Biography of Father Bede Jarrett (IV)

Extract

From Oxford Father Bede was sent to Louvain to finish off his Dominican training. He still had two years of his theological course to complete before he could exercise the full ministry of a priest and Friar Preacher. It might have been expected that his earlier ecclesiastical knowledge would have grown rusty during his three years absorption in secular studies and interests in Oxford, and that more than the normal two years would be required if he were to recover lost ground and complete his theological studies satisfactorily. Instead of that he crowded his remaining work into less than one year, and with such success that the examiners who at the end of that time awarded him his degree in theology spoke of him as the best prepared student they had ever examined. In every way Oxford made him, not a worse, but a better candidate for all ecclesiastical dignities and responsibilities.

This was the last of his examinations. He left them all behind him with a sigh of relief. Years later he could write to a young man still at the mercy of examiners:

‘I have only two bits of advice: one is never to work in the afternoon, a fatal mistake; the other is never to be angry with one’s paper. That is equally fatal. A prayer to the Holy Ghost is far simpler, more effectual, and quiets the nerves . . . Personally I hate all exams so desperately, whether or no I am ready for them, that I can’t understand anyone going near them who hasn’t got to. Since the year 1896 I have never failed in an exam, and have hated’ em all! ... Freedom is incompatible with swotting for an exam, and swotting must go on till the beastly things are all over.