Occasionally in our lives someone enters eternal life, someone we do not personally know, but whose life has touched us. Affected by this loss in some inexplicable way, often lacking an ability to explain why we feel a sense of loss, we nonetheless have this feeling in the pit of our stomach that our loss has been severe. One of my childhood memories is the time when Pope Pius XII died. I was 15 years old at the time and had no real knowledge of what he meant to the world and to his Church. Yet, I had that pit-of-the-stomach feeling.

What brings on this fit of nostalgia is the recent death of Richard John Neuhaus. I’ve been a reader of “First Things”, a magazine for which Fr. Neuhaus was editor in chief. I’m a fan of his writing style. He had a way of using sarcasm in an erudite manner. Not the way I developed a knack for sarcasm on the streets of Chicago. He also had a command of his thoughts that allowed him to pack a whole lot of meaning in a few words. I offer an example of what I mean.

The following was taken from the April 2006 issue of “First Things” and it was Fr. Neuhaus’ description of the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

“He went in for heavy-duty intellection that is sometimes ponderous and exhaustingly discursive, but always adorned with dazzling erudition and rewarding one's effort with scintillating insights of a frequently counterintuitive nature. One spends pleasurable hours reading Balthasar not so much in an analytical mode as in surrendering oneself to the beauty of how his mind works and its adventurous probings of theological imagination. Reading Balthasar is in large part a meditative exercise bordering on the contemplative.”

Fr. Neuhaus (as well as Gil Bailie) is responsible for my love affair with von Balthasar’s work. I will miss him.