Homily for the Funeral Mass of Fr. Aelred Squire

Extract

[The Gospel: “I call you no longer servants but friends...”]

Introductory note

Aelred Squire died at New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, California, on May 1, 1997. Bom in London on December 6, 1920, baptized in the Church of England, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Oxford in 1943 by Fr Conrad Pepler. He was accepted as a postulant at Prinknash Abbey, expecting to join as soon as the war was over. In the event, he joined the Dominicans in 1946, was ordained in 1952, and, apart from a brief spell at the preparatory school then run by the Order in Monmouthshire, taught at Blackfriars, Oxford, until 1965. He moved to Belgium to live as a hermit, returned to London to teach at the study centre conducted by the Dominican Sisters in Portobello Road, migrated to Norway in 1972 to serve as a mission priest at Lillehammer, finally yielded to monasticism in 1980, first with the Benedictines at Christ in the Desert, New Mexico, transferring his vows from the Dominicans in 1982, and at last, from December 1983, with the Camaldolese Benedictines at Big Sur. He published little in this journal (but see ‘The Cosmic Dance: Reflections on the De Musica of St Augustine’, November 1954); but with Aelred of Rievaulx: A Study (1969); Asking the Fathers (1973), a fine introduction to patristic spirituality and theology; Summer in the Seed (1980), a somewhat idiosyncratic reflection on the cultural situation of Catholicism after Vatican 11; and Fathers Talking (1986), a popular anthology of patristic texts, he has left a considerable theological legacy.