Irenaeus Leonard Alexander 1932–1972

Extract

It is trite to say that anniversaries stir the memory but it is true enough. As I write this down I am remembering a young Dominican who died a year ago this July. His death was not only a deeply felt personal loss, for it was something more in that it challenged us with the problem of his unfinished work and involved us directly and intimately in a conflict of which we had previously only been spectators. It was—and is—a whole situation we had not understood till he came to live our life with us.

It might at first seem odd to select this one man’s history out of so much that has happened to the Province in the last few years. Disasters and desolation, unparalleled since the period of the French Revolution, that laid us waste with a real death of God: this has been met with courage and constancy by the old and in a spirit of dutiful endurance by many of the elderly. The turmoil of renewal and the tensions created by change conflicting with ancient customs has led to a new experience of the role—not always pleasant—of discussion, a development that has associated itself with or sprung from the generous energy of the young determined to recreate the common life and rediscover a style of worship suited to the needs of today. After a spasm of rejection, almost anarchic in character, there has been in the studium a return to the tradition, even the text of St Thomas, purged of the trivialities of the manualists. All in embryo, all signs of hope and all associated with men loyal to their vocation as preachers. Why, then, pick on this one man when there obviously are so many others? Why this particular one, when we live with all our dead, having them in constant and loving memory-some well known to the public, others known only to their brethren?