HOMILY FOR THE PONTIFICAL MASS OF CHRISTIAN BURIAL FOR MONSIGNOR JOHN USHER, AM
ST PATRICK’S CATHOLIC CHURCH, MORTLAKE, 27 SEPTEMBER 2024
At the end of the Great Depression, social scientists enlisted a group of 268 sophomore students at Harvard, including the young John F. Kennedy, to be part of a longitudinal study aimed at better understanding happiness. The researchers traced the lives of the participants for nearly eighty years, collecting a cornucopia of data on their physical and mental health, and adding new members to the study, including some children of the original cohort. In all 1300 lives were examined in granular detail as their subjects went through all the highs and lows of health, careers and relationships. In terms of length and breadth, it’s one of the most comprehensive studies of human beings ever attempted.
Among the most significant findings of the study was the importance of relationships. Whilst health and wealth play their part, it’s the quality of human connections that makes the biggest difference to how happy people are; indeed, close relationships—more than fame, money or vigour—are what make people happy, protect them from life’s discontents, and help delay mental and physical decline. For those aged over fifty, relational health is a better predictor of wellbeing than cholesterol or social class; and a lack of meaningful relationships can be as dangerous as poverty, alcoholism or smoking.
In today’s Gospel (Mt 5:1-12) there’s an expectant hush on the hilltop as the Master sits, as if in the professor’s chair, and the crowd strains to hear Him. We get Jesus’ blueprint for the good life, the happy-making life, blessedness. But His prescriptions are as paradoxical and unnerving for 21st century hearers as they were for the first. Surely happiness requires being comfortably off, not poor in spirit or resources; being content with your lot, rather than mourning and weeping about it; having influence and control, not meekness and persecution; being justly treated rather than hungry for justice… and so on. But as if pre-empting the Harvard Study, Jesus turns worldly wisdom on its head: happiness is about relationships and values, much more than comfort, status or genetics. While some of these things can provide fleeting joys or ground deeper goals, they are not themselves the secret to the good life.
How, then, do we become truly μακάριος, blessed, fortunate? Well, in the Beatitudes and the whole Sermon on the Mount, Christ identifies certain virtuous dispositions as crucial: humility, purity, justice, courage, prayerfulness, mercy, faith and hope. He beatifies the most unlikely candidates: the humble, needy and reviled, those who hear the word of God and keep it, those who give, forgive and spend themselves completely in the service of God and humanity. In other words, those who are like Him, the truly Blessed One!
No one should pretend this comes naturally or easily to us. In fact, we can only have such happiness with the help of others, especially God and His Church. As the Harvard study proved twenty centuries later, connection is key. But not just any old liaison. Only an encounter with the one, true God, with His incarnate and risen Son, with the consoling Spirit of them both, will enable such a demanding happiness. Only that will instill the profoundest of loves, agape, unconditional charity—a love St Paul reminds us today (Rom 8:31-39) conquers even death.
It is, as I said, a demanding love, that draws us out of ourselves and into service of others. The mission to bring God’s love to the peripheries of the community, to the disadvantaged and vulnerable, the victims and survivors, ran like a watermark through the life and ministry of Monsignor John Usher. I recall when we were preparing to deliver World Youth Day in 2008 that a man who was sleeping rough approached Jack here at his presbytery; to John’s surprise the man didn’t want money or food but entry to the Final Mass of WYD. As Vicar-General Jack was able to offer more than the man had bargained for: front row seating plus entry to the VIP hospitality tent! This man was, in John’s view of the world, exactly the right person to be hosted there.
Now we might hope that many of those little ones whom John helped are at the gates of heaven pleading with St Peter that John be admitted to the VIP tent. For in our collect we prayed that John be raised on the last day to rejoice in God’s presence forever, but also that he be admitted immediately to the joyful company of the saints.
