In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
At ease in any society. Always the flower of courtesy. Gracious to everyone. Exceptional qualities … scholarship, a handsome person, … delicate perceptions. A fine personality.
I know what you’re wondering, so I might as well clear this up from beginning: No, Tom Kramer did not prepare a homily for his own funeral and keep it in his file to be preached today. These phrases are rather found in Willa Cather’s 1927 book, Death Comes for the Archbishop. “The flower of courtesy,” “delicate perceptions,” “a fine personality”: these are thoughts that one priest in the story, Father Joseph Vaillant, has about his longtime friend and eventual bishop, Father Jean Latour. These two ministers were originally from France, but they crossed the Atlantic together as missionaries and finally traveled together “out west” in the early 1800s. Their assignment was to build up the Church throughout the vast and rugged area of New Mexico. The last time they would see one another was fast approaching, when—after a long night of conversation—Father Joseph reflects on the character of his friend. He muses:
To man’s wisdom it would have seemed that a priest with Father Latour’s exceptional qualities would have been better placed in some part of the world where scholarship, a handsome person, and delicate perceptions all have their effect; and that a man of much rougher type would have served God well enough as the first Bishop of New Mexico. Doubtless Bishop Latour’s successors would be men of a different fibre. But God had his reasons, Father Joseph devoutly believed. Perhaps it pleased [the Lord] to grace the beginning of a new era and a vast new diocese by a fine personality. (Cather, 251-2)
A fine personality. There is a wonderful variety in the gifts our Lord imparts to his servants. The Lord does not mass-produce Christians, but each of our lives receives the Lord’s personal touch. So my path will not be your path, which will not be his path, which itself might look dramatically different from her path. The Lord smiles on all of them. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a poignant book, but I remember that this in particular struck me as such a graceful observation: that the Lord would be distinctly pleased with “a fine personality.”
On the occasion of the death of Dr. Thomas Kramer, I believe we can say: it pleased the Lord to grace our community by a fine personality—and for many, many years.
Case in point: Tom wanted “Clair de Lune” played at his funeral. He often had occasion to speak publicly, not least when introducing the newest “Baby Rotarian,” and he always spoke from handwritten notes. He kept mountains of beautiful antiques, he adorned his walls with gorgeous paintings, and he recorded his family history more carefully than anyone I have known. His favorite columnist was George Will, and more than politics, the main reason for this—so far as I understand—was the quality of George Will’s prose. Tom was a man of “delicate perceptions,” as Willa Cather would say—and I even count his fedora in favor of this claim.
Beauty has the power to stop anyone in his or her tracks. We all appreciate beauty at some time or other. It is one thing, though, to appreciate beauty; it is another to carefully weave beauty into as many parts of your life as you can. Every gift of the Lord will bring with it some temptation. We can only trust in the Lord’s mercy for all those times we fall to it. And delicate perceptions are certainly no exception to this rule. It is good, even admirable, to be a connoisseur. The crucial part is never to lose touch with that childlike moment of awe, when Beauty won your heart in the first place.
Childlike awe and delight: these are the roots from which “the flower of courtesy” properly draws its life. I think this begins to explain the pleasure the Lord would take in a fine personality. This is how delicate perceptions can be part of a person’s walk with Christ. Why? Because Jesus is himself the ultimate object of every such moment of childlike awe and delight.
In the passage from John’s Gospel, it is a monumental claim that Jesus makes when he says to Martha, “I am the resurrection, and the life.” I Am. I Am is nothing else than the Name of God, the Name that the Lord gave to Moses from the burning bush. I Am the Resurrection and the Life. This is one of seven I Am statements our Lord makes in John’s Gospel. Jesus is himself the Eternal Word of the Father now standing before us in flesh. The Infinite Being and Goodness and Beauty who holds all things in existence is unveiled for the world in Jesus Christ—and never so perfectly unveiled as when the Lord gives himself in Love for us on the Cross.
Think of it this way: Jesus is not just really, really good. He does not measure high on the goodness scale. Instead, Jesus is Goodness Himself. He is the scale. (This is partly why we cannot be good without Christ, whether we recognize him or not: there is no goodness that is not Jesus’s in the first place, and we only ever have any of it because he generously sheds abroad his goodness throughout the world.)
Just so, Jesus is not just really, really beautiful. Jesus is Beauty Himself. The delicate stillness of “Clair de Lune,” the intricate carving in a carefully kept antique, the satisfying cadence of a well crafted sentence: these are all but glimpses of Jesus’s infinite Beauty.
This is our hope, not just that Tom was such a swell guy, but that the Lord is kind. It is the Lord’s great mercy revealed at the cross that gives us hope—hope that Tom has left the rivulets behind and he is now drinking straight from the fountainhead; hope that so many glimpses of the Lord’s beauty are now giving way to the sight of God’s unveiled face, whose Holiness burns away every sin and whose Beauty transfigures every virtue. By the Lord’s grace, may we one day share with Tom in that magnificent vision. Amen.