Fr Matthew was a monk for over sixty years; a Priest for fifty years. Before he was a monk he was a soldier, being of the generation that did military service, and he fought in the jungle in Malaysia. He was a tall, strong man, whose long and interesting life was mostly behind him when he arrived at Pluscarden nearly twenty years ago.
We knew him as an old man, still strong though. An enduring memory will be Fr Matthew in these last few years when his memory had begun to fail. He was in the final stages of life, but he remained vigorous. He walked, hour after hour, tirelessly. He didn’t wander. He went purposefully from his cell into the cloister then along the cloister and round back along the cloister to his cell again; a pause, then off again. A beaming smile for whoever he met, a wave of his hand to indicate he couldn’t stop, he had to press on.
Constant movement, but always within the confines of the cloister. Where was he going? In any reading of Fr Matthew’s life, it resonates the message that St Benedict wants us to hear from every word of Scripture: that we might travel by a straight road to our Creator. Fr Matthew went by a long straight road to his Creator.
We can explain Fr Matthew’s rectitude, the straightness of the path he walked in life, by the circumstances of his upbringing and early life: the Catholicism of his mother; the legal profession of his father; the generation and class into which he was born; his education at Ampleforth; his service in the Army; his study of law at Southampton University. All this seems designed to produce a pious man, a dutiful and just man, a man faithful to his commitments. Insert into this a nature that is sociable and loving, consider the impact on such a nature of the loss very early in his life of his mother, and you can understand much about Fr Matthew. All this is true and important, but superficial, and we know Fr Matthew was not superficial. He was a man of depth. What appeared was always true, but there was always more than appeared.
Consider his smile, his unfailing cheerfulness. Was he always as happy as he appeared? Was that possible? But it was not false. The truth (I think) was that his smile reflected not what was in him but what he saw in you: the happiness that he wished and hoped for in you. And because he was not a superficial person, this was something that went deep: he always hoped to find a loving and responsive heart. This is why his smiles and gestures had the quality of blessing.
He was always searching for love, not desperately but hopefully, confidently. In his search he met obstacles: his own emotional vulnerability, in later life his profound deafness, such a barrier to communication. He courageously overcome all the obstacles.
I remember once having a conversation with Fr Matthew. In the middle of it, unconnected with anything I was saying, he stiffened, looked resolute, and said ‘Yes, Father, I will do it!’ And he marched off. To do what, I had no idea. Complete confusion, yet an essential communication had happened: a monk believed his abbot was asking something. With the swift step of obedience, he did it, whatever it was.
It was the love of God that he was seeking. He knew by faith he had God’s love. He struggled to find within himself the child-like confident love towards God our Father that his faith assured him belonged there. This sense of some lack within himself, explainable by his experience of the limitations of human relationship, might have caused bitterness and self-pity, but not at all. It made him a seeker, turned towards God and neighbour, ready to go deep within himself. He needed others to assure him that this quest for love was love.
The great love of his life, under God, was Quarr Abbey: the place, the community living there, the form of life lived there. He entered the Abbey when he was a young man, he would be there still if circumstances beyond his control had not prevented it. From his first visit it exerted an overwhelming attraction for him. This is not the only way a monastic vocation takes shape, but for many, as for him, it is a total engagement of heart and imagination in what he found at the Abbey. Not so usual is that this strong attraction seems never to have left him. In this as in so many ways, in the best sense, he was child-like. If he wanted a place where he might experience love and know he was a child of God, he had found it.
All the harder that he had to leave Quarr. He was then 67, an age when it is hard to be taken from home, and not to be expected that one can really be at home in a new place. He was like Abraham, seventy five when the Lord told him ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you (Gen. 12:1), or like Moses, eighty when he stood before Pharaoh ready to make the journey out of Egypt.
Abraham never possessed the land God promised him, Moses never entered it. They were holders of a promise that for Abraham was fulfilled in his children, for Moses in his people. The promise was fulfilled in their fruitfulness. Did Fr Matthew find the promised land here at Pluscarden? He found essentially the same form of monastic life that he had chosen in his youth, and he was grateful for that. He bore spiritual fruit in this monastic life. In our cloister he walked on resolutely towards home, on the straight path to his Creator, smiling at us all as he went. It was our privilege to cheer him on. Now we pray that the angels of God will take over from us and accompany him the rest of the way.
