My sister Vicki writes:

How fitting that God would choose Thanksgiving Day to bring our wonderful Great Auntie Mena home to heaven! She so personified a grateful heart to everyone who knew her. Her cheerful way, her servant’s heart, her positive outlook in every part of her life could only come from someone truly thankful for all that God had given, even through the difficult times. When commenting on the loss of her vision, it’s no surprise that rather than complain she said, “You know, when you live this long, things just start to wear out.” Even into her nineties, one could never think of her as a “little old lady.” There was always a sparkle in her blue eyes, a smile on her face and on her feet sneakers rather than orthopedic shoes. Around her 90th year, we paid a visit and I asked her what year it was that Northern Michigan University presented her with an honorary Bachelor of Nursing degree. Before I could beat her to it, she was bounding up the stairs to get the plaque from her room. Coming back down to show us her award from 1978, she said, “It’s good for me to go up and down those stairs.”
On our last visit with her in August at Norlite, she was slowing down, but still persistent in spreading warmth and cheer. She spoke of being blessed to be cared for by a wonderful staff and for the food that is “out of this world.” As we prayed with her before leaving, she prayed herself and in a strong voice, “Thank you, Lord, for giving me so many people who love and care for me.” As we said our good-byes, she urged us to get a cup of coffee for the road, “It’s the best coffee you’ve ever tasted!” That was our Auntie Mena. How thankful we are to have had her influence and example in our lives. We will miss her, but we know she is rejoicing with her Savior, Jesus Christ, and all of the loved ones who have gone on before her.

“Thank you Lord for giving me so many people who love and care for me.” My sister Vicki’s anecdote captures my Great Aunt Mena at her most characteristic. Humility, as C. S. Lewis said, is a cheerful virtue.

Mena Haskins Hartvigh was cut from the same cloth as the man whose remark stopped me in my tracks a few years ago as I watched the BBC production Windsor Castle: A Royal Year. In three nearly hour-long episodes, it gives an inside look at the royal house. Thus we see the maids on their knees polishing waxed floors in great gilded rooms, men in felt socks walking on top of the banquet table set with gold service for one hundred and fifty. Upholsterers, clockmakers (keeping time with the 400 clocks in the castle), the fender men (polishing the fenders on the 80 hearths), the footmen, chefs, stable boys, guards and game wardens, we see all of them cheerfully going about the business of serving the monarch.

What stopped me in my tracks was the remark of a man named Tony Martin. Mr. Martin’s duty is to hoist the royal standard at the top of the great tower of Windsor Castle when the Queen is in residence. When the Queen leaves the castle, he lowers the standard. On her majesty’s return, the moment she is inside the ramparts, he raises it.

There are nearly 400 servants at Windsor, so the sovereign can’t know each one personally. But Mr. Martin finished speaking of his duty by saying that he met the Queen once. “She said to me, ‘You’re the flag man, aren’t you?’” He finished his remark by saying with apparent joy, “She knows who I am.”

It’s rather like that scene from one of Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In the chapter titled How the Adventure Ended the tiresome boy Eustace Clarence Scrubb says to Edmund, “But who is Aslan? Do you know him?” And Edmund replies, “Well — he knows me.” That is very good theology impossible to grasp by an imagination in thrall to the democratic. (I might suggest that the key to Mena’s gladness was kept as in the keep of a castle, except that in her case it was as hidden as the key my Uncle Lowell hid thirty-three years ago. My family had come from Sault Ste. Marie to Marquette, Michigan for a visit. Vicki was in college there at Northern Michigan University, and Mena and my Uncle Lowell lived in Marquette. On such occasions we would stay at Lowell’s house and on this one, fearing we would arrive before he could be there to greet us, this cunning man hid the key to his house in an envelope and taped it to the front door. On the envelope for anybody to see he’d written a discreet note to my folks. It read, “Bud and Ann: The key is in the envelope.”)

The Lord knows who Mena Genevieve Haskins Hartvigh is. The Sovereign she served faithfully knows who she is. That was the source of her joy, as it is now and shall be forever.

