Abbot Timothy Wright (1942-2018)
The Requiem Mass of Abbot Timothy Wright was held today in the Abbey Church. He will be remembered fondly by many, and this was evident in the number and variety of people who attended. Fr Gabriel celebrated the Mass, and his introduction and homily can be found below.
Introduction & welcome
On behalf of our Abbot and the monastic community, I welcome you all – those here present and those around the world listening on the live streaming - to this Requiem Mass and Funeral of Abbot Timothy Wright, titular Abbot of Westminster and Abbot of Ampleforth from 1997 to 2005.
I would like to begin by welcoming Abbot Timothy’s family, including of course his two brothers Fr Stephen Wright monk of Ampleforth and Fr Ralph Wright, firstly monk of Ampleforth and now monk of St Louis in the USA. We remember the fourth brother Miles, a very generous benefactor, who died not so long ago and whose funeral memorably was here. But already we note this: three monks in one family; clearly we are dealing here with no ordinary phenomenon. We also have with us our own Fr Matthew and Fr Laurence of St Louis, from Abbot Timothy’s novitiate of 1962.
Abbot President Christopher has written to me to send his heartfelt apologies. I welcome from our Congregation Abbot Geoffrey of Douai and First Assistant in the Regimen, Fr Leo Maidlow Davis, Prior Administrator of Downside and Abbot Martin of Ealing. This mention of Abbot Martin, gives me the pause to thank him and his community most profoundly for their wonderful care of Abbot Timothy in his illness and while being treated so well in hospital and in particular, Alan and Maureen in Ealing Abbey: I would hardly have believed it possible but Abbot Timothy found new superlatives in his characteristic way to describe their care: ‘Gabriel, I just want you to know, they have been fantastic!’ Their kindness reminds me to welcome and thank two key people, Julia Brooke and Liam Kelly, both first appointed to work in Ampleforth in Abbot Timothy’s time and who as you all know have along with a team of others, done so much for this funeral, as they do every day of their devoted working lives here, for us. And to thank others, Laci Nestor-Smith an OA and family who have also given much care and friendship to Timothy as well as Alphons and Cecile Brenninkmeier, whose support in Brussels has been a great strength too to Abbot Cuthbert, myself and many of the brethren.
Being titular Abbot of Westminster was not just an empty title and honour to Abbot Timothy and we are honoured by the presence today of the Very Revd Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster. It seems a providence, one of so many that Timothy died within the archdiocese of Westminster. Among other clergy here today, I would like to welcome in particular Mgr Rod Strange, under whom Timothy worked at the Beda in Rome, a for him particularly happy and blessed posting, immediately after he ceased being Abbot. And I welcome too Mother Abbess Andrea and representatives from Stanbrook; Abbot Timothy so rejoiced in your move to North Yorkshire and readily perceived and proclaimed the blessings of your closeness to us in Wass.
As you all know – and as the numbers here testify – Abbot Timothy was a larger than life character with an immense range of involvements to the shame of us lesser mortals. I welcome all of you who know Timothy from his long years working in Ampleforth College, in activities which ranged from the lowly to the exalted and back again, most particularly maybe I should mention those of you who know him from his long and dedicated years as housemaster of St John’s: he kept in touch with so many of you because he kept you in that great and prayerful heart of his, where you and St John’s always had a special place. There are two other Ampleforth connections so important to mention because they too had a very particular place in his heart. The first of these is the Lourdes pilgrimage and I welcome specially by name Anna Mayer, because she has always been one of his most stalwart friends and one of his most key helpers and inspirations in the Lourdes pilgrimage and Paul Williams, Chairman of the Ampleforth Lourdes pilgrimage. The Manquehue Apostolic Movement in Chile also became for Abbot Timothy and to the very end of his life a most key place and way of encounter with God – he was there this year as so often celebrating the Easter Triduum with them. His friendship with their founder and Responsable, Jose Manuel Egiguren, was one of the great gifts and graces of his life and is symbolized here in his funeral by the presence of Cristóbal Valdes and the members of the St Scholastica Community at Downside.
For most it might seem that high monastic office, and what higher than an abbacy, represent the pinnacle of a career. Not for you Timothy! I have already mentioned the Beda, but for a very particular reason Abbot Timothy’s last years were spent teaching in two Benedictine Universities in the USA at St Procopius and at St Martin’s and these brought him great blessings, which also he freely gave – as today’s first reading, which will be read by his cousin Charles Wright, puts it ‘the favours of the Lord are not all past’. Timothy, in his time as Abbot and more significantly afterwards had discovered a new favour of the Lord in the connection between lectio divina, his monastic way of prayer, and the great religious tradition of Islam. He still had a doctorate and books to write, classes to teach and maybe most importantly new friends to make. My last welcome, but it is on the strict understanding that the last is first, is to Sheikh Mohammad Ali Shomali, Imam and Director of the Islamic Centre of England who is here today fully in his own name and representing those new friends, those friends of the latter years, who together with us are joined in a bond of love and prayer, praying for the repose of the soul of Timothy Wright, no ordinary phenomenon, God’s servant, monk and priest.
Homily
As a monk Abbot Timothy’s devotion to prayer was well known, indeed legendary. This could take idiosyncratic form, as on the exercise bicycle set up in the housemaster’s bedroom in St John’s, modified to include rosary beads, and used each morning before Matins at 6am. But it would then take more usual forms too, as he would then go to Matins, albeit still with this idiosyncrasy that housemasters were not often sighted at Matins. This is maybe the first and most important clue to Abbot Timothy, the man of prayer, the monk of prayer.
