St. Martin in the Fields Church, Atlanta, Ga.
February 21, 2005
Father Pope left his burial instructions with the parish
office six years ago with the following notation: “Neither homily nor eulogy desired, but Officiant should feel
free to make remarks as he feels appropriate.”
Under that rubric, you will note what I am about to say is
simply “remarks,” and, I hope, Fred, you will approve what follows, or at least
the spirit in which it is offered.
In his instructions Fr. Pope listed the hymns he wished
sung, including the lovely solo from Faure’s Requiem we will soon hear, and the
readings we have just heard. As I
looked at the readings and asked myself, “Why did Fred pick these?” I think I discovered a thread of consistency
in the soul of this dutiful soldier and priest who has been through so much.
Psalm 130: “Out of
the deep have I called unto thee, O, Lord.”
Yet the Psalmist is waiting for the Lord for mercy, for redemption.
I Corinthians hits us with the reality of death, and of
the perishable body that is mysteriously raised in power. “O death, where is thy sting?” “Therefore, be steadfast, immovable…you know
that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain.”
And John 5, the Gospel we just heard, so spare and hard, usually shunned
at funerals, yet like a diamond: the
fact of judgment, and yet the passage from death to life. This man picked these readings, and what
does this say to us?
Frederick Alexander Pope had two great influences in his
life: the military and the priesthood.
He spent five years in the army, First Lt. in the 7th Armored
Division, service in France, the Netherlands, Belgium. Aide to General Bruce Clarke, used as front
man, severely wounded. Fred experienced
death as few of us have, not just then, but in re-living those experiences even
to his last days. He came to hate war,
this dutiful soldier.
If Fred’s military service was for five years, his
priestly service was for nigh fifty-five years. Coming out of an Evening Prayer service at Columbus, Georgia,
with Wilma, while at Ft. Benning, he said, “If I come back from the war, I
would like to go into the priesthood.”
He did just that. At the Golden
Anniversary of his ordination five years ago he delivered a memoir, which, if
you have not read it, you need to pick up a copy at the reception following
this service. In that account Fred’s
love of the Eucharist is the underlying theme.
It was evident while he was still in uniform at the front – and for him
clearly it was life in the midst of death.
Let me quote a bit:
“We had a Roman Catholic chaplain – Father O’B we called
him – who was greatly beloved. I
remember a field mass near Verdun, with tailgate of a two-and-a-half ton truck
as an altar and a sort of khaki-colored thing for a chasuble; and one piece of
liturgical furniture you don’t have, off to one side. On the gospel side, as we then spoke of it, was a hole in the
ground. Well, Father O’B had begun, and
we shortly found out what that hole in the ground was for.
“An air strafer came overhead from the airfield at Metz,
spraying the place with 20 mm. projectiles.
Father O’B snatched the vessels from the altar and with one motion
stepped down into that hole. When the
strafing stopped, a couple of strong men reached down, one on each side of his
armpits, lifted him up, set him on his feet, brushed him off, and Father O’B
went on without missing a syllable.
“I remember what I thought at the elevation of the Host:
that this is the only clean thing in the world. Death and destruction had engulfed Western Europe. The casualties were mounting day by
day. It was the only thing not
besmirched by mankind’s obsession with death and destruction.
“When the white Host goes aloft in this and every parish
church, or in whatsoever setting the Eucharist is celebrated, it is still the
only fully clean thing in all the world.
Our world is obsessed with death and destruction, with war and partisan
politics, with consumerism and materialism.
These things blur, but do not extinguish, the light of Christ in the
world; and when the white Host goes aloft, remember, this alone is clean in a
besmirched world.”
Fred could tell a story in a great way if you could get
him talking. A number of us have been
privileged to learn of bits and pieces of his life, at the living room table,
or by his bedside at the Veteran’s Hospital.
But none know of this long and interesting life more than
Wilma, his bride of 62 years and 10 months, and helpmate and companion all that
time. They met at the University of
Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and have been together ever since.
Following the war, there was seminary at Sewanee, then
ordination as a priest March 21, 1950 in Trenton, S.C., followed by service in
South Carolina, Florida, Texas and
Virginia in various church assignments, and some stints in academia. He also had a year in Pennsylvania (Yankee
sojourns in the cold weather were brief for this Arkansas boy). Many years of being a faithful priest and
teacher, raising a family with Wilma, making do on a modest income.
Retired from Southwest Virginia, Fred and Wilma moved to
Atlanta in 1986. After a time at Holy
Trinity, Decatur and Annunciation, Roswell, they started at St. Martin’s in
1995, and the following year Fred became Priest Associate. In 2001 he participated in Glenna Reed’s
ordination: as a woman and an African-American, this was important for the
parish and for Fred. He had an altar
again at which to celebrate, in his words, “the most real thing in all the
world.”
We are shortly going to do this action again together, and
I think it is appropriate to end in Fred’s own words:
“It is so simple a thing, this eucharistic action; but
nothing in the experience of western civilization has meant so much, for so
long, for so many. Nothing in my years
of priesthood has impressed me so, as has the continuing response of the people
of God to the invitation to draw near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament:
the lines, long or short, of men, women and children moving from pew to altar
rail; the service plain, almost severe in its unadorned simplicity or adorned
with lights and candles, bells, organs, choirs, vestments – and incense on
great occasions – its ancient texts set to music by composers from Palestrina
to Poulenc.
“Why do they come to share morselled bread and sip watered
wine? Each one who comes has his or her
own reason, knows a meaning of the Eucharist none other knows. It is not possible to assign a single
meaning to the Eucharist, because it is a sharing of all that is ultimately
meaningful in human life… It is a sharing of Ultimate Reality.”
Father Pope concluded his remarks at the celebration five
years ago, “I am happy that the Church has called me to serve her people as
their priest these fifty years, that she has permitted me to stand so often
before her altars, offering this Holy Sacrifice. I am grateful for the opportunities afforded me in this parish
church to do just this, in the midst of the holy people of God, that they and I
may know ourselves to be now and forever beloved of our God.”
Fred, we are grateful for you and your ministry. Your trials are ended. You are healed, forgiven, upheld as a man
now and forever beloved of God.
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