Homily preached by the Reverend Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Ph.D., S.T.D., for the First Anniversary of the Death of the Reverend Nicholas L. Gregoris, S.T.D., Ed.D., on 21 August 2025 at the Church of the Holy Innocents, New York City.
A most sincere thanks to all who have gathered here for this first anniversary Memorial Mass for our dearly beloved and departed Father Nicholas Gregoris. A year on, it seems like yesterday as I am still tempted to call for him down the hall to share some interesting development, making me recall the sage observation of St. Peter: “. . . with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
At Father Nicholas’ Funeral Mass, I bemoaned the fact that he had encountered very little “institutional” affirmation, however, the past year has had me inundated with hundreds of communiques from cardinals, bishops, priests, Sisters, and lay faithful – all grateful acknowledgments for his priestly life and ministry. Father Nick, you never realized how much you meant to so many people!
In my funeral homily, I touched ever so briefly on the impact Father Nicholas’ death had on me personally. Let me expand on that for a brief moment this evening, especially since so many of you, very thoughtfully, have expressed such concerns. To put it most forthrightly, I have never had to deal with such feelings before – not even with the deaths of my parents; after all, having entered the seminary at the age of seventeen, I never lived with them again. Allow me to put a finer point on this.
When Father Robert Sirico – the inestimable founder of the Acton Institute and staunch devotee of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman – wrote to express his condolences, he concluded with this lapidary line: “Father Nicholas was your Ambrose.” What did he mean? Ambrose St. John was Cardinal Newman’s younger alter ego. The parallels between Newman’s relationship to St. John and mine with Father Nicholas are uncanny. For example, there was a significant age difference between them; they had collaborated for 32 years, we for 37; Father Ambrose died at the age of 59, Father Nicholas at 52. In the dedication to Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Sua, he would write:
And to you especially, dear AMBROSE ST. JOHN; whom God gave me, when He took every one else away; who are the link between my old life and my new; who have now for twenty-one years been so devoted to me, so patient, so zealous, so tender; who have let me lean so hard upon you; who have watched me so narrowly; who have never thought of yourself, if I was in question.
Those words find a strong echo in how Father Nicholas affected my personal life and my priestly ministry. And so, once more I must reprise the great Cardinal, who confessed to a friend on May 26, 1864, the feast of Corpus Christi, as well as that of St. Philip Neri (coincidentally the date of Father Nicholas’ priestly ordination): “I have always thought that no loss was the same as that of one’s husband or wife, but I think it is difficult that someone’s pain could be greater than mine.” And even more poignantly to another: “This is the greatest affliction I have had in my life, and so sudden. Pray for him and for me.” Yes, “pray for him and for me.”
And so, a year later, I still feel his presence – a source of sorrow but also an impetus to carry on with the work to which we were both so committed, as it was for Cardinal Newman.
Which brings me to my next point. As you know, the souls in Purgatory can’t help themselves. Although, as an aside, after the hundreds of Masses offered these twelve months for our dear friend, I am tempted to suggest that he may well have gotten his “Get-out-of-Jail” card by now! At any rate, the Poor Souls can help others; in fact, many of them are more altruistic in their suffering state than they were in their earthly existence. In this regard, I have a sneaking suspicion that Father Nicholas may well have been offering his purgatorial dolors for the Holy Church he so loved and it was those oblations that gave us a new pope – one I think he must appreciate.
Perhaps another gift of Father Nicholas was Pope Leo’s decision to declare our revered Cardinal Newman a doctor of the Church, something about which Father Nicholas wrote passionately and for which he prayed most fervently. Which leads me to a final consideration.
Every time Catholics gather for a Requiem Mass, of course, we feel it to be our bounden duty to pray for the deceased but also to reflect on our own mortality: Memento mori (Remember death)! Let’s enlist the wisdom of our soon-to-be Doctor of the Church to do just that.
