Priests and People Mourning. The Great and Gifted Redemptorist Father, Rev. John O'Brien, Deceased--Beautiful and Appropriate Tributes to his Memory.

A pillar of the Lord's temple, a lustrous light of faith departed, a glorious soldier of the church militant on earth, is the sorrowful, but withal grateful, subject of our memoir. Taken from this life suddenly in the very bloom of a magnificent manhood, and from the career of his saintly priesthood, fragrant with thousands of tests of the divinity of his ordination; aye, taken from the multitudes who so much needed his spiritual guidance and support, may we well exclaim that the ways of our Almighty Father are wondrously mysterious and hidden beyond the ken of our feeble understanding. The great and gifted young priest was truly of that royal race of him, Boroimhe, who was slaughtered by the hand of a desperate assassin, as he prayerfully knelt in his tent, on the battle-field, offering thanks to the Lord of Hosts for victory over the hordes of northern barbarian invaders. He of Clontarf was king, soldier and saintly Christian. His descendant, transplanted in his youth, as if by divine ordination, from Ireland to America, was soldier, Christian, king of hearts and saver of souls. Majestic in person, gentle in deportment, tender of heart, Rev. John O'Brien, C. SS. R. through wondrous graces of mind and soul won upon all; brought the wayward into the paths of holy places, and readily summoned sinners to repentance. He achieved miracles, temporal as well as spiritual. It will be recollected how agreeably our whole community was startled by the corroborated recital, not so very long since, that the young daughter of Col. P. T. Hanley, of Boston Highlands, was healed of her chronic lame infirmity through the efficacy of his ministrations and her own pure prayers and strong faith. How heroic he was in "apostolic zeal and saintly fervor," like one of those heroic, primitive soldiers of the Cross, the martyrs of the catacombs, his reverend and eloquent panegyrist attests, when he reminds us how little terrors for him and his pious associates had the murderously-inclined orangemen and other bigots of Newfoundland, when these Fathers were there not long ago on the mission.

Rev. Father O'Brien had been for some years connected with the Redemptorists' Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, at Boston Highlands. He was in his thirty-sixth year at the time of his decease, which occurred suddenly on November 8th, from rheumatism of the heart, at Ilchester, Md., the parent house of the order. He had, only a few days previous to his death, closed a most arduous but successful mission in Philadelphia, where, but a short time previously, Rev. Father McGivern was taken with his fatal illness through overwork in his missionary labors. The remains of Father O'Brien were conveyed here by Mr. Cleary, one of our undertakers, and reposed in the main aisle fronting the altar of the Tremont Street basilica, during the evening and night of November 11, where many thousands visited them in tears, and rendered upward their silent and heartfelt prayers for the purposes which animated his sanctified soul. The emblems of mourning in the edifice, the varied and beautiful and artistic floral tributes, the grief depicted on the features of young and old of the people, and many other evidences, attested most unerringly the great bereavement which the Catholics of Boston sustain by his death.

On the morning of the 12th, at 9 o'clock, the Redemptorist Fathers' Church was thronged with a great congregation, and hundreds were unable to get in when the office of the dead was recited. Over fifty priests participated in the sanctuary devotions. The clergymen offering up the Solemn High Mass of Requiem were as follows: Celebrant, Rev. Father Welsh, C. SS. R.; deacon, Rev. Father Wynn, C. SS. R.; sub-deacon, Rev. Father Lutz, C. SS. R.; master of ceremonies, Rev. Father Licking, C. SS. R.; Father Licking also preached the panegyric. The Reverend Father took for his text:

He began most impressively and substantially as follows: "What shall I say to you on this sad occasion? How shall I find words to express the sorrow and sadness, which I see depicted on your countenances? The zealous, the learned, the whole-souled Redemptorist, Rev. John O'Brien, is laid low on the bier of death. A young warrior has fallen on the battle-field of duty. A strong worker has sunk beside the vines he was preparing for the heavenly kingdom.

"Oh, brother, if thou hadst not died in the prime of youth! If thou hadst not within thee the strength and energy to labor long and successfully in thy sublime vocation! If thou hadst grown gray in the service of God, I should congratulate you on this day, the day of thy espousals to Jesus Christ. I should say to thee: well done thou faithful servant, thou hast labored long and well in the service of thy maker. Thou hast gone to thy well-merited reward." Father Licking continued at some length in this strong strain of apostrophe to the name and memory of his beloved brother, and then entered into reminiscences, in which he said, "I remember well when first I met the departed. It was in the year 1870. We were then students at the preparatory college of the Redemptorist order. He was even then the picture of health, and a model for every student. Never was he known to infringe upon the slightest rule of the institute; never (and this is saying a great thing), never did he lose a single moment of time. Always at his books by day and by night, even stealing from his well-merited rest some hours in order to acquire knowledge which he might employ in after years in the service of God and for the good of souls. So well pleased were his superiors with his conduct, that they appointed him, together with the late lamented Rev. Father McGivern, overseer of the college boys in the absence of their superiors."

