The Homily from the Requiem Mass held for the Very Reverend Dom Luke Waring,
23rd June 2016
“They who trust in God will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with him in love; for grace and mercy await those he has chosen.” We heard these words from the Book of Wisdom proclaimed this afternoon. Could there be a better text to sum up the nature and purpose of our Christian faith, the faith for which Fr Luke lived and in which he died? Trust in God, understanding the truth, being faithful, living in love, being chosen by God, waiting on his grace and mercy. These words sum up not only Fr Luke’s faith but the story of his life. We are gathered here today to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass for the repose of his soul and to pray that God will be merciful to him on the Day of Judgement. No one more acutely aware of his sins than Fr Luke, he asked before he died that we always remember him in our prayers.
John Vincent Waring was born in Leyland on 6th April 1927 to Henry and Sylvia, the first of six children, two of whom died in infancy. He was proud to have been born in Lancashire and to be of recusant Catholic stock. In 1938 he passed from St Mary’s School, Leyland, to the Jesuit run Preston Catholic College, where he excelled in studies, but not in music or in games: he was tone deaf and too uncoordinated to take part in ball games. Not that he wasn’t athletic, for, with his tall, lean build, he was later to become a first class cyclist and a keen walker. After obtaining excellent grades in the Higher School Certificate, he came to Belmont as a postulant in 1945. When asked why he didn’t become a Jesuit, he always said it was the example of the Ampleforth monks at St Mary’s that made him dream of becoming a Benedictine. Throughout his life he retained a deep affection for his family, his hometown and the parish of his youth. At Belmont he came under the influence of its cultured abbot, Dom Aidan Williams, and its saintly and austere novice master, Dom Benedict Adams. He was clothed in 1946 and made his First Profession on 29th June 1947. When he died on 9th June, he had been a monk for 70 years. He began his priestly formation at Belmont and in September 1949 was sent to Fribourg in Switzerland to study theology. In the meantime, on 15th September 1950, he made his Solemn Profession under Abbot Anselm Lightbound. Br Luke cycled to and from Fribourg each year and in 1950, the Holy Year, cycled to Rome on pilgrimage. He was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood by Archbishop Michael McGrath of Cardiff on 13th July 1952. He completed his Licentiate in Theology in June 1953 and returned to Belmont. In Switzerland he acquired a good knowledge of both French and German, which he spoke with a pronounced Lancashire accent, as well as furthering his studies in New Testament Greek and becoming a Hebrew scholar. Scripture and theology were to become the passions of his life, together with history, that of the Catholic Church in Britain and of the English Benedictine Congregation in particular.
On his return from Fribourg, Fr Luke was appointed Assistant Priest of Belmont, for the abbot was technically the parish priest. Although he did the work, he had no authority or control over the finances. It was not until 1963 that he was made Parish Priest. He became renowned for his pastoral zeal, visiting every home once a month on his bicycle, no matter the distance or the weather. He made many converts and loved having a few pints in every village pub, chatting with the men in the public bar and sharing his packed lunch, made by himself with the leftovers of his breakfast. However, he felt unfairly treated by the abbot and some of the brethren, who had little respect for the parish, and, to his dying day, he spoke of the hurt this caused him. Nevertheless, he became a legend in his own lifetime, wherever he served, and that began with the Belmont parish. He knew everyone by name and each family history in detail. People loved him because, like Jesus, he loved them and he would go out of his way to help them, no matter what the problem. Long before the phrase “preferential option for the poor” became common coinage in the Catholic Church, it was the poor, the needy, the marginalised and the underdog who were the focus of his attention. With Luke you could see what Jesus meant when he said, “The first will be last and the last first.” While looking after the parish, he also taught Philosophy, Canon Law and Sacred Scripture to young monks in formation. In 1966 he was appointed Novice Master by Abbot Robert Richardson. He was in post until 1971 and again from 1973 to 1976. Many of us passed through his hands and he left an indelible mark on our personalities and monastic vocations. He was strict and demanding, for ever checking up on us to see if we were all doing our sacristy work together or doing spiritual reading and mental prayer at the right time, sitting or kneeling in the correct position. But with the weak he was indulgent and far too kind. When an irate novice complained to him during Holy Week that one of his companions wasn’t turning up to do his work, Fr Luke promptly replied, “He’s just getting over Christmas!” At times he would have you pulling out your hair, like on those month days when he’d walk the novices all the way up Orcop Hill, for example, and make us take turns in carrying the heavy box of sandwiches, apples and crisps, only to be left with nothing to eat as he passed them round his cronies in the pub, “Have a sandwich.” His classes, rather like his homilies, could be a struggle for his hearers, and so it seemed for himself, with his idiosyncratic delivery of strangled 'aaghs ' and painful pauses, but he knew his stuff and shared with us a wisdom second to none.