John Henry Newman, at the age of fifteen, embarked on a decades-long journey, in the words of his motto, ex imaginibus et umbris in veritatem [from images and shadows into the truth]. For many years on his theological sojourn, Newman stood by the teaching of the 39 Articles of Religion of the Anglican Communion, including the one which describes Purgatory as a “pernicious” doctrine. With much prayer, intense study of the whole thrust of Sacred Scripture, as well as the convincing witness of the Fathers of the Church, he ended up writing one of the finest works on Purgatory, “The Dream of Gerontius,” which rivals the depth and beauty of Dante’s appreciation of Purgatory in his Divina Commedia; perhaps this work is best known through the lovely hymn, “Praise to the Holiest,” which it contains (and quoted by Pope Benedict XVI in his beatification homily for Newman).
Let me rehearse the “plot” of that lengthy poem.
A soul is in its last agony and is trying to make sense of his final moments, assisted by his Guardian Angel. The dying man cannot understand why he has become so calm in the face of this previously dreaded experience; the Angel tells him that the prayers of the priest and his friends who surround him have given him confidence and, beyond that, that the “calm and joy uprising in thy soul is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense, and Heaven begun.” The man gradually slips further and further and becomes concerned about the loss of his senses; the Angel comforts him: “. . . till that Beatific Vision, thou art blind; for e’en thy Purgatory, which comes like fire, is fire without its light.” The soul is buoyed up by that knowledge and conforms his will to God’s, asking but to see the Face of God for no more than a moment before embarking on his process of purification. The Angel declares that he shall, in fact, see God for just such a twinkling of an eye but warns him: “That sight of the Most Fair will gladden thee, but it will pierce thee too.” This soul will now “learn that the flame of Everlasting Love doth burn ’ere it transform.” He is now ready to face the Lord in judgment, the sight of whom “will kindle in thy heart all tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.”
And what might such thoughts be? Best to allow the poetic genius of Newman to speak directly for, as he knew, cor ad cor loquitur (his cardinalatial motto, Heart speaks to heart):
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearns for Him
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
There is a pleading in His pensive eyes
Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.
And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though
Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinn’d,
As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire
To slink away, and hide thee from His sight:
And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell
Within the beauty of His countenance.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen, –
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him, –
Will be thy veriest, sharpest Purgatory.
And as the man proceeds to the divine tribunal, he is astonished to hear earthly voices; once more, he is reminded that he hears the priest and his friends praying the Subvenite on his behalf, bringing now the same Angel of the Agony who strengthened Christ in His last hours to do the same for this poor soul, escorting him into eternity. Once there, this would-be lover of God “flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel” but never fully makes it because the sanctity of the All-Holy One scorches and shrivels the soul into passivity “before the awful Throne.” And yet, the Angel can exclaim: “O happy, suffering soul! For it is safe, consumed, yet quicken’d, by the glance of God.” And the soul agrees; he is, paradoxically, “happy in my pain” and even wants to leave the presence of God immediately, so as to hasten the day when he can return for the full and lasting experience, desiring to rush forth to what the Angel terms “the golden prison” of Purgatory. The man confidently asserts: “There will I sing my absent Lord and Love: – Take me away, that sooner I may rise, and go above, and see Him in the truth of everlasting day.”
And so, the soul’s Angel complies with those holy wishes. Listen to how Newman ends this magnificent work, which is at once imaginative and theological, realistic and poetic, as he gives God’s messenger the final say:
Softly and gently, dearly-ransom’d soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.
Angels, to whom the willing task is given.
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth, and prayers in Heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.
Farewell, but not for ever! Brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.
Yes, Lord, we pray today for all who love and yearn for Your purifying love; make them – and us – to be cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es (With thy saints forever, for Thou art merciful)! In this Jubilee Year of Hope, let us entrust the soul of our dear friend to the Mater Spei (Mother of Hope) that she would present it to her Son, our Eternal High Priest. For more than a quarter of a century, Father Nicholas invited the faithful to “come and eat” at the Eucharistic Banquet. Our faith emboldens us to believe that he has heard the Eternal High Priest give that same assurance to him: “I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20).
Let’s allow Cardinal Newman to have the last word by having recourse to two of his more beautiful prayers:
Oh, my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments, and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious Saints … smile upon me; that in them all, and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die, as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love.
May He support us all the day long, till the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in His mercy, may He give us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.
Softly and Gently, dearly-ransom’d soul. . . Farewell, – dearest son – but not for ever!