eulogy - Dom Christopher Power OSB

 

 

EULOGY - REQUIEM MASS

October 21, 2008

 

On behalf of the monks of New Norcia welcome to this Requiem Mass.

 

Placid as you know was not a self promoter or one for self glorification, but he would be touched to see so many people here from so many parts of his life.

 

We welcome His Grace, Archbishop Barry Hickey; Bishop Justin Bianchini of Geraldton; Bishop Chris Saunders of Broome; Bishop Don Sproxton, Auxiliary to the Archbishop; Bishop Myles McKeon, retired Bishop of Bunbury; and so many of the priests of the Archdiocese.

 

Placid especially promoted New Norcia links with the other Christian churches and other faiths and he would be delighted to see Bishop David Murray, representing the Anglican Archbishop of Perth, The Most Rev Roger Herft; The Rev Ken Williams, Moderator of the Uniting Church in WA; and Ajhan Brahm, Abbot of the Buddhist Monastery at Serpentine.

 

We are also very pleased to see representatives from the other monasteries around Australia that follow the Benedictine Rule and from the Sisters of the Good Samaritan.

 

You will understand if we save our warmest welcome for Placid's own family: his older brothers, Don, Gordon, Bob and Clyde; his sisters-in-law Jean and Robina; his niece Sue; nephews Andrew and Peter; and grandnephew Benno. They have come all the way from Queensland and New South Wales to be with us this morning.

 

Over the last few weeks we have discovered what a complicated and messy business it is dying suddenly overseas. Placid always signed his notes when he was asking for something SFB - sorry for the bother. Well this has been an almighty bother and I really need to take this opportunity to thank a number of people for what they have done for us.

 

Thanks firstly to the abbot and community at Ampleforth Abbey in England for caring for Placid's body and organising the repatriation so smoothly and efficiently. Heaven help us if he had died on a train or in Italy! To the Anatomy Department of UWA for declining to accept Placid's body for medical research and thereby allowing us to have a funeral and burial. Yes, to make matters worse, Placid had bequeathed his body to the university but given the lapse of time before arrival and the fact that the body had to go through an autopsy, that was not possible. Praise the Lord!

 

Our very great thanks to Fr Joe Walsh, the Parish Priest of Subiaco, firstly for offering the use of this Church and then helping us with the ceremony. We would not have been able to do it without you, Joe. And if it had to be outside New Norcia, where better than on Salvado Road, Subiaco.

 

We thank the Georgian singers, who sang at Placid's installation, for their contribution, and Ann and Denis Cullity for the beautiful flowers.

 

To each and every one of you, your presence is a great tribute to Placid and a great comfort to us.

 

Placid first came to New Norcia in 1983 while he was still Prior of Ampleforth. He came at our invitation to do a special job for us - to facilitate a Community discussion about the future of our college. In those days the college was in its death throes and running an operating deficit that threatened to ruin the Community and New Norcia. We needed to make a decision and hopefully one that would not leave us murdering each other for the rest of our lives.

 

We didn't know Placid Spearritt from Adam. His name was simply number 2 on a short list of English monks who had been recommended to us as able to do the job. Number 1 couldn't come and Placid could. And, of course, he so impressed us that at the next Visitation we asked our Abbot President if this virtual stranger could be made our Prior Administrator - our temporary superior for the next three years. He was appointed in 1983 and then reappointed at regular intervals until 1997 when he eventually secured a two-thirds majority of votes of the solemnly professed monks and was elected Abbot. In all he was our superior for almost twenty-five years: thirteen years as Prior Administrator and almost twelve years as the sixth Abbot of New Norcia.

 

As you have heard and so many of you know from your own experience, Placid was a rare bird:

He would have been hard to place comfortably just about anywhere, but at Ampleforth, in many ways a bastion of English Catholic privilege, he must have been a thorn in the side of many a community member and have often felt like an outsider. However, I like to think that by the early 1980s Providence, by nature and grace, had turned him into an excellent fit for New Norcia.

 

He was fifty when he came full of energy and ready for work. One of his first moves was to establish an Architects Advisory Committee to get an overview of the buildings and infrastructure problems across the town, and then to identify a priority list of works to ensure that we tackled the most important things first.

 

Next he established a Finance Advisory Committee to clarify our financial position and make sure that whatever assets we had were working as best they could. In both these areas he went out and found the best people available. He then listened to them and acted on their advice. He felt surer of his own technical ability when it came to New Norcia's movable heritage. He set up a Library Committee and an Archives, Research & Publications Committee, both of which he chaired himself. And although he left the Museum and Art Gallery largely to me, he made sure I was well advised. He was always wary of enthusiastic amateurs.

