On Monday 16th April, we all gathered to pray for Fr Francis Davidson, a monk of our monastery since 2001. Atop the church tower flew the Saltire, the flag of the country in which he was born: Scotland. There were many who came to join us to pray and to celebrate his life, and we are grateful to them all. Fr Gabriel celebrated the Mass, and his homily can be found below.
Homily for the funeral of Fr Francis Davidson
'I would like to welcome you all to this requiem mass and funeral of Fr Francis, or to use his baptismal and family name, George Davidson. I welcome you on behalf of Fr Abbot and of the monastic community. A number of us were at a meeting last week with Abbot Cuthbert, in the course of which he told us how very sorry he was not to be able to be here today, and I would like to say more about what he said in the homily. We welcome his family especially his sister, Lady Amelia Dunbar, her children and grandchildren, who are here to mourn with us his passing and likewise those who knew him in the course of his distinguished monastic life and career at Fort Augustus, the monastery of his education and profession, from Portsmouth Rhode Island in the United States and also from the parish of Bamber Bridge. We welcome and thank all of you who do us and him the honour of being here today. As a possibly somewhat whimsical gesture, which I think nonetheless Fr Francis would have appreciated, with that quite dry sense of humour of his, and at the suggestion of our Fr Gordon, together with Fr Francis and indeed myself fellow Scots, we are flying from the Abbey Tower today the Saltire, gift of a generous benefactor, as a bow – though not too solemn a one – in the direction of Fr Francis’ beloved patria and the beloved monastery of his profession.
In that gospel passage we have just heard, there come those familiar, beautiful and consoling words of Jesus; ‘Come to me all you labour and overburdened and I will give you rest’. Give you rest. We come not just as listeners or spectators to a funeral but to do something, to do something very practical, the most practical of things we can ever do for anyone, to pray for them. We come to pray that they be given rest – just as Jesus says and promises ‘I will give you rest’.
‘Come to me’: George Davidson came – more properly was carried and brought - to the Lord in his birth and baptism in Edinburgh in February 1939. He came – now of his own free will and choice, bringing in offering his own life - to the Lord in his monastic clothing and profession in the years between 1956, the year of his clothing and the giving of the name Francis by Abbot Oswald Eaves, and 1960, the year of his solemn life profession. All of these events – his clothing, his simple and his solemn profession took place I notice from his CV on the 29th September, the feast of St Michael and all angels – as we will pray very practically later ‘May the angels lead you into paradise’. And we pray above all that he will now come to the Lord, carried and brought again as in the beginning and this time with the assistance of our prayers, following his death in the infirmary of this abbey of St Laurence’s at Ampleforth, the last of his homes here on earth, on Monday 9 April just gone. ‘Come to me all you labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest’. Into that rest is enfolded all our human need for the forgiveness of sins, which we all need, and our need for that rest which ultimately and for ever can only be a rest in God, as in those famous words of St Augustine ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in you’.
However I think the thing that first strikes one in Fr Francis’ CV, the story of a life, which a monk always keeps and presents to his abbot each Lent, is just how much his life was full of labour and burden (‘Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened’). And albeit briefly I am going to show how true this is. However for some important information I cannot rely on the CV alone. Fr Francis tells us himself just that he was educated at Carlekemp, the prep school for the Fort from 1945 and at the Fort itself from 1952. He neglects to tell us, for reasons of humility and modesty and the utter absence of loud boasting and self-advertisement of any kind, that he was a most accomplished cricketer, a bowler, that he played hockey for Scotland, and that though a heart condition prevented him from playing rugby that he was a distinguished coach of rugby. He was Heaad of School at the Fort. I thank Kevin Deady, who has known him for 68 years for these details between the humbler lines of the CV. I also thank Fr Bernard, fellow monk of the Fort and now of Ampleforth, who has filled in the further lines that we might all have guessed anyway that he was a very able student. This ability took him after the time at school to distinguished studies at Fribourg in Switzerland and then Blackfriars in Oxford.
With an equal degree of understatement of which George, Fr Francis, would have approved and for which he would have been grateful, Amelia, his sister, has commented to me that he was ‘very capable’ – a wonderful Scottish turn of phrase with a particular nuance. Such capability as his brings with it, in the terms of today’s Gospel a fair measure of labour and burden.
We can see this in his rapid rise up what some might describe as the ‘greasy pole’ of monastic promotion and successful ambition, but they would be foolish so to describe it, though Fr Francis did ‘rise’ and ‘quickly’. He was appointed a Housemaster four years into his teaching career and then Headmaster three years later; he was in that post for 13 years. After a period of working on loan to Ampleforth and Downside parishes, in a bold and brave move he was ‘headhunted’ I suppose we would say now, to do that unusual thing for a monastic Headmaster to a second headship in a second school, to run Portsmouth Abbey School in the United States, but not just to run it as he did for five years, but to turn it into a co-educational school. This is a move which has ‘danger do not enter’ written all over it, but ironically it turned out to be in fact one of the happiest periods of his life. As a number have pointed out to me, and as I remember him making clear to me in conversation, he fell in love with America and spoke of it very fondly and indulgently – not always true for those of his country, class, age and education. Indeed as again Amelia, his sister, has pointed out to me he could be quite sharp in response to those who voiced very standard British criticisms of America, based some think on a certain amount of jealousy. Not Fr Francis and he would not allow it.
