On the Man Who Taught Me How to be a Christian
Father Fraser graced me with the opportunity to preach in this pulpit many times as a seminarian, and I think once or twice as a Deacon before we left for my first parish, downstate in Pekin and Morton. The first homily was for the Baptism of Christ by the hand of S. John the Baptist, aka the Theophany. I believe that morning I said everything that could possibly be said about the momentous event. The homily lasted over 29 minutes, and if you are really lucky this eulogy just might come in just under that.
My family and I were parishioners at St Paul’s, Riverside from Nov. 2009 through June 2016. We started just days after my daughter Marla was born. Father Fraser was my mentor from the first time I set foot in St Paul’s through even his final days before he died. He texted me less then four weeks before he died. Pardon me while I say this directly: Father Fraser taught me everything about Christian life: how to be Christian, how to be Catholic and Benedictine, how to be Anglican, and what it means to be an Episcopalian; how to be a laic, a priest, a rector. When I started at St Paul’s, I was in significant ways in the wilderness, and within a short time, I became (in the words of my daughter Marla) a “hard-core Anglican.”
Father Fraser mentored me on all channels: directly, through the formation class he taught “Adult Theology Class,” which was for other parishioners weekly over two years (or so he said); for us it was weekly over four years; pastorally, through regular spiritual direction; liturgically, through the very holy manner in which he celebrated the Mass and preached; and less formally in the hundreds of conversations we had, during coffee-hour and, in many cases, over the phone. He taught me what it means to be God-centered in all things. He taught me what devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints means. He taught me what it means to be a Priest, in terms of pastor, liturgist, sacramentalist, and teacher; and he taught me what it means to be a Rector, both administratively and pastorally, as he saw the Anglican Rector as a contemporary adaptation of the Benedictine Abbot.
He taught me about the glories of the Anglican tradition and the glories of the Episcopal Church, as well as the current troubles that plague both and make life in the contemporary Episcopal Church as an orthodox-catholic a challenge. He taught me how to see the Anglican tradition as part of the Church: part of, that is, the historic, sacramental, apostolic Church that naturally finds its places alongside the Roman and Orthodox traditions; thus he taught me how to be at peace as an Anglican–how like Elijah to see the wind, the earthquake, the fire outside of the cave, but through it all, how as an Anglican to hear the still small voice of God. He taught me about English change-ringing, because of the set this parish possesses. He taught me about the brilliance of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which all of my children have gone through, and which we have started at my current parish. He understood the parish also from the perspective of organizational dynamics, and shared much wisdom about how to recognize and handle different dynamics common to parish life. He taught me about the central importance of parish culture. He also taught me about the 7 Ecumenical Councils, holy icons, monasticism, and many aspects of spirituality.
He welcomed my aspiration to priesthood–when I first told him, only after three months at the parish, he said, “Matthew, do you think that I am surprised?” He encouraged me to start theological study, first at Catholic Theological Union (in Chicago) and then, also, Nashotah House, guiding me successfully through both master’s programs, which I did concurrently. He helped us discern God’s calling to my first cure in Pekin, Illinois, helping us to overcome the unknown and our resistance to leaving Chicago. His words “You never go home” still ring in my soul. He advised me when I was discerning God’s call to my current parish in Florida. He also strongly encouraged my study of Martin Thornton. He called me a “Martin Thornton junkie.” This parish here exemplifiesMartin Thornton’s vision of a godly parish, and Father Fraser encouraged me, as a budding adult catechist, to follow Thornton’s idea of “devout experimentation” in the classes I started very early to teach her. Besides preaching and teaching, he encouraged me to be a lector, altar server, thurifer, member of the altar guild, scheduler for the liturgical ministers, and bell ringer. My seven years here was the closest I got to a curacy, and it was often intense.
In short, Jesus Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit operating through the Rector of this holy house, Father Fraser helped me see God’s purpose for my life; he helped to turn my life around, and that of my wife as well, and tilled the soil for my children to grow up as devout Anglican Christians. His spirit is active in my life to this day, and in my family. He was a force of nature.
