Obituary - Fr Maurus Lucan 1930

Death has been busy in our ranks during the last few months. Three times have we journeyed to Brownedge for the funeral of some brother monk of the Ampleforth familia. Fr Denis Firth, Fr Anselm Wilson, and lastly Fr Maurus Lucan, each has called upon us to show the last tokens of affection and sorrow. For Fathers Denis and Anselm we had long suspected that God's messenger was on his journey, but in the case of Father Maurus, though he was well advanced in years, beyond the Psalmist's span, the news that he had had a stroke came as a surprise and a shock. To our intense grief, his death followed with painful suddenness.

Ralph Cletus Lucan was born in Liverpool on April 27th, 1859. He was sent to school in that city for a time, and then went to reside with his relations at Bamber Bridge. Here he attracted the notice of the Rector of the Benedictine parish, Fr Anselm Walker, who saw that he was bright and intelligent and discerned in the boy the sign of a religious vocation. There were confidential talks between the two. 'Would you like to go to College?' 'Yes,' answered the boy, and on February the 10th, 1870, he arrived at St Lawrence's, Ampleforth, along with two other students.

His life at Ampleforth ran along the familiar lines of school-days. He held his own in his class, and was proficient at games. Full of high spirits and energetic, he had a great sense of humour and was a general favourite. One of the earliest recollections of the writer at Ampleforth was seeing Ralph Lucan beating the field in a game of rounders. The fielders took up their position where they expected the ball to be driven. Lucan had his eyes on the field. As the ball was fed to the striker, there was a swerve of his body, and the ball went far out of reach of the baffled opponents. In all the Ampleforth sports of those days, rounders, hony-holes, bandy, darting, he was an adept, but he was never simply an athlete. Enjoying every minute of his recreative hours, at the sound of the bell he returned to his work, and displayed the same earnestness in the class room, that he did in the playground. Public Examinations did not then play the same part in school life that they do now, but in 1875 Ralph Lucan was one of six boys who were sent up for the Oxford Locals in Leeds, where all of them were successful. In the following year Ampleforth made its first acquaintance with the London Matriculation, but only one of the class - Fr Bail Clarkson - was successful. In August 1876 Ralph Lucan entered the novitiate at Belmont and took the name Maurus. His fellow novices were BB. Hilary Willson, Cuthbert Butler (now Abbot) and Benedict Weld-Blundell. He passed through the somewhat Spartan régime of Belmont as many another novice and junior, getting from it a solid grounding in monastic discipline, a love of liturgy, and an intellectual interest that was to influence his whole life. In the year 1880 he returned to Ampleforth, where he threw himself wholeheartedly into the life of the house. He was soon put to teaching in the school, and he concentrated his energies on French and English literature. He loved to expound the beauties of Shakespeare to his class. As a boy he had played his part on the school stage and in the staging of the Plays and Operettas, as a master he showed great histrionic talent. He wrote the words of the play, 'Masque of King Time' - a skit on modern education - for which Fr Clement Standish composed the music. Along with Fr Hilary Willson, he was ordained priest by Bishop Hedley on March 23rd, 1884. For the next ten years he lived a very full life at Ampleforth and more and more responsibility fell to his lot. Besides his class work, he was cantor for the chief festivals, sang tenor in the choir, composed a prologue or epilogue and staged a play for the Annual Exhibitions, acted as secretary to the theological conferences, and was appointed a councillor of the monastery. Finally, Prior Burge gave him the post of Prefect of Studies. This office is now absorbed in the functions of the Head Master. It was a position that called for unremitting labour, organising ability, and tactful handling of men, qualities which Father Maurus showed in a marked degree. He was in the best sense a community man, always cheerful and light-hearted, with a fund of playful banter that never wounded, strongly devoted to his brethren and to his monastic home. The link that bound together the community of those days was very strong. In a letter of his, written many years later, to his life-long friend, Fr Anselm Wilson, on the occasion of the latter's golden jubilee in the monastic habit, this feature is well illustrated: -