He received the habit of the order in 1875, with Rev. Fathers Beal and Licking. The panegyrist made most feeling allusion to the occasion, when the lamented dead took "the profession of those holy vows, those tremendous vows, those eternal vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.... Thank God, he kept those vows to the end."

Father O'Brien was next sent to the Redemptorist Theological Seminary of Ilchester, Md., to further pursue the great studies that fitted him for his calling.

"It often required an express command of his superiors to take him from his books that his body might not succumb, and the mind gain the necessary rest. So exact was he in all his ways, that we, his fellow students, could, at any hour of the day, point out the very spot where he might be found, either going through the Way of the Cross, or praying before the Blessed Sacrament, or reciting his rosary, or studying at his books. Is it a wonder, then, that God should allow him to die on a spot which had so often been the witness of so much piety and so many of his good works."

He was ordained priest in 1880, and the following February found him at the Boston Highlands in the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Here he administered for the first time the Sacrament of Penance; here he preached from the pulpit of his panegyrist his first sermon; here he entered upon "that career of zeal and usefulness which made his name proverbial in every family of the parish." ... "He possessed a powerful and comprehensive mind, a prodigious memory, and a most fertile imagination; and, above all, a most generous spirit and tender heart. Graced besides with every form of manly beauty, strength and vigor, of a powerful frame, nothing seemed wanting to him. It might be said of him as the poet sang of the ancient hero:

Father Licking dwelt at length upon the great extent of the work done in the parish by the beloved deceased. "Every interest in the large parish received his particular attention." All were participants of his zeal and charity. In 1883 he passed through his second novitiate after a retirement of six months, which fully equipped him for the missions. "And now his soul rejoiced, indeed, in the Lord."

"It is related," said the preacher, "of a Southern officer, that when he returned from a successful expedition, the first question he put to his general always was: 'Where is the next blow to be struck? Send me there!' So it was with the young warrior of the Cross, whose death we mourn. His zeal knew no bounds except those of obedience. Hardly had one mission been finished when he hastened to another.... North, South, East and West were witnesses of his Apostolic zeal and saintly fervor. The cold weather, the fierce storms, and still fiercer spirits of hostile sects in Newfoundland, had not terrors enough to deter him, and the hottest sun of July and August could not draw from him a single word of complaint, when engaged in arduous task of giving retreats. And though comparatively a young man, when only four years had elapsed since his ordination, his superiors trusting in his zeal, his prudence, and his wisdom, selected him, from out of many, to the important office of giving retreats to the clergy of the land." ... "I see among the floral tributes one bearing the letters 'Apostolic Zeal.' It shows me that you have understood his spirit."

In the panegyrist's recital it was told that six weeks before his death he was returning from missions in Pennsylvania. He saw in New York the very Rev. Provincial, who told him that the Fathers at work on the missions at Philadelphia were becoming exhausted, and that even then the Rev. Father McGivern was on a dying bed there. Father O'Brien stood up, and stretching himself to the full height of his massive frame, he exclaimed, "Look at me! Am I not a strong man? Send me. I'll do the work for them!" "Does it not remind you of the brave general who said, 'Where is the next blow to be struck. Send me there.'" When that, his last mission, closed, the Fathers had heard thirty-five hundred confessions, and he retired to Ilchester for a cursory visit, where the joy he experienced in meeting his old Alma Mater superiors was beyond description. While there he remarked: "Father, this would be a nice, quiet and holy place to die in." That night he was attacked with the fatal malady. His limbs became racked with pain. The rheumatism reached his great heart, and he is found at five o'clock in the morning insensible. The last sacraments were administered, and at seven o'clock his noble soul took its flight from its mortal abode.

With an eloquent peroration, Rev. Father Licking closed by craving the prayers of the faithful for the departed hero of the Cross.

The pathetic musical services were rendered by the regular choir of the church, and comprised the Gregorian Requiem Mass, Miss Nellie M. McGowan, organist. The twelve pall-bearers were Colonel P. T. Hanley, Frank Ford, John J. Kennedy, M. H. Farrell, Thomas Kelly, E. J. Lynch, James McCormack, Thomas O'Leary, James B. Hand, William S. McGowan, John Reardon and Timothy McCarthy. Mount Calvary Cemetery was the place selected for the interment. In His Grace Archbishop Williams' vault the body will repose until the completion of work now in progress on a lot specially intended for Father O'Brien. It is estimated that the services at the church were attended by over twenty-five hundred people, and the funeral was likewise largely attended. Every kind attention was paid to his bereaved mother, father, and sister, who came on here from New York State.

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