Subject: Fr. O'Donovan interview
From: "Alexander S. Mackler" <[email-masked]>
To: "Jill Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Ashley Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Hallie Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Missy Owens" <[email-masked]>, "Valerie Biden Owens" <[email-masked]>, "Ted Kaufman" <[email-masked]>, "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 07:51:35 -0400

Thought you might be interested in this answer from Father O'Donovan, in which he sort of compares Beau to Jesus:

And so in the homily, whether people noticed this or not, I actually tried to draw an identification between Beau and Jesus, and in the first paragraph I described the loss that his death entailed by saying that, “We had hoped that he would be the one, we had put our trust in him,” or words to that effect, which are the words that the disciples on their way to Emmaus speak, when they speak to Jesus without recognizing him. So I was consciously trying to speak of our hopes for this young man the way people had hoped in Jesus and then faced his death, and then hoped never the less.

You mentioned having the privilege of presiding over the funeral mass for Vice President Joe Biden’s son. I just wanted to ask you what that meant to you, to be able to do that.

Well, it was a very, it was a very painful moment shared by a lot of people and instinctively — I don’t know how to put this without crying. Beau Biden was, by any measure, an extraordinary young man. He was 46 when he died, but he was never the less a young man so clearly at the beginning of what might be hoped for. He became the attorney general of the state; it was widely expected that he would run for governor, unless you really knew him and the immediate family well because the original diagnosis of the brain tumor was very severe. And he was a man of extraordinary generosity as his brother Hunter (CO ’92), who went to Georgetown, and Beau went to Penn, but, as Hunter said, his first memory, Hunter’s first memory of life, was waking up in that hospital bed after the accident where his mother was killed and his little baby sister. And his brother Beau was leaning across from the bed next to his holding his hand and looking intently into his eyes and saying repeatedly, “I love you, I love you.” And then Hunter said, “And that was the story of my brother’s life. If you needed something, he took your hand.” And the president, in his beautiful and very personal eulogy, said of Beau, “He was the most popular politician in Delaware,” and then he looked down at Joe Biden and said, “Sorry Joe.”

And at the end of Hunter’s eulogy he said, “So that was my brother, and I’m proud — but what I’m most proud of is that he took my hand first.” I would never have been asked to preside at that funeral mass or give a homily if I hadn’t been at Georgetown all those years. If I hadn’t come to know Joe as senator and more recently as the vice president. If I hadn’t gotten to know his sister, Valerie, who took care of the boys after their mother’s death. Some of her children went to Georgetown. There are young members of the family hoping now to go to Georgetown.

It had a lot to do with Georgetown and Washington, and it felt very much like being home, because there were so many people there from Congress, President Clinton was there with Hillary Clinton in the front pew next to the Obamas. Mitch McConnell was there, Lindsey Graham I think was there; members of the Republican side of the House and Senate. I didn’t think of it then, but as I look back, I’m proud that that’s the kind of situation where Georgetown could make a contribution. Being a university in the nation’s capital and being in a position to respond to something really aching and painful beyond words, but something hopeful and faithful even more beyond words.

The night before the funeral I wrote to Hunter and said, “Tomorrow will be very hard, Hunter, but it will be somewhere full of grace and hope.” And I got off the computer and put that line into the homily, because I hadn’t thought of it before. That was true; it was like dying with Jesus, but hoping you would be one with him forever. And so in the homily, whether people noticed this or not, I actually tried to draw an identification between Beau and Jesus, and in the first paragraph I described the loss that his death entailed by saying that, “We had hoped that he would be the one, we had put our trust in him,” or words to that effect, which are the words that the disciples on their way to Emmaus speak, when they speak to Jesus without recognizing him. So I was consciously trying to speak of our hopes for this young man the way people had hoped in Jesus and then faced his death, and then hoped never the less.

That’s part of our university’s tradition. John Carroll, our founder, was an ardent republican in the sense of supporting the new republic. He wrote the prayer that was used at George Washington’s inauguration. We have this immense honor and responsibility of a special connection with the government of our great country, and I was given trust, the trust of that institution for a time, and from the very beginning I thought, “This is a great trust, and I will do the best I can with it, and then hand it on because it’s only for a time,” which was actually a great relief. It was not something I had to do so there is a freedom in that.

That’s a rather philosophical answer to your question, but it’s the deeper truth. We’ll always be in Washington. No matter how international and global, increasingly international and global. … That’s our heart and the heart of its students because of whom the faculty comes together, for whom the money is raised to support the teaching and the housing of the students and their activities, and because of whom, students and the faculty, all the facilities are built, but it starts with the students around whom a faculty gathers in the hopes that these will be young women and men as Jesuits say, “for others,” or responsible for a better world. What better thing could you be about?

> 
> 
> 
> 
> Georgetown University The Hoya
> On God, Beau Biden, and a Hilltop Dining Hall
> Georgetown University The Hoya
> I had the great honor — it was a very painful day — but the great honor of celebrating Beau Biden's funeral Mass and preaching at that Mass in early ...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>=2