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Since my uncle Jack’s death on Saturday morning I have received many inspiring messages and had some great conversations all with memories of Jack in every aspect of his long and full life.

While there aren’t too many still around who were at St. Bede’s with him, there are still some who remember him at Greenmeadows, the Marist Seminary where he spent several years, and from his years working in the BNZ in Balclutha, Rangiora and Kaikoura.

Jack’s uncle Con was the Novice Master at the Marist Novitiate in Highden for more than thirty years including Jack’s two novitiate years. Jack named Con as the one who taught him to pray – but perhaps I’ll write more on that another time.

It was Bishop Ashby who accepted Jack for the diocesan seminary where he spent a few years before his ordination in July 1965. Then for the next sixty years he went wherever he was sent – usually to parishes that some city-bound priests were terrified of being exiled to!

It wasn’t that Jack always wanted to go. Instead it was that he knew God loved foiling the undiscerned decisions of some bishops by turning an exile into a delight where a deserted outpost would, by divine intervention, become a fertile land of growth and love because there were people, and people and people, getting on with their lives in rural communities and simple damp smelling wooden churches where people just got on with life and love and faith.

Of course Jesus did the same, opting for the spontaneous encounters on the dusty roads of the geographical and social peripheries knowing that his first call was not to the city structures and ambitious plans but to the people, the people, the people wherever he could find them.

And so we find almost all of Jack’s priestly ministry in the small places, Ross, Fairlie (twice), Hawarden, Greymouth, Ngahere, Temuka, Chatham Islands for a double term, Pleasant Point, and only briefly as Parish Priest in Christchurch City at St. Albans. Then there were the years when he lived with me at Sockburn, John Fisher House and Amberley.

I’m moved as I write this. And I realise on looking back over what I have written that it might sound a bit serious. Yes Jack was often serious, and he was a man of broad and rich passion, often light with a lot of laughter.

Many of the stories I have heard in recent days are of the delightful moments of his adventures, his fun, his humour. Some of these accounts don’t translate well into written text so I’ll tell you a tale or two when I meet you face to face.

I remember the staff at Nazareth House a couple of years ago when 94-year-old Jack wasn’t home for the 9.00pm curfew. I was called, but wasn’t too worried, I guessed, and I was right. After dinner he had decided to catch the bus to Rangiora to take part in a prayer meeting and wandered back in to Nazareth soon after 9.30 still full of energy.

Jack’s brother Mark died in 2022 and Jack was keen to go to the funeral in Hamilton. So off we went. I picked him up from Nazareth one morning and flew to Auckland, collected a rental and drove to Hamilton for the Vigil gathering where Jack was full of stories about his young brother. Then off to the airbnb before Mark’s funeral the next morning, followed by reception, then to the rugby club, then back a cousin’s home for the evening where I lost Jack in the crowd. About midnight I was exhausted and ready for bed myself, I searched and found him about to annihilate another young cousin at the pool table. Next day the drive back to Auckland, plane to Christchurch driving in the gates of Nazareth after 9. I was done. Completely done. As I stopped the car Jack rubbed his hands together and said “John, when’s our next trip.”

Perhaps the video clip below will give a glimpse of the man who just kept on living.

And now by the grace of God he is living more fully than ever before.