On transcendence - in fond memory of Father Rog

When I first started looking at colleges, my mother was very nervous. She was going to be living on another continent, and I was going back to "the States" for school. Her first-born baby was going to be gone, far from where she could fix things, put band-aids on cuts, brew tea, listen to worries. Her anxiety for me was palpable.

We visited Seattle University the summer between my junior and senior year. I met with admissions staff and professors. Three weeks later, in Germany, I got a note thanking me for my visit. Handwritten. And when I got my acceptance letter the next spring, the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences wrote a message on my acceptance: "Thanks for your statement. Given your interests, you would enjoy Frances Mayes' A Year in Provence." The dean wrote to me. My mom loved that the Jesuits needed two PhDs to teach, that the community was small and tight-knit, that SU seemed to care about its students personally. I wouldn't be just a number at SU.

And I wasn't. I am profoundly thankful for my formative 4 years at SU.

I wasn't a number because of the incredible SU faculty and staff, including Father Roger Gillis. Father Rog was really involved with Search, but accessible to everyone on campus, always ready with a smile and a kind word.


(photo from the Spectator)

This afternoon, Father Rog passed away. He had been battling cancer for several months. The Jesuits started a Facebook page, whose members swelled quickly, and the wall immediately filled with kind notes and memories and pictures of Father Rog dancing.

There are amazing individuals in history who have big names and who we can all think of when we think of grace, acceptance, love, faith...Father Rog lived this. Every day. For years - not just the years that I was at SU. The notes on his Facebook wall, this groundswell of love and gratitude, dates back before my time and continued in the years after my graduation. He shared this grace with his students, so fully, so openly - it did not matter if you were lost, found, Christian, atheist, tall, short... It was the first time that I was in a community of religious people and did not feel pressure to convert or join. Nor did I feel judged. Father Rog accepted us as we were, loved us in our brokenness and our wholeness.

I look up to figureheads like Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, but it is because of Father Rog that I understand them as real people and believe that this kind of transcendent beauty and grace is attainable. It is possible to live with grace and radiate love. He did it.

So, it is our loss, but he filled us with a joy for life that we should cherish and share.

Rest in peace, Father Rog.