 

When the college finally closed in 1991 and 200 people left the town and thirty buildings were emptied, he had the faith and courage to wait, to live with the tension to see what New Norcia's eclectic mix of factors might produce. For someone who had so many ideas himself, who was vigorous in opposition, when he was in government he consciously strove not to throw his weight around. A lesser man would have acted quickly, but doing so would have cut off possibilities. And so over time he encouraged, tempered, and guided the many-layered work of hospitality which has gradually become our central activity, reusing the buildings and bringing new life to the town. He delighted in the cross-section of people who visit New Norcia.

 

He was especially pleased to see school students return to the site, and thought the establishment of the New Norcia Education Centre and its reconnection with the Aboriginal community one of the most significant developments in his time. He loved the ecumenical flavour of the Monastery Guesthouse, and more recently, the opportunities for interfaith dialogue that reached out to the wider community. He saw no inconsistencies with the breadth of New Norcia's interests so long as we didn't forget our priorities.

 

While his work outside the walls of the Monastery was important and essential, in his role as Abbot he was first and foremost father to his monastic community. It might surprise you that in this role he largely left his playfulness outside the cloister. While he had an umbrella with him more often than any other monk in the house, he only ever put it up in the rain, and there was never any holding up of signs. With us he was generally controlled, courteous and respectful, not given much to small talk and even less about himself - though we all knew to look out when his upper lip began to tremble. He subscribed to the Rule of Benedict's high theology of the abbot's office, which he had seen modelled at Ampleforth, and he also knew that monks everywhere had long memories, especially for their abbot's mistakes. Despite a certain aloofness with us, we always knew that there was no greater priority for him than us, his community.

 

From the outset, as father to his monks he set out to teach us and to teach us his kind of religion. He was not in favour of popular Mediterranean-style Catholicism, but instead took as his focus the essentials of classic monasticism:

For 25 years he gave us fortnightly conferences and extolled the virtues of such little-heard-of values as silence, solitude and obedience. And true to his thoroughness in just about everything he did, he then printed the conferences off in hard copy so that today we each have almost 1000 pages of his reflections.

 

In his dealings with each of us individually he also followed the Rule faithfully and tried to adapt himself to each one in order to help him grow and develop. He encouraged and gave the best opportunities he could to those with talent, and also to those of us with less. He allowed us to regress, which happens often in monasteries, occasionally being firm when he thought we could take it, but more often being patient, waiting for the right opportunity, or just waiting. As novice and junior master he took a special interest in the young with whom he was surprisingly open and tender. He may not have got it right all the time, but he worried about it and never ever gave up on any of us.

 

His pace of work was unrelenting and we, his monks, were often stupid, rebellious and all too human, so like all true Christians he suffered intensely, though generally in silence. Only occasionally might he admit he was wallowing in self-pity.

 

In 1986 Placid appointed me his Procurator or business manager and we worked side-by-side for 22 years. Often it meant that we went to Perth together, and I can assure you those trips were not always full of unalloyed pleasure - at least not for me. He would always drive, and after I had given him one of the lifesavers he always had with him, we would settle down to talking through all the items of business I had brought with me. I always liked to string that part out for as long as I could because I knew that once we had finished, he would start flying his kites, as he would say:

All of which usually involved eroding away any scrap of comfort that I had been trying to shore up around the place. He would arrive in Perth fresh as a daisy ready for the day's business. I, on the other hand, would stumble out the other side an emotional wreck, feeling I had done a full day's work already.

 

On our last trip down together, we were going to see the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure about a bypass for New Norcia. It was an important meeting, so I was going on in the car about how we should handle the interview and who should lead the way. Of course, I thought I should lead as I had done all the research work. He was happy enough about that but floored me by saying that there was no need to over-tell the story as I usually did, and that I should give the Minister some credit for being an intelligent woman and for having done her homework. It was one of those 'old married couple' moments, and if I could have opened the door and got out, I would have.

 

However, after a while I regained my composure, having decided in my own mind that while 5% of the world might be like him, 95% were like me and needed to hear the whole story. And of course, the Minister proved me right. While she might have been an intelligent woman, she hadn't done her homework and wanted to hear it from the top.

 

Well Placid, I may be guilty as you say of over-telling a story, but I don't think so today. When you came to New Norcia the place had reached a crisis. The model of town that it was, rotating around a dying secondary school, was coming to an end after over eighty years. And the community was unable to reform itself from within. Without any great strategic plan, without any great stash of ready cash, you have led us forward into a new and unexpected future. You have given us monks a sharper understanding of our monastic vocation, unified us, and engendered new growth. You have turned the monastery into the centrepiece of the town and encouraged its culture to be expressed in all its works. And for so many thousands of people you have made New Norcia a place of Catholicism at its best

Thank you, Placid.