Fr. Robert Crouse – In Memoriam
“They have no wine”, Mary says in today’s Gospel story, the story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. As Father Robert Crouse observed, her statement captures the human predicament. We lack the means of joy in ourselves. We lack what he has called “the wine of divinity”.
Many of us may feel that we are at a loss, too, with the death of The Rev’d Dr. Robert Darwin Crouse. A great teacher and scholar of international standing and repute, he was a friend and a mentor to a great number of priests and scholars around the world. Many of us owe our love and what knowledge we have of such outstanding theological and poetic figures as Augustine and Dante, for instance, to Robert. Through his teaching in hundreds and hundreds of sermons over many years, many people, both clergy and lay, have learned a love of God and an understanding of Christian doctrine, particularly as expressed in the liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer. Acknowledged as “the conscience of the Canadian Church” by another theologian, Canon Eugene Rathbone Fairweather, Robert’s voice was the calm still voice of wisdom and understanding, a theological voice which has not always been heeded by the Anglican Church, but which lives on through his writings and teachings and, perhaps, in some small way through his many, many students.
He was, perhaps, the most outstanding scholar that King’s Collegiate School in Windsor, (now King’s-Edgehill) and the University of King’s College in Halifax ever produced. The School contributed to his love of nature, his love of music and his love of learning. They are the loves which stayed with him throughout his life: in the horticultural paradise of his gardens in Crousetown; in playing the organ at little St. Mary’s, Crousetown, the home of the famous Baroque concerts; in teaching at King’s and Dalhousie and in Rome. An outstanding teacher of patristic and medieval philosophy and literature, he was the embodiment of the ideal of the scholarly priest.
While a student at the School, he often came down to Christ Church to play the organ: it was his way, he told me, of getting out of rugby! He has left his mark, quite literally, on the inside wall of the organ chamber where his signature in chalk can still be seen. The smell of the wood and fabric of Christ Church, he once told me, has always stayed with him as evocating the very image and idea of the essential being of the Church.
Robert’s teaching was always, in some sense, sacramental. From Robert we learn something of what it means to have “no wine” in ourselves and, even more, to discover “the wine of divinity” in which we may find those joys celestial which have no ending. May he rest in peace and may his example inspire us all.
Fr. David Curry
Chaplain & Teacher, King’s-Edgehill School
Rector of Christ Church, Windsor
January 16th, 2011
Many of Fr. Crouse’s sermons and writings can be accessed via this link at St. Peter Publications.
