 Fr. Gerard William Ehler, OP
"...He shall wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or
mourning, crying out or pain, for the former world has passed away." (Rev.
21:1-4)
"Angels fly," wrote G. K. Chesterton, "because they can take
things lightly. The devil fell by force of gravity." Fr. Gerry was (and
is!) of the angel sort.
He died peacefully in his room at St. Albert's Priory
on October 8. A native of Chicago, he attended Christian Brothers LaSalle High
School there, where he gained national prominence by winning the William Randolph Hearst
Oratorical contest; and also Northwestern University, majoring in drama. With his
mother and aunt, his sole surviving relatives, he moved to California, and in 1957,
entered the novitiate then located at Kentfield.
While a student at St. Albert's, he cultivated his own and others' talent for speaking
by promoting the dramatic arts. He helped direct, and played the leading role in,
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and several times during each year he would conduct
and participate in community dramatic readings. But his sterling production was his
adaptation in dramatic form of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: "The
Pardoner's Tale." The adaptation was exquisite, such that when Gerry, having
enrolled in the Drama Department of University California Berkeley for summer courses, his
professor declared it acceptable as an M.A. thesis. His early dream was to establish
in the West a school of drama with a Catholic orientation, such as the Dominicans, Gilbert
Hartke and Urban Nagle, had done in Washington and New York, but reality moved him in
other directions.
His early assignments were to parishes in the Bay Area, and then to the directorship of
our Mission Foundation. Even when relieved as director, he continued through the
remainder of his active ministry to serve our missions by preaching and begging on their
behalf. But his principle ministry by far was that of preaching parish missions and
retreats throughout the western states and sometimes in the East and Canada. His
keen and controlled sense of the dramatic, his down-to-earth conservatism, and his
contagious good humor made him a most welcomed preacher wherever he was sent. More
than what he said, the way he said it drew people to a greater appreciation of their
Catholic faith.
But after some 25 years on the Preaching Band his health, always a problem,
deteriorated so that he was less and less able to endure the unsettled life of an
itinerant preacher. He moved from St. Dominic's in San Francisco to St. Albert's.
There he enjoyed the company of the young as well as the old, though his ill health
often kept him from the visible life of the community. But when he did manage to
make an appearance at common meals and recreation he sparked life and laughter among the
brethren.
Two things sustained him in his sickness as throughout his ministry. One was his
simple, uncomplicated faith, especially in the Mass, and real presence of Christ.
Gerry wasn't much interested in exegesis or theology -- not Jesus' past life as recorded
in ancient documents, but His presence here and now to and in Him; and he had no serious
questions or problems about God. For him God-in-Jesus was quite enough to go
by. As that final pain struck him down, one can easily imagine his saying in all
simplicity: "Jesus, I love you," and meaning it.
The second thing that kept him sane and relatively cheerful in his last years was the
movies. As he proudly proclaimed, he was a "movie buff." Not any old
movie, but the classics. Some considered this his "escape" but if so, it
was escape in the right direction; away from the surface of the ordinary into the
extraordinary at its heart, for which we're made. Gerry responded positively to
Tennessee William's line in a poignant moment of a very fine drama/film: "Sometimes
there's God." You meet someone, look at a painting, read a poem, hear a
preaching, watch a movie -- and yes, sometimes you're swept up into God or something
fairly close to Him. Gerry was ever alert for such moments in the cinema and
rejoiced when he found them.
A final word: Laugher. Just a day before he died, Gerry came to my room, gift for
me in hand. It was a book -- about the movies, of course. But he also came
bearing a joke, and told it as only he could. He made me laugh to tears, such that
he himself laughed heartily along with me. I'm grateful for that last time together,
which says much about Gerry and the whole Christian faith which we tried to live and
preach. Chaucer, whose skin Gerry seemed to inhabit and from whom, as he would say,
he cribbed his Pardoner's play, had written a magnificent poetic "novel:" a
tragic story of two star-crossed lovers, Troilus and Criseyda. At the end of
the poem, Chaucer sends it on its way, telling it not to be "envious" for being
only a tragedy but together with him pray that someday he, its maker, be able to write a
comedy. Which of course, he did in and through the Canterbury Tales -- tragic
in part, like all of life, but far and away filled with laughter and ending in a Heaven
begun here and now. And just a generation or two prior to Chaucer, an Italian poet
had written the greatest of Christian poems, perhaps the greatest poem of all, which he
called, not his tragedy, but his commedia, and which the world has since extolled
as the divine comedy. Yes, in the end, and deep down all along the way, what's meant
to be is not tragedy but comedy, not sadness and tears but joy and laughter. I'm
grateful to Gerry for having kept me and many others mindful of so great a truth.
- Fr. Fabian Parmisano, OP
In the
service of the gospel I have been appointed preacher, apostle and teacher. - 2 Timothy, 1.11
O God, grant that your servant, Gerald William, whom You called to the
religious life and
raised to the priesthood, may now be with You, in whom he placed his faith, his hope and
his love. Amen
Date of Birth |
Date of Profession |
Date of Ordination |
Date of Death |
February 7, 1928 |
September 9, 1958 |
June 1, 1963 |
October 8, 1999 |
XII: 454 |