With her death, the last of her generation in my extended family has joined all the company of heaven, but her devoted service continues. She would have slapped her knee with approval had she heard my father some years ago telling the four of his children, “When I die, you can bury me wherever you want. Tell the mortician when he lays me out to point my toes because as far as I’m concerned you can take a maul and pound me into the ground wherever you want because the Lord will know where to find me!” Not, “I will know where to find the Lord,” but, “the Lord will know where to find me.” That’s the hope of the resurrection in language any Yooper can raise a glass to.

What I most want to say for Mena has been said by other servants in the house of the Lord, by my family, by the Book of Common Prayer, by apostles and prophets, and by none other than our Lord himself.

O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done your will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.

For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord.
and if we die, we die unto the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;
even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.

Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant Mena. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

On 23rd February of the Christian kalendar, we commemorate Polycarp, one of my favorite saints. Polycarp was the elderly Bishop of Smyrna in the year of our Lord 155 when he was arrested by the Roman proconsul, brought on an ass to an arena, and told to renounce his faith in Jesus and pledge his fealty instead to Caesar. At the entrance to the arena, he was transferred from the ass to a chariot where two Roman soldiers who had no enthusiasm for seeing an old man die said to him, “What harm would it be for you to say Caesar Kurios? Just do it, old man, just renounce your allegiance to Jesus.” At first Polycarp did not answer them; but when they persisted, he said, “I’m not going to do that.”

They took him into the arena. And there the proconsul asked him, “Are you Polycarp?”

“Yes.”

“Will you deny this Jesus whom you call Lord?”

Polycarp didn’t reply.

“Think about your age, old man. Swear by the fortunes of Caesar and I will release you. Revile Christ!”

Polycarp said, “Eighty and six years have I served him and he never did me any wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

The proconsul persisted. “I have wild beasts. I can burn you at the stake unless you repent.”

Polycarp said, “I am a Christian. What are you waiting for? Do whatever you wish to.”

They burned Polycarp at the stake.

Over the years, the whole idea of truth – much less our ability to know it — has been rendered doubtful by the slow advance of a soft agnosticism that has itself become orthodoxy at so many universities. Not so at Notre Dame. All across this wondrous campus, we pass imagery that sings to us about the hope born of a Jewish woman in a Bethlehem stable. Yet we kid ourselves if we believe these images are self-sustaining.

Without a witness that keeps these signposts alive, our crosses, statues, and stained glass windows will ultimately fade into historical curiosities like the “Christo et ecclesiae” that survives to this day on buildings around Harvard Yard and the seal that still validates every Harvard degree. For most of her life, Notre Dame has served as a symbol of a Catholic community struggling to find acceptance in America — and yearning to make our own contributions to this great experiment in ordered liberty. We identify with those who are poor and downtrodden and on the margins of acceptance because that is where the Gospel points — and because we remember whence came our own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.

If we are honest, however, we must admit that in many ways we — and the university that nurtured us — are now the rich and powerful and privileged ourselves. This is a form of success, and we need not be embarrassed by it. But we must be mindful of the greater responsibilities that come with this success.

For years this university has trumpeted her lay governance. So what does it say about the Notre Dame brand of leadership, that in the midst of a national debate over a decision that speaks to our Catholic identity, a debate in which thousands of people across the country are standing up to declare themselves “yea” or “nay,” our trustees and fellows — the men and women who bear ultimate responsibility for this decision — remain as silent as Trappist monks? At a time when we are told to “engage” and hold “dialogue,” their timidity thunders across this campus. And what will history say of our billions in endowment if the richest Catholic university America has ever known cannot find it within herself to mount a public and spirited defense of the most defenseless among us?