I have been asked many times why I chose the Episcopal Church. And I have said, many times, that I did not choose the Episcopal Church. God drew me to St Paul’s Parish in Riverside, Illinois–only God, and Him alone. I grew up ELCA, and upon heading to college, began a 17-year wilderness period before God led me to St Paul’s. I had never heard of “the Episcopal Church” nor “Anglicanism.” The Holy Spirit led me there through my wife’s inquiry as we walked by it one day in 2009, “Have you ever checked that place out?” I looked at the sign, which read, in large letters, “Saint Paul’s Parish” and in smaller letters “Anglican/Episcopal - Benedictine.” I said, “No, and I don’t know what any of those words mean, either.” It is my absolute, firm conviction that God, by means of the then-anonymous guiding of the Holy Spirit, led us to this very hold and unique Episcopal parish as part of my, and our, vocation.
What led us to stay was the sense of holiness that pervaded the liturgy, community, church grounds, and buildings. I was looking for God, and I and my family found Him here, and were here found by Him. To paraphrase Saint Paul in 1 Cor 14, we we began worshipping here, instead of finding a church assembled and speaking in tongues–for we had visited many churches prior to St Paul’s and found nothing but people speaking in tongues (let the reader understand)–instead of that, we found the church, it was assembled and speaking prophetically. Christians in this place spoke freely about how God was present in their lives; people like Helen Jablonski, of blessed memory, and many others. And so coming here, we fell on our face (me literally), and we worshipped God, and we declared, and continue to declare, that God is really here among us.
I will say a couple more things. Father Fraser, unsurprising to many, encouraged my family’s devotion to icons, as well as nurtured the interest in Gregorian plainsong that I already had. Yes it was the icons installed in the nave and sanctuary. Perhaps more importantly, it was the parish’s tradition of giving an icon to every household annually on All Saints’ Day that was the seed. Today my family has over 100 icons in our house, and my eldest daughter is studying iconography with the foremost iconographer in the western world, Aidan Hart. Even our two youngest children, Martin and Hildegard, 8 and 3, have a devotion to icons. Martin loves St George, and whenever Hilda sees an icon of the Theotokos, she points and says “Mama.” As far as plainsong, I already had a devotion to plainsong before joining St Paul’s; but the commitment there to plainsong in the liturgy and Father Fraser’s encouragement, greatly increased that. My family has chanted Matins and Evensong daily in the home, and has for nine years. We do so several times a week in services in our current parish. This is owing in large measure to Father Fraser.
Finally, while I knew him for only 16 years (one says “only” when one is talking about a man who was rector of a parish for 42 years, and started four months before I was born; something Father Fraser never failed to allow me to forget), I think two factors are central to understanding the trajectory of his life. One is that his father was an Episcopal Bishop, and the other is that during seminary his dogmatic theology professor was Anglican Father John Macquarrie and his ascetical professor was Orthodox Father Alexander Schmemann. The first, his bishop dad, exposed Father Fraser to an awareness of the Church that few have: seeing it from the perspective of a bishop gave him much wisdom and instinctual brilliance, which Father Fraser regularly imparted to me, quite intentionally he said. And, the traumatic childhood he had, which was not his fault, wounded him so deeply that he had a significant, and often hurtful, and occasionally nasty, temper throughout his adult life. This is not my story to tell. But according to what his priest in Raleigh preached at the funeral, Father Fraser was deeply aware and deeply regretful for all the bridges he burned throughout his life. If we know nothing else about his condition at this moment, we can know that all the fear that he lived with his whole life has by Christ been taken away; divine healing for him, and, perhaps divine healing for us.
The other factor–the two seminary professors he had at the height of their own theological brilliance–without question enlightened the eyes of his heart, and did so in mystical ways. Both priests, as well as their teaching, imprinted Father Fraser’s sensibility with a profound holiness which was palpable to most everyone that met him, and especially members of this church, and was I think the primary influence the holiness of his liturgical celebration and his commitment to Benedictine spirituality. He was a man brilliant (and a man tortured) and his own devoutly experimental model for the Anglican parish so that survives and thrives in a secular era is prophetic, and as this parish continues to show, is attainable, and let us hope, reproducible in all corners of the Anglican world.
Thomas Augustus Fraser the third, today we pray for you. We ask as well that, as you are in the nearer presence of Christ in paradise, that you pray for us. Amen.
Get full access to Anglican Ascetic Podcast at frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe [https://frmcdallman.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
