“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one bringing good news, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation….” (Isaiah 52:7)

As Christmas draws near here in Jamaica, NY, most of the trees in our garden are barren, and even the hardiest autumn flowers have turned brittle in the cold. Nature itself reminds us that life has its cycles. We too flourish and wither. Through the winter we will only have our memories of what was, and the dream of what might be again in spring.  But as Christmas draws near in the Caribbean island-nation of Jamaica, whose people Fr. Richard Leary loved, the giant poinsettia trees are filled with brilliant red flowers while the prolific euphorbia bushes abound with silky white blossoms. At Christmastime, these vibrant flowering bushes alternate side by side in a garland of festive color encircling the rectory at Balaclava, one of the many places Fr. Richard pastored during his decades of missionary life in rural Jamaica.

His home State of Vermont’s motto is “Freedom and Unity,” and his father’s name was Moses.  It is no surprise that young Lawrence Leary grew up with a desire to get on the move in order to help others less fortunate than himself.  In his teen years, he heard a call from Christ to leave father and mother and the consoling atmosphere of the large and loving family into which he was born in 1918. He entered the Passionist seminary at 19 years of age and by 21 professed his vows as Richard of the Mother of Sorrows.  In that solemn moment, he committed himself to keep the Passion of Jesus ever before his eyes both as an inspiration for his own self-sacrificing love, and as a divine message of “good news” about God’s love for our world. Some seventy years later, we can see how that charism and life-defining vow genuinely shaped his relationship with everyone he would meet from that day forward.

Richard grew up among the mountains of Vermont whose hardwood trees summer clothes with a mantle of green leaves, and evergreens full of cones which winter blankets with layers of fluffy white snow. Stately oaks abound, as well as the maple trees cherished for their syrup, which graces the breakfast tables of countless homes along the Eastern Seaboard. Little did Richard and his family know in his childhood and adolescence, that he would spend the last third of his long and healthy priestly life crisscrossing the mountains and valleys of a Caribbean island. There, winter and summer hardly differ.  There, flowers and fruit trees thrive every month of the year.

The mountainous terrain of Jamaica has much in common with the valleys and highlands of Galilee, which Jesus walked all the years of his hidden life and public ministry. Our Gospels constantly remind us how blessed the people were who heard the message of salvation which Jesus announced. Truly, as Isaiah writes, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one bringing good news, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation….” (Isaiah 52:7)

Jesus was no stranger to his mountains, often seeking out their solitude for his prayer. From that vantage point, he grew in passion for ministry to the poor, the sick and those whom others had cast aside through fear or a lack of love.  Like Jesus who knew well all the country roads zigzagging across the Galilean highlands in his thirty some years among us, Fr. Richard too would spend some thirty years seeking out the country people of Jamaica, far away from the big-city lights of Kingston or the tourist meccas of the northern coast. At night on the roads or alone in his rectory, he would live the prayerful life of Jesus and grow ever deeper in his own passion for justice.

“The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall lack…Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side” (Psalm 23:1, 4).  Passionist ministry in Jamaica has always had a strong ecumenical flavor because in most of the rural areas only about 3% of the population belong to Roman Catholic church communities.  Psalm 23 is a constant feature of funerals in every Christian church in Jamaica, and the virtues of the good shepherd characterized Fr. Richard so aptly. From 1948-61, he taught Canon Law to more than a dozen classes of Passionist seminarians. But it is obvious that like every good teacher, he was also a student at the same time.  Canon 529 offers a description of the role of a pastor which serves as an accurate summary of Fr. Richard’s apostolic fervor, especially once he left the classroom. “The pastor should strive to come to know the faithful who have been entrusted to his care; therefore he is to visit families, sharing the cares, worries and especially the grief of the faithful, strengthening them in the Lord…he is to make a special effort to seek out the poor, the afflicted, the lonely…” Fr. Richard diligently shepherded countless thousands of people both in his Atlanta ministry in those history-changing years from 1961-1977, and in Jamaica from 1977-2007.