Jack was once described in a newspaper as a “chain-smoking priest with a passion for social justice and the races”—which only captures a part of the man. Today his admirers have placed a book of poetry, a vinyl record, a pack of cards and a Tigers’ scarf out as signals of other human interests they were blessed to share with him. All are foretastes of that eschatological banquet promised today by Isaiah and the Psalmist (Isa 25:6-9; Ps 22).
Alongside his chalice, the Usher Report on out-of-home care and the civil honour, these tell the story of a richly lived life, of a man who was, first and foremost, a lover of God and His people, a priest filled with the compassion of Christ, a Christian who sought to live out the beatitudes as keys to a truly happy life. When he retired to lesser duties, John thanked his parishioners for making his time at Mortlake one of “supernatural joy”. That impish grin that earned him the nickname ‘Happy’ from the Seven Dwarfs never left him. He now carries his beatific smile to the Lord he served so well.
Eternal rest grant unto Jack O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PONTIFICAL MASS OF CHRISTIAN BURIAL FOR
MONSIGNOR JOHN USHER AM
ST PATRICK’S CATHOLIC CHURCH, MORTLAKE, 27 SEPTEMBER 2024
Welcome to St Patrick’s for the Pontifical Mass of Christian Burial for Rev. Monsignor John Joseph (“Jack”) Usher, a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Member of the Order of Australia and, for a third of a century, pastor here at Mortlake. Born in 1940 to Cecil and Mary Usher, he was raised in the faith by his parents and schooled at Domremy Five Dock and St Pat’s Strathfield. After studying commerce and working, he discerned a call to the priesthood, and trained at Springwood and Manly. Ordained priest in 1972 by Archbishop Freeman, he served in several parishes (Mt Pritchard (1972), Balgowlah (1974), City Rd (1977), Golden Grove (1978), Dundas Valley (1979), Blacktown (1979), Rozelle (1985)) before coming to Mortlake (1986-2019).
After post-graduate studies in Social Work at the University of Sydney, he was appointed to head up the Blacktown office of “Westcare” and then Centacare Sydney (later CatholicCare), which he led for 21 years, establishing many services that have helped the disadvantaged to this day. He advised numerous governments on issues around adoption, foster care and out-of-home care of children and young people, culminating in the 1992 Usher Report for the NSW Government. He served on the Family Law Council of Australia, the Community Welfare Advisory Council, the NSW Child Protection Council, and the Social Security Advisory Council. His contributions to the welfare sector were recognised with the A.M. in 2004.
In 2005 a formidable new weight was added to his cross: he was made Chancellor and Vicar General of the Archdiocese by Cardinal Pell. The immensity of the task—in addition to being a parish priest—is demonstrated by my having ultimately to replace him with three people! But thanks to his deep faith and unwaveringly cheerful disposition, which I witnessed to the end, as well as an unending supply of cigarettes, he was able to perform all three jobs admirably. John was a friend, mentor and wise counsellor to countless laypeople, clergy and bishops, to the bold and beautiful, the destitute and survivors. While much of his ministry was necessarily confidential, many gratefully remember his help or have stories to tell of his life and love. In recognition of his service to the Church, he was elevated to Monsignor in 2009.
I acknowledge concelebrating with me today Bishops Richard Umbers and Danny Meagher, Vicar General of Sydney Fr Gerry Gleeson, Vicar General of Parramatta Fr Peter Williams, Parish Priest Fr Tom Stevens, and many brother priests of the Archdiocese and beyond. His classmates Bishop Bob McGuckin and Monsignor Vince Redden send their apologies.
I acknowledge and thank Brenda Johnston and Michael King who selflessly cared for Monsignor Usher during the final period of his life and enabled him to live at his Rodd Point residence until almost the very end. I salute his cousins, friends, colleagues in social welfare, and beloved parishioners of Mortlake.
For more than half a century, Jack Usher applied his gifts to the service of God and the ‘little ones’, epitomising Christ’s words “What you did for the least of my brethren, you did for me” (Mt 25:40). With great confidence we now commend this faithful priest of Jesus Christ to the Lord he served so well.