Loss of a Brother

I took Clare to the Optometry School this morning to collect the specs she ordered, and have her inflamed eye examined. This produced some helpful advice from optician Ceri, and the curious information about Blephoritis, the condition she's suffering from. Ceri is in touch with colleagues and students of hers from all over the world via WhatsApp, and they are reporting an unprecedented surge everywhere over the past year in the number of cases of this condition. The reason hasn't been identified. It's strange when you think there's been a marked reduction in air pollution from vehicles and 'planes during the pandemic. Could it be something to do with more people have been confined indoors by lock-down, and exposed for longer each day to stale air and dust mites? It's a mystery which is likely to be the subject of research in years to come.

This afternoon, I walked right up the Taff Trail as far as Llandaff North bridge, something I haven't done in the past year. There was a mother with four growing ducklings up river from Blackweir Bridge, so that's two Mallard pairs with offspring I've seen so far this spring.

While I was out, Clare had a phone call from one of the brothers at Alnmouth Friary to tell us that Brother Raymond Christian had died, aged eighty four. We met him in our first year as undergraduates in Bristol, and kept in touch by letters, cards and occasional visits and phone calls ever since. Since our friend Mike Wilson died three years ago, he's been our oldest friend. We met him along with Mike a few months into our first term fifty eight years ago. 

He became a Franciscan Friar named Brother Christian in his late teens in Canada, as their admission age was lower than their British equivalent. I think the Canadian Anglican Franciscan experiment didn't work, but it didn't disillusion him. He returned to Britain and joined the Society of St Francis at Cerne Abbas, where he had to go through novitiate training a second time. Then, after ten years in the Order, his elderly parents had nobody to look after them, so he left and cared for them until they died, while helping out in his local parish and working as a hospital orderly. He was no stranger to personal violence. On one occasion, he was mugged at night and it took a long while to recover from his injuries, but this didn't deter him from public ministry, as a lay person and as Friar.

After a decade's absence he returned to the Order and a third time went through the novitiate, finally making his Life Profession as Brother Raymond-Christian using his baptismal name as well as his adopted 'religious' name. In the 1980s a small group of Friars lived and worked in Belfast, and he worked as a hospital orderly alongside the chaplain in a time of violent conflict. 

It's an extraordinary story of vocation, and persistent faithful endurance. He imitated the example of St Francis in the humble trusting way he lived, and coped with the pain he often suffered by identifying with the vulnerability of Christ the cross-bearer. He went into hospital for surgery and caught pneumonia while recovering. His funeral will be up at Alnmouth Friary with a memorial service at Cerne Abbas Friary a month later, both journeys out of reach for us at the moment, but we will be able to remember him in prayer and at Mass. May he rest in peace and rise in glory!