Through this prayer he sought to give himself to God, to hand over his life to be used as God chose, to seek God and to do his will. In the words of our first reading from the book of Lamentations, to recover hope that the favours of the Lord are not all past, they are renewed every morning. He took those following words, with a particular monastic resonance ‘My portion is the Lord, says my soul’ and ‘The Lord is good to those who trust him, to the soul that searches for him. It is good to wait in silence for the Lord to save’. Those who were in the rooms underneath the exercise bike, were not always so persuaded of the silence, but they did not miss the act of a powerful human will giving itself to God or of its motive. The response to the psalm ‘those who hope in you, O Lord, shall not be disappointed’ echoes the ‘Suscipe’ which is always sung as a monk’s body is lowered into the vault, just as the monk before, sometimes many years before, sings it at his profession for life: ‘If you uphold me, Lord, by your promise I shall live, let my hopes not be in vain’.
Abbot Timothy always saw his life very clearly in the light of God and of his will and I think none of us imagine that he ever gave into vacillation or hesitation, these were as far as can be from his foible or besetting fault. When the Lord finally came for him, it was as expressed in today’s Gospel reading, as the thief in the night, and we cannot but think that Timothy met this thief, disguised as massive bilateral pulmonary thrombosis, with a smile, or rather one of those so distinctive laughs, of welcome and recognition, nor do we doubt that his Lord sat him down at the banquet, and clad in apron, is now waiting upon him. Indeed I seem to see him beckoning us, loudly exhorting us by name (another Timothean characteristic) and telling us to get a move on and join him at the table of the Master. His scoffing always had a point, and if not always quite taken so, was kindly meant.
Now at this point I think I should admit that justice seems to require at least ten homilies, probably more, to cover all the many roles Abbot Timothy has taken, here in the monastery and then in an external career since 2005, but I think the perhaps doomed attempt to do justice to a monastic life always lived in an overdrive gear, will need to be served by a series of memories to be published in due course, rather than cavalierly summarized in this sermon – and the flavour for this has already come more in the welcome to this Mass, rather than now in this context.
His abbacy from 1997 to 2005 came at the beginning of what Pope Francis has described as ‘not so much an era of change as a change of era’, the birth pangs of a new age, which has been experienced as a great challenge, if also as an opportunity, for Ampleforth. In his years as Abbot, and for all his successors as Superior here, there has been the need to face the sins and crimes regarding the safeguarding of children and adults at risk. Abbot Timothy’s emails remained anguished about this right up to his death, though I think he shared the view of his successors, best described in Fr Terence’s first conference as acting superior in the autumn of 2016 that we must view this as a purification not as a persecution.
But the ‘change of era’ extends far beyond this and has affected every aspect of a monastic vocation in the 21st century. I doubt there is Abbot, Bishop or even Pope in his ordinary teaching office, who would suggest that his judgement in the midst of such turbulence and uncertainty has never faltered. Abbot Timothy did not shy away from confrontations, he called them his tin hat moments, with a passing hint at his famous nickname. These could be could be with whole groups, as with the whole neighbourhood over a scheme for Park House Farm, with the monastic community, in which close votes, indeed a majority of one, were held to be evidence of a big green light from the Holy Spirit; they could also be individual and some of the brethren found Timothy all too much of a bull in the very precious china shop of their monastic lives. Myself, I always rather admired his good judgement but then it was in his abbacy, that I became successively a Head of Department, a Housemaster, and then, though this was a terrible challenge to my Moley-like timidity, Headmaster. But I too had my moments. In one cataclysmic Abbot’s Council, I found myself on the wrong side of Abbot Timothy and the Holy Spirit over a particular issue and therefore in rather a fiery place. But then there came something rather revealing; he said to me ‘you know, Gabriel, you must always tell the truth’. The revealing thing is that he did not say what I rather more mealy mouthed and mean spirited, might have said namely ‘You must say what you think is right’, but I suspect without changing his view in the slightest, ‘You must always tell the truth’. He was reminding me, I think, that we are not about convenience or calculation, but about the truth, even in collision.
I met him for the last time, a few weeks ago when he was waiting for his operation in Ealing Abbey. I had cooked up in my head a scheme to bring Timothy in from the cold, as it were. I thought it might be rather a good idea for Abbot Timothy to be a senior research fellow at St Benet’s, pursuing his great passion of the latter years, the depth comparison of Benedictine lectio with the Islamic, especially the Shi’a Islamic, approach to their Scriptures, maybe with Sheikh Mohammad as an honorary fellow. He said ‘my goodness Gabriel, that would be a dream come true’ but then his face fell and suddenly I realized he had never looked less bull-like. ‘I am not clever enough for Oxford, why I have not even managed to learn Arabic’.
Abbot Timothy always walked St Benedict’s path of humility which Benedict says God raises up to become a ladder. I think he probably walked it more instinctively than by plan, certainly not by any calculation, and in my self-determining arrogance I probably mistook it more often than not. But I realise his looking less than ever like a bull, has maybe some connection, with that final step on the ladder of humility: ‘The twelfth step of humility is that a monk always manifests humility in his bearing no less than in his heart, so that it is evident at the work of God, in the oratory, the monastery or the garden, on a journey or in the field, or anywhere else’. We are brought by this step according to St Benedict, to say with the tax collector at the back of the Temple ‘Lord I am a sinner, not worthy to look up to heaven’.
Timothy maybe was not looking up to heaven either, but he was ready all the same for the thief in the night, who comes to lift us up and to bring us to himself.