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William McGurn, A Notre Dame Witness for Life, at Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, April 23, 2009

Gorbachev deflected this question. He insisted that religion was not a serious problem in the Soviet Union. According to the notes, Gorbachev told Reagan that “he, himself, had been baptized, but he was not now a believer, and that reflected a certain evolution of Soviet society.” There might have been some “excesses” in repressing religion immediately after the Soviet revolution, Gorbachev said, but times had changed. His program of perestroika was designed to expand democratic procedures, and it would extend to religion. Reagan then ventured further, taking a step that quite a few Americans would have found objectionable. The president switched from seeking to persuade Gorbachev of the value of religious tolerance to promoting a belief in God. Reagan did so by telling one of his trademark stories. According to the notes of their meeting:

The president said he had a letter from the widow of a young World War II soldier. He was lying in a shell hole at midnight, awaiting an order to attack. He had never been a believer, because he had been told God did not exist. But as he looked up at the stars he voiced a prayer hoping that, if he died in battle, God would accept him. That piece of paper was found on the body of a young Russian soldier who was killed in that battle.

Gorbachev tried to switch the subject. Perhaps the United States and the Soviet Union might open the way for greater cooperation in space, he told the president. But the president wasn’t to be diverted. According to the transcript, Reagan told Gorbachev that space was in the direction of heaven, but not as close to heaven as some other things that they had been discussing.

As the meeting ended, Reagan became even more direct and personal. He noted that his own son Ron did not believe in God either. “The President concluded that there was one thing he had long yearned to do for his atheist son. He wanted to serve his son the perfect gourmet dinner, to have him enjoy the meal, and then to ask him if he believed there was a cook.”

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James Mann, in the WSJ

In the spring of 2006, I traveled with my parents to Japan in celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. My sister Vicki arrived at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, disembarking her plane even as I boarded mine for my flight returning to Potomac. She would be in Japan, with her son Kyle and daughter Naomi, for about 10 days.

After she got back to her home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she sent this email letter. She writes of the walk they took with my mother to a park in Ninomiya where our Aunt Kimiko lives, a beautiful walk I took with my parents when I was there with them. Ninomiya is on Japan’s east coast at the middle of the country. The park is at the top of a great bluff overlooking the Pacific. As if that sight weren’t magnificent enough to take in, you can turn inland, face west, and, on a clear day, “enjoy your eyes” (as the Japanese say) on the breathtaking sight of Fuji-san. This is a story about my Okasan. And it is a story about loving God and our neighbor.

My sister’s letter:

Mom, Naomi and I took a great walk on a beautiful day up the steep hillside in Ninomiya. Kimiko had shown us a shortcut that took us through a beautiful nature trail, around orchards, up nature steps and through bamboo fields to get to the site of the old castle in Ninomiya, the one that overlooks the bay and is surrounded by cherry blossoms and flowers. As I sat under a tree inhaling the view, I left Naomi to take photos and rest on the uppermost area catching the sights and sunshine.

I began to wonder what became of Mom after several minutes had passed. I walked back up to the spot and saw her talking intimately with a young man whom I had seen sitting on a bench rather pensively when we had first arrived. When I looked at Naomi quizzically, she said, “I think she’s saving that boy’s life.” We left Mom to her mission and she came over to us later in the field. She was troubled that the boy seemed despondent, staring without moving. She had heard that if someone is troubled and perhaps suicidal, it can take the encouraging words of anyone to bring them back to their senses.

In the truest form of Mom’s bold nature, she walked over, returning to him, and asked him if he was in some kind of trouble. He answered that yes, he was beginning his first day of university the next day and was deeply distressed about his “fashion” and this phase of his life. Mom spoke with him shared the gospel message, prayed with him, encouraged him about God’s love for him. Then, she left him to continue to ponder, and she came back to us.

A few minutes later, she walked back over for a time. We were nearby and she introduced us to him. We shook his hand and said hello, not knowing all that had transpired.

Later, she told us that she had forgotten to pray the sinner’s prayer with him and went back to ask if he would like to repeat that prayer after her. He told her that he would. So, on a beautiful hilltop on the site of an ancient castle overlooking the Pacific Ocean, our mother prayed with an 18 year old young man to receive Christ as his savior. We need to remember to pray for him, as well as all of our Tamaoki family.

As amazing as this story is, it amazed me also to learn that my daughter captured a beautiful photo of Mom praying with this boy with her hand around his back. I will try to send the photo, but will likely ask Naomi to do it for me. Of all the Japan photos, that is the one Kyle said he definitely wants a copy of. And so, I’m sure, will you all. He said, “That shows the real Grandma.”