At night in rural areas, Jamaican roads and hillside towns are intensely dark. But darker still are the fears people have for their uncertain future, and for where they will find assistance for food and the basic education of their children, much less dental care which can restore a happy spirit as well as a child’s smile. Like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Fr. Richard was there, walking with the people in their dark valleys of life’s challenges.

Fr. Richard’s life bridged many momentous changes both in Passionist lifestyle and in the history of the world. You can even find his writings on the internet simply by typing into the Search box on Google: Funerals in Jamaica Richard Leary. That will take you immediately to his article in our Passionist Compassion magazine, which gives us a glimpse of the pastoral texture of his life in 1997. After Fr. Richard describes some of the common Jamaican practices for burying loved ones, he writes, “When no family or friends are present, I am called to officiate at a brief graveside ceremony. I am always moved by the tragedy of the event. How devastating for a human being to die without a home, without loved ones to mourn, without anyone to remember who you are, whose lives you touched, what you did with your life!” (The Passionists Compassion, Spring 1997)

Though he was reluctant a few years ago to come back to this monastery in Jamaica North from his assignment in the Jamaica South which he loved, we can say that he did not die without a home, or without loved ones who mourn his passing, but with several classmates and other people who remembered and cherished who he was, people whose lives he touched here as well as there, and still cherish what he did with his life, especially for the poor. In death now, he will return to Jamaica, land he loved, to rest in peace with fellow Passionists who served and died there as well.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:1).  The Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel invite all of us to grow in a variety of virtues – simplicity in material concerns, mercy, single-hearted devotion to God as the orientation of our whole life above all else, peacemaking, with fortitude and perseverance in the face of injustice. But the vivid presence of the beatitudes in Fr. Richard says more about what God does in someone, rather than what the person does on their own. We may plant a tree and care for it in its fragile beginnings so that it may take root well.  We help the tree develop and in God’s time we may be blessed with fruit that will nourish ourselves and others. We do our part, but we do not create the fruit.

God first planted Richard’s life in the tender, caring environment of the Leary family home.  His love for his family endured with steadfastness wherever he roamed widely on this earth, even till the last morning phone call from his sister on what turned out to be the day of his death. Those virtues of Christ’s beatitudes continued to mature in his Passionist community life. No doubt his reserved spirit was tested by that imposing band of classmates who hailed from the big cities of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, classmates who had never seen Vermont and probably never suspected what treasures could come from there.

Nourished by his communion with Christ Jesus, “the Lamb who was slain but is risen,” Richard of the Mother of Sorrows was familiar with suffering throughout his life. But in his latter years, the tree of his life became more explicitly conformed to the tree of Calvary on which hung our salvation. He who had generously worked with his hands for others all his life had to rely totally on others to help him every moment of the day. His feet had served him well marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as plodding through the red dust of Manchester hillsides suddenly turned to slippery clay in the midst of a funeral in a backyard family plot. His virtues as a Passionist indeed came to full maturity when his hands and feet were pinned to the bed of suffering.  Surely, the Mother of Sorrows whose title he bore in profession was his unseen companion in these years of his spiritual crucifixion with Christ.

The vision of John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation enables us best to understand how our brother, uncle, fellow Passionist and friend, who was a ‘tree of life’ for so many here on earth, is worthy to take his place alongside that unique and eternally longed-for heavenly Tree of Life which bears fruit “twelve times a year, once each month; the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations” (Revelation 22:2). Transplanted now alongside that river of life which flows from the throne of God, everything Richard shared with us will continue to be healing grace for all who have known him here, whether for a day or a lifetime. So many benefitted from the gifts of his theological education, his discerning insights about the foibles of human nature, and his deadpan humor which could reduce even the most unresponsive persons to laughter. All that may seem over now, humanly speaking.  But his love for God, which he shared so generously among us, will continue to bear fruit in God’s time and providence. May we come to know the truth which he shared on the banner he hung on his door wherever he lived in recent decades that, “Grace is everywhere” (Last line of The Diary of a Country Priest). Dear Richard, may you who brought peace to so many on this earth, now rest in eternal peace.

- Fr. Paul Zilonka, C.P.

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