He returned to Fort Augustus and one would very much like to say that a season of Indian summer awaited him. But instead, so typically of religious and monastic life (and at least to my outside observation married and family life likewise) the labours and burdens, and frankly with them the sorrows and trials, were only just beginning. Again the CV is restrained, factual and laconic. In March 1998 he was appointed Prior Administrator of Fort Augustus. I must confess I am now beginning to grow very uncomfortable – Housemaster, Headmaster and then Prior Administrator. My silly joke is aimed to get me past a real monastic and human tragedy: some seven months later the Fort Augustus community with truly terrible sadness and aware of the horrible consequences, voted for its own dissolution. I think I will just note, leave to the imagination and not dwell upon what it was like to have to preside over the closure of the Fort and the toll this inevitably took: labours and burdens indeed and some.
On the 28 March 2001, at the age of 62 and following a number of other brethren from the Fort, Fr Francis transferred his stability to the community of St Laurence at Ampleforth. I now come to the point at which I say what I believe Abbot Cuthbert would so dearly love to be here saying himself. Fr Francis might then have expected a quiet life, but his ‘capability’ meant that he served the Abbot and the community in the following roles: Abbot’s Assistant for developing a Five Year Plan, Child protection / safeguarding co-ordinator, Governor of St Martin’s Ampleforth, Abbot’s Adviser for Ampleforth College, Sub Prior, Acting Prior, organizer of the sale of abbey lazy assets. Why did he not just stare at his shoes like the rest of us when that job came up on offer? Trustee of the St Benet’s Trust in Oxford and then appointed as the first Prior and Religious Superior at St Benet’s under the first lay Master: all of these you do not need me to tell you high stress jobs seeing him well into his 70s. Fr Francis, I am just the Abbot’s mouthpiece here today to thank you for this. Your adopted and adopting community always knew your worth. For several years you were first past the post in elections to the Abbot’s Council (a dubious honour I know) and the community’s choice to be Delegate to General Chapter. This was only halted by your own eventual and most understandable cry of ‘enough’ which all of us who were present in the Conventual Chapter will remember, a moving moment, only four years ago.
I know I do not need to labour the point. In the Rule of St Benedict the novice master is told that his concern must be whether the novice truly seeks God and whether he shows eagerness for the work of God, for obedience and for trials. He should be clearly told all the hardships and difficulties that will lead him to God. All the evidence, however, and I think it is that of Fr Francis’ life too shows that these trials, hardships and difficulties last throughout one’s life not just a period of formation at their beginning. As I have already suggested they in fact intensify. These burdensome labours were for him the closure of Fort Augustus, the subsequent police investigations into and exposure of sins and crimes committed by Fort monks as here by Ampleforth monks, and Fr Francis himself in the evening of his life came under direct fire for his handling of cases at the Fort. He like all of us had to face some failures in the care of children entrusted to our schools, who have been harmed. We have to apologize for these and we have to ask forgiveness; even when not directly harmers, we have to admit our share in responsibility.
His last period in the monastery infirmary, too, had its acute difficulties for himself and for those caring for him. I think the trouble is that those who are highly capable suffer and struggle more than others as they have to endure becoming incapable. So it is that for this monk clothed, simply and solemnly professed on the feast of the angels that we need to pray ‘may the angels lead you into paradise’ because this is not something that any one of us can do on our own, we have to be lead, brought, carried as in our baptism, as on the day of our funeral, and we need an angel.
At the end Fr Francis was sent an angel. He came from a Scottish family very much like my own: quite fiercely reserved, with no gush, a tendency and preference not to speak of deep, intimate or spiritual matters. But the angel leading him into paradise was from this family. It was his sister Amelia, who in a somewhat stormy meeting in the monastery infirmary, told her brother George to lie back, to accept it and pray for a good death. Shortly after this I had the very great superior’s privilege of coming to anoint him in the presence of Br Benedict and two of the wonderful team of carers Marco and Jo. He was … lying back and accepting it according to the command of the angel. It was a very peaceful sacrament. The difficulties were not quite over but they were soon to be. ‘Come to me all you labour and overburdened and I will give you rest’. Monks all remember the words that there will be trials, hardships and difficulties, but St Benedict says of these in his next breath ‘they will bring you to God’. The prayers of the angels, of his family and of his monastic brothers, will bring him, we pray, to God, to that new Jerusalem, of which Millie his great-niece read to us, Jerusalem, the vision of peace the place of rest.'