'Died in the 73rd year of his age, the 50th of his Religious profession, and the 46th of his Sacred Priesthood.' This is Fr. O'Brien's history in the annals of the English Benedictine Congregation. A veteran of the rank and file, with an unblemished record of faithful service, devoted to his duty and fondly proud of the flag he served under,- this, to most people, was the story of his life.
A long service distinction, honourable as it is, seems but a scant reward for the labour of a lifetime. Yet it is true to say that Fr. O'Brien looked for nothing further. It was his pride and his pleasure to tell of his many years on the mission, and to thank God for his life of unbroken health, and for the vigour of his old age. He seldom spoke of past work without a glad reference to its continuance in the present. What he had done in the past he was still able to do; the rests and comforts he had denied himself in his youth, he was proud to be able to refuse himself in his declining years. A break down must come some time or other; but he believed and wished to believe that the time was still a long way off when his career of useful service would come to an end. The ambitions of his younger days - if, indeed he ever had any - were gathered together and woven into the one desire to lengthen out his praiseworthy record of untiring fidelity to duty. It is, and always has been, and will be, an old-fashioned virtue, this -
It is only at the end of a long life one can lay claim to it, and prove that one is not
But the grace of it is one of the beauties of old age, and remains fresh and green long after other, perhaps nobler, ambitions are faded and forgotten.
Fr. O'Brien's undoubted talents were neutralized by a singular mistrust of himself; -singular, because he was conscious of many, at least, of his gifts, -his fine voice, sweet-toned, but robust and manly; his faculty of speech, a talent, only a little lower than genius ; and his ready wit. Those who know him only from an Ampleforth re-union or an Exhibition evening, when with speech after speech he made the meeting almost a one-man entertainment - a delightful one, will be inclined to question this statement. Nevertheless, it is the truth that he never willingly sang, or preached out of his own church. Practically, he never refused when asked, but this was through his good nature. His assent always left one under the impression that he honestly thought himself unfit to do the thing as well as it ought to be done. And this mistrust of himself was the negative side of what was one of the pleasantest traits of his character - his almost childlike appreciation of the gifts of others. Nobody enjoyed other people's songs, or speeches, or humorous remarks more than he did. He had no jealousy, and would only pose as a rival for the sake of amusement; he was unstinted in his praise of others, and seemed to enjoy their success even better than his own. It should be said of him that he could never bring himself to say an unpleasant word to anyone, and, what is still more to his credit, that his keen wit never took the form of caustic remarks; he was even especially careful to avoid saying an unkind thing of one who had displeased him. Whether he was particularly sensitive or no, it is impossible to say; he had the art to conceal his feelings. But one felt that there were sore places, for the reason that he would not allow them to be touched. There were names and subjects whose mention always led to a jocular remark about the weather, or to some disconnected anecdote which abruptly turned the conversation.
Another characteristic, which an enemy, if he had one, might scoff at, and which his friends made a joke of was his faculty for saving. He himself believed it to be a virtue, and certainly it entailed considerable sacrifice on his part. If any one took offence at a manifestation of it he was accustomed to turn the matter into a joke, and whatever loss of sympathy or esteem it cost him he willingly bore it, knowing the advantages his sacrifice would bring to the mission he was serving, or to the monastery he loved so dearly.
What people envied in Fr. O'Brien was his irrepressible good spirits and his immense capacity for simple enjoyment. It seemed the outcome of his robust health, and was so to some extent, but it was at least quite as much the result of his life of self-denial. To his last days anything in the shape of comforts and pleasures was fresh and new to him. He had never experienced the surfeit that kills enjoyment. His few and short holidays, had, to the end, the flavour of a first vacation. In his last illness, a stranger, listening to his talk, might have judged him to be suffering only from what Mark Twain calls 'an attack of the panegyrics.' The little comforts, usual in a sick room, were luxuries to him. Grapes, sent by one kind parishoner, were described as though they had been grown in paradise. Jellies, made by another, were decorated with adjectives that lent them a patent of nobility. 'I have just had a grand cup of Bovril,' he said a day or two before his death, and then he launched into a description of its qualities that far outstripped the advertisements. He spoke in the same way of the friends who remembered him. Everybody was so good, everything was so excellent: -'a bit of nausea, now and then, but no pain, and my faculties as good as ever.' One could not help but be reminded of the 'age as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly.' Only it seemed, at the time, as if the winter had hardly yet begun.
John Placid O'BRIEN 28 Oct 1898 1825 5 Sep born 1847 23 Dec Clothed 1849 17 Feb Professed 1852 18 Dec Priest 1853 Coventry 1854 St Anne's Liverpool 1856 St Augustine's Liverpool 1862 Woolton 1873 St Mary's Liverpool 1878 Clayton Green 1884 Parbold 1891 Aigburth, Grassendale 1898 28 Oct died