Father George Windolph, O.F.M.
June 14, 1922-July 31, 2005
Homily for Quincy University Chapel Mass, August 9, 2005
First reading: Proverbs 8:22-34
Second reading: I Thessalonians 5:14-22
Gospel reading: Mark 10: 13-16
“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good.” (I Th 5:19-21)
These three sentences describe life lived on a knife edge.
“Don’t quench the Spirit or despise prophetic utterances” means “listen to unwelcome voices.” Listen to the prophets among you.
But don’t just accept them uncritically. “Test everything; retain what is good.”
Test everything. This is the attitude of the scientist. Be critical. Ask the hard questions.
That was George in his younger days.
I first met George in 1956, when I was fresh out of the novitiate and he had been teaching at O.L.A. in Cleveland for only three or four years. He was known as “Agatho” then.
O.L.A. at that time was an exciting place. Allan Wolter was the star of the O.L.A. constellation. Allan single-handedly wrote and mimeographed our textbooks in at least three areas: nuclear physics, cosmology, and a Latin text in metaphysics. Allan and Matt Menges and Lucan Freppert and Valerius Messerich and Leonard Paskert were the philosophers at O.L.A., George was the scientist. He kept the dialog between philosophy and science going, and shared it with us.
The nuclear physics text was titled, if I recall correctly, “Problems in the Physical Universe,” and dealt also with astronomy. George used it as our text for the first semester of our first year. After that we moved into chemistry and biology, where George himself wrote and mimeographed the texts.
The spirit there was one of daring examination of the newest findings of science, combined with a passionate desire to use knowledge in the service of the Gospel. The learning was practical; it focused on knowledge you could use. You could use it to think about nature, and then use your thoughts in prayer and contemplation. It was not the gamesmanship that can dominate secular science, where scientists have to compete for teaching positions by publishing or perishing. We studied science so we could understand philosophy better, and we studied philosophy so we could understand theology better, and we studied theology so we could help people know and love God better. We had a clear mission statement, from, I believe, St. Bonaventure: In sanctitate et doctrina. Combine holiness and learning.
A few days ago I received copies of emails from two former students of George’s. Both of these men had been Franciscans and had left the Order back in the 1960’s or 1970’s. Here is what one, Gael Stahl, wrote:
That’s our old (then, young) prof Agatho. Best chemistry, genetics, cosmology, reproduction, etc. prof I ever had in those subjects. A really natural, good teacher. It was his charism, and I kept some of those mimeographed textbooks. I think Alan Wolter wrote them or most of them, but Aggie/George sure could teach them.
The second one, Jack Brennan, wrote:
A physician friend of mine borrowed Aggie’s manuscript on embryology from me and never returned it. He told me it was superior to the text he used in med school. A great teacher. Rest in peace, Brother Agatho.
I had exactly the same evaluation of George’s teaching. I came out of O.L.A. feeling armed for the struggle, ready to face any question that science could throw at me. I still feel that way.
Three or four years ago George was preaching in the chapel here at the 5:00 Mass on the feast of the Annunciation. During his homily he said something like this (I can’t recall his exact words, but the idea made us all sit up straight and take notice). “I hope that some day you young women will be priests, and be able to make Christ incarnate on the altar just as Mary made him incarnate in her womb.”
The statement makes me think of a saying by another of my teachers in the seminary, Sylvester Saller. Sylvester had spent most of his life in Jerusalem at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, teaching and doing archeology. He said that sometimes Protestant scholars would ask him, “What would you do if something you find in your scholarly work disagrees with what your Church teaches?” Sylvester said his answer was “We can hold anything we can prove.”
Those words have become burned into my memory, and have guided my life. “We can hold anything we can prove.” Sylvester added that if what you are saying disagrees with an official Church position, you had better have good proofs, and it may take a while, but you can hold it if you can prove it. Look at Galileo.
The spirit of O.L.A. in those days is being revived today in what has come to be called the Commission for the Retrieval of the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition. I just finished reading a book by Mary Beth Ingham entitled Scotus for Dunces. She wants to present the ideas of John Duns Scotus, whose icon looks down on us from above (the one with the square halo). She says the main theme of Scotus’s thought is that God is an artist who creates because God loves beauty and wants to share it.
Beauty is found in nature, but above all in human beings. God delights in the beauty of human beings. Let me repeat part of the first reading. The author is personifying “wisdom,” but Franciscans have always seen it as referring to Christ.
When he [God] established the heavens, I was there,
when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
When he made firm the skies above,
when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
When he set for the sea its limit,
so that the waters should not transgress his command;
Then was I beside him as his craftsman,
and I was his delight day by day,
Playing before him all the while,
playing on the surface of his earth;
and I found delight in the sons of men. (Prov 8:27-31)
George found delight in the children of the human family. For the last several years, the most important thing in his life was for him to go to Blessing Hospital Day Care Center and sit in a rocking chair and hold and rock babies. This scientist, who had spent his life peering into the secrets of the universe (years ago he had read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time), found his delight in playing with the children of the human family.
George never was a man of many words. In recent years he spoke less and less. In our community chapters we have a “sharing of life.” When George’s time to share came, he would just give that little smile, as if to say, “What is there to say that I didn’t already say last time?” We would all smile back and move on.
John Joe Lakers drove George every day to Blessing, and JJ tried to see if he could get him to say something. One day George spoke. He had read something on a cereal box that morning. The thing he read went something like this: “Babies are a sign that God still has hope in the world.”
Our society claims to be child-centered. It puts huge amounts of money at the disposal of wealthier children, but allows millions of children to go to school hungry. Our society is like the disciples; we think that adult concerns should take precedence over the interests of children.
George took Jesus literally. Like Jesus, he embraced the children, blessed them, and placed his hands on them. George, with all his science, accepted the kingdom of God like a little child.