Sad News -- Richard John Neuhas

Father Richard John Neuhaus died today. He was born a Lutheran and converted to Catholicism at the age of 55. He was confirmed as a Catholic September 8, 1990, and ordained a Catholic priest a year later by Cardinal O'Connor. I remember this in particular because I had been confirmed as a Catholic earlier that same year; the magazine First Things that he founded was a great influence on me in those early years after conversion.

Some of Fr. Neuhaus's writings online are here.

He came very close to death once before, and in 2002 wrote a book about it called As I Lay Dying which I read a couple of years ago on the recommendation of Lissla.

First Things article:

Our great, good friend is gone.

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two.

From an essay originally published in First Things in 2000 "Born Towards Dying."

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well....Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer.