Morning eastward springs: The funeral of Stratford Caldecott

This week I attended the funeral of the Catholic writer Stratford Caldecott at the Oratory in Oxford (see Kathy Schiffer's brief obituary here). I had met Stratford only twice - both times at conferences organised by the G. K. Chesterton Institute in Oxford - but had also corresponded by email with him several times about writing and publishing. My daughter Emily had the privilege of staying with his family in Oxford for a month while she studied to teach English as a Foreign Language there.

Stratford's funeral was the most beautiful I have attended, rich in the beauty and hope of the Catholic Tradition and set to the beautiful Requiem by Gabriel Fauré performed live in the Oratory itself. Stratford embodied the call of the Second Vatican Council to proclaim the mystery of salvation and restore all things in Christ. He will be deeply missed and his passing will leave a profound impression on the Catholic intellectual landscape of this country.

The Oxford Oratory was of course where Gerard Manley Hopkins worked as a curate from 1878 before moving to Manchester. Hopkins' poetry was in many ways my first encounter with verse outside of the poets I was taught at school such as D. H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes. In 1877, Hopkins wrote "God's Grandeur" later published by Robert Bridges with other poems of this period such as "As kingfishers catch fire".

The last lines of this poem bring to mind the hope of light from darkness witnessed by Stratford's funeral:

"And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

The hope of eternal life to which Hopkins witnessed as a priest and of which Stratford wrote so often. Whilst in Oxford, we also revisited the University Church of St Mary the Virgin where C. S. Lewis preached his famous sermon The Weight of Glory in which he says of the hope of glory that awaits us as Christians:

"We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning star...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure...Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

Stratford's funeral was such as day, for like Hopkins he knew that,

   "Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
   To the Father through the features of men's faces."
       (from As kingfishers catch fire)

May he behold "white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise" (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King).

Requiescat in pace, Stratford.

A list of Stratford Caldecott's books can be found here.