of Fr. Paschal

Late August, 2019. My wife and I, new to marriage and new to the Abbey faculty, were moving into Manor House’s third-floor apartment. The day was hot and terribly humid. I grumbled as I walked down the narrow, spiraling staircase for yet another box.

Walking to my car, I passed a strange-looking man headed towards the bay. Tattered button-down, faded swimsuit, and a beard that reminded me of Rasputin, he walked with an unbothered intentionality, his mind somewhere else.

Back in the apartment, I peered out the window for another look. He was halfway down the hill when I asked my wife if she knew who he was.

“That’s Fr. Paschal,” she said. “He is a character.”

That was Wednesday. Next time I saw him was Sunday, at Mass. I was taken by the way he celebrated Mass. He had a strict precision at the altar. He “said black and did the red,” as the old liturgical adage goes, meaning he did exactly what the Roman Missal required and nothing more. There were no improvisations, no flourishes, no performance of any kind. As a layman who’s into liturgy, I appreciated this.

Though I don’t recall that day’s homily, I can recall his many others. He had a small yet meaningful rolodex of sermons. The supernatural power of God, the necessity of grace, the emptiness of a world without Christ—these were his go-to’s.

At school Masses, you could tell that students listened when he spoke. Maybe it was the fact he was “spiritual and religious,” to quote Kale Zelden—a living witness set against a culture gone material and secular.

There were many reasons students loved him. Intelligent, quirky, and utterly unfiltered, Fr. Paschal lived the fundamental realities of faith. While his students’ lives were inundated and mediated by technology, his was comprised of books, ideas, and most especially prayer. What concerned them most had mattered little to him. He was a modern-day St. John the Baptist, saying things like “What matters more than finding God?” and “If this life is all there is then we’ve been gypped.”

In private conversation, Fr. Paschal and I spoke of books. It was always books with him. “So what are you reading?” Whatever I said in response, I could expect an email from him hours later. “I enjoyed our conversation. See attached PDF. I think you will like this book. Best, Dom Paschal.”

Fr. Paschal could be quite funny, too. One time, Br. Joseph invited my wife and me to Sunday vespers and dinner. After prayer, we feasted on steak and wine. (Fr. Paschal ate salad and drank water.) During dessert, one monk, a rather rotund figure, returned with a towering bowl of pie and whipped cream. Fr. Paschal glanced at it, and, just loud enough for me to hear, deadpanned: “I see you’re cutting back.”

While students loved him and faculty respected him, I am sure he tried his fellow monks. His blunt criticisms and stark admonitions could be unnecessarily harsh, and his intolerance of mediocrity didn’t seem to account for human frailty and weakness, so often revealed in religious communities.

But holy men are not angels. A former colleague, writing to me the day after Fr. Paschal’s death, put it best: “He was irascible and acerbic, full of love and good will. I will miss him dearly.”

As I write this, I like to imagine Fr. Paschal finally at peace in heaven. Perhaps he is reading. Perhaps he is at prayer. He was, after all, at the time of his death.

Whatever he is doing, I trust he is resting in the One to whom he submitted his life as a monk of Portsmouth Abbey forty years ago.

He was a monk for forty years. He was a priest of Jesus Christ for thirty-six.

For his many years of praying for us, may we now offer him ours.

Requiescat in pace, Dom Paschal.