October 19th, 1923.
My Dear Father Anselm,
Memory carries me back over fifty years to the Sports of 1872, when as an admiring, applauding youngster I saw you win the Mile race on the old High Road under the bridge. As you staggered along, your opponent older, stronger, fleeter perhaps than yourself, but still of the Jonathan type, called out to you, 'Come along, Joe, don't give in.' No need to address such words to Joe Wilson, who never gave in in his life, where he shouldn't. The rest you remember, dear Anselm. You won the race by a yard, both of you falling over the line.

I like to think of that illustration of the child being father to the man, for it was the character you then displayed that has clung to you through life, and given you that personality that we all so dearly love. If this is sentimental, Doctor, you will pardon it - one may be allowed to gush even with your worthy self, once in fifty years.

My heartiest congratulations on this great day of commemorations. May it bring you not only troops of friends, pleasant messages and memories, but the abundant blessings and consolations which the high example of your edifying life deserves. Floreas ad multos annos!

Yours very sincerely, R. M. Lucan.

This same spirit of brotherly affection was strikingly manifested in the kindly humour and delicate pathos of the memoir of Fr Theodore Turner, that he wrote for the Journal.

Towards the end of 1894 his health showed signs of failing, and his Superiors decided to give him a change of work. He went on the Mission to St Anne's, Liverpool, where he spent three years. From there he was transferred to St Mary's, Warrington. According to the system then in vogue, the charge of the schools of the parish did not necessarily fall to the Head Priest. Fr Lucan was given the administration of the schools in both these missions and he worked with his accustomed energy at the task. When in 1900 he was made Head Priest of St Illtyd's, Dowlais, he kept the management of the schools in his own hands. It was anxious work. Catholic schools were suspect to the local Education Authority. A long and tiresome dispute arose over some question of discipline, but Fr Maurus fought strenuously in defence of principle and he won his point, backed, as he was, by the sterling loyalty of his flock. This dispute, along with the school administration was almost sufficient, in itself, to occupy the time of one priest, but Fr Maurus had, in addition, the arduous duties of a Head Priest, and, moreover, he undertook and brought to completion the building of the new Priory. After seventeen years of strenuous work at Dowlais, he welcomed the change to a position of less responsibility and lighter work. He took charge for a time of the handsome church of St Lawrence's, Petersfield, and from there he went to Maryport to assist Fr Aidan Crow. His last years of work were spent in ministering to nuns, first at the Convent of La Sagesse, near Liverpool and next as chaplain to the Benedictine nuns at Maxwelltown, Scotland.

In his pastoral work, there was one branch in particular, for which he had special gifts, and which he cultivated assiduously, viz., pulpit eloquence. His literary studies and wide reading fostered this gift. He had a power of expression, a certain dramatic instinct and a musical voice that made it pleasant to listen to him. His favourite author in this line of work was Cardinal Newman and he drew largely on the Cardinal's thought and even on his phrasing in many of his efforts. After listening to one of his sermons some wag is said to have remarked:

One of his last 'special' sermons was delivered at the opening of the church at Keswick. Here he was in a district in which his mind had long revelled, both from personal visits and from his knowledge of the Lake Poets, and he took the opportunity of the setting to indulge his poetic fancy, picturing the spot in Catholic days and looking forward to the return of the people to the faith of their forefathers.

The end of his life came all too suddenly. In one of his last letters (10/12/29) he writes:

Although I have never had a serious illness since I came to school sixty years ago, I cannot fail to read the visiting cards of time, one of which tells me that my heart is not quite as responsive as in the days of hockey on the ice.

A numerous body of his brethren came to assist at the ceremony. Fr Abbot sang the Requiem Mass and Father Stephen Dawes gave an appreciative sketch of the life and work of his brother in religion and his former master. May he rest in peace!

MAURUS LUCAN

Details from the Abbey Necrology