LATE FATHER GILBERT

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 January 1931, Page 5

LATE FATHER GILBERT

THE MONTH’S MIND The Month’s Mind for the late Father Gilbert was observed yesterday, at St. Mary’s, Christchurch, when a Solemn High Mass of Requiem was celebrated. The Month’s Mind 'is the remembrance of a deceased person, usually observed a month after death, or as near to that date as may conveniently be arranged.

Bishop Brodie presided in the Sanctuary. The celebrant of the Mass was the Very Rev. Father A. Burger, S.M., M.A., rector of St. Bede’s College. The Rev. Father Long (Greymouth) officiated as deacon, with the Rev. Father Crocker, S.M. (St. Patrick’s College, Wellington) as sub-deacon. The Rev. Father Dignan, S.M. (St. Mary’s) was master of ceremonies. The Dead March in “'Saul” was played by Miss Mina Ward. The solemn chant of the Mass was rendered by a choir of clergy, and the Occasional Sermon was delivered by the Rev. Father J. Cullen, S.M., 8.A., of St. Bede’s College. Clergy from all parts of the diocese and visiting priests from Wellington and Dunedin were present. There was an overflowing congregation. In his Occasional Sermon, the Rev. Father Cullen said that they were assembled for a two-fold purpose. First, the offering of Mass, the great sacrificial prayer of the New Law, for the eternal repose of the soul of Thomas Andrew Gilbert, and secondly, to pay a final tribute to the dead priest and rector. “It is given to me who for nearly twenty years lived with him, dined and conversed with him, and had a very small share in his life’s work, to reveal to you more intimately the manner of man he was,” continued Father Cullen. “Mr. Anderson, of St. Andrew’s College, wrote of him that he seemed to be one always seeking the good and the beautiful. To me he will always be’the great Apostle of Catholic culture in New Zealand. “You cannot take a sentence from its context and hope to understand its full meaning. Neither is the work of Thomas Gilbert to be judged rightly unless viewed in the setting of Catholic belief and practice. The Catholic lives in a world in which truth is essentially one —where the facts of revelation have the same reality as the visible world round him; where God exists, and His word is never questioned; where service is first towards God, and then towards our neighbour now authorised to call God his Father; in short, a world where spiritual values are paramount. “Does anyone demand proof of this faith? We point to the gift of one quarter'of a million made by Catholics to the people of New Zealand when over 20,000 of Catholic children ask for no accommodation in State schools. The spending of £40,000 in one diocese in one year for what could be had ftor nothing is not the product of shifting beliefs. Fifty years now have searched and,found unshakeable this world of Catholic belief and practice. Some may say that w r e are sacrificing to shadows: they cannot question the sincerity of our beliefs. That country is the better that has in it a people that will place principle before purse. Others, less confident, may use the words of that brilliant young Englishman, Beverley Nichols, in reference to the faith of Belloc: ‘I feel sorry for Belloc who has nailed his colours to the wrong mast; but much more sorry for myself, who have no colours to: nail to any mast.’ The pursuit of knowledge seemed to be in Father Gilbert a blazing passion. He had work enough in his theological studies. But in his study of the modern languages, in his devotion to the classics and the best dn English prose and verse, he doubled and trebled the work of the day. If you can realise that at twenty-two, and for the whole of his subsequent life, he was never to be wholly free from pain, you will understand the might of the spirit encompassed by so frail a body. I was to see him some years later compelled to take the short interval between classes in a darkened room. And I have seen him studying with cold packs on his forehead.” Father Cullen went on to describe the late rector’s work at St. Patrick’s College. “Our colleges are not for any one class,” he said. “They have in mind the raising of the standard of Catholic culture in the Catholic body as a whole. Nobility of nature, intelligence, the power t 6 soar above the sordid, is not the possession of any one class. No one realised this better than Thomas Gilbert. It was said that he would he equally at home in a palace as in a cottage,” said Father Cullen.

Father Gilbert was the founder of the University Students’ Guild, which grew until it numbered over a hundred said the Rev. Father Cullen. On coming to St. Bede's lie had established a similar guild in Christchurch. After his journey through Europe he returned laden with prints of Rome, Greece and Carthage, and of cathedrals and buildings of historic note. He framed them and hung them in the passageways and halls of the college. His last great work had been the building of the college chapel. He had carried tout this work with his usual enthusiasm. “In the fullest confidence we can say: May his soul rest in peace! May the God of truth receive you into His paradise!” concluded Father Cullen.