Bob’s office was next to mine in the Merton Center and that allowed a lot of my ability to have a window in on his life.
Bob preferred to be called Brother Bob to Father Bob, even though he was a friar and a priest. Brother Bob felt that the title of “Father” removed him too much from the lives of other people, and he wanted to be with them. People were often confused when he called himself “Brother.” Sometimes they would come to me to ask, “I thought he is a priest. Why does he call himself Brother?” I would explain as best I could why he did that. Thinking about it now, I probably should have directed them back to him. Brother Bob would have welcomed a conversation and a few moments to share about himself.
A few years ago that song “Cooler Than Me” was popular on the radio. A student stopped by my office back then, and as we were joking around with that song, the student pointed to Bob’s office and asked me whether I was cooler than Bob.
“Absolutely not!” I said. “He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame and was a college professor here at SBU in the 1970’s. He helped found Campus Ministry in the Merton Center. He left Bona’s to go to a very poor part of Philadelphia and start the St. Francis Inn soup kitchen. Then he went to Kingston, Jamaica for ten years – a very rough place indeed. Then he came back to the U.S. and lived in Buffalo with men who were coming out of prison and worked as a prison chaplain. Then he came to Mt. Irenaeus and spent the last several years really trying to understand spirituality and prayer. He started a meditation group on campus and also taught a one-credit class on prayer, in addition to beginning student visits to Gowanda prison. Bob is a lot cooler than me!”
When our Vicar Provincial Minister (he’s like the Joe Biden of the friars) came up for Brother Bob’s funeral in December, he noted that of all of the friars he has known, Bob was probably the one who had the most varied ministries. I would have to agree.
Some other things I knew about Brother Bob is that when he was graduating from SBU in 1956, he had a commission in the Army from his involvement here in ROTC. He resigned that commission. He was being called to serve in other ways. Bob also played semi-professional baseball. He might have gone on to be famous. But he did not want to be famous. He wanted to serve. Even when he left Mt. Irenaeus for one of our friar retirement homes in June in his late 70’s due to some health issues, he still was not looking to retire. In recent months he has gotten on YouTube – yes YouTube – to make his lectures on prayer available to more people. That’s pretty good for an old dude.
St. Francis of Assisi wrote a series of Admonitions – or pieces of advice – to his brothers. In the Admonition VI he specifically writes how all of us need to be imitators of Christ. What Christ did, we should do. Francis goes on to write that it is a great shame if we sit around boasting about the great things the saints did as if we can somehow get glory and honor by telling the saints’ heroic stories. To paraphrase Francis, I think it would be a great shame if we just sat around and recounted Brother Bob’s coolness. We should imitate his coolness and get out there and make a difference in the world.
~Brother Kevin Kriso, O.F.M.
