A while ago, IgNation ran a series of entries from Jesuits writing about their lives as Jesuits. As a riff on this, I am writing about a Jesuit who significantly influenced my life.

Fr. J. J. Murray S.J. (“Jack” to his Jesuit brothers) taught English at St. Paul’s High School as a scholastic during the fifties and as a priest in the sixties through early eighties. When I first met him during the late sixties he seemed old….balding with a few combed-over white hairs, with piercing blue eyes and an aquiline nose (which probably accounted for his student eponym, “The Buzzard.”)

While he was anything but athletic (his idea of a workout was walking “five streetlights” after supper, in sandals…even in a Winnipeg winter,) he had powerful arms and strong hands, probably from all the farm work he had done as a novice and a junior at Guelph. While he never taught me English (I had the then Mr. Pungente doing that!) his students always talked about the yards of memorized poetry they had to recite and about the “hissy fits” he would throw from time to time, dramatically leaving the class “to give you time to consider how to mend your ways”…while he would slip off for a smoke!

Though he was a dedicated and knowledgeable teacher, his heart…and his real impact…was not in the classroom but on the stage, for Fr. Murray was the force behind dramatics at St. Paul’s. It is hard to over-emphasize the impact which dramatics had on some students of those days. While the school stressed athletics then (as it does now) because that’s where most boys are at that time of their lives (and Jesuit education is nothing if it is not entirely practical about “bringing them in their door and taking them out your door,”) there were many boys (myself among them) to whom the world of the imagination spoke more than did the competitiveness of banging bodies together.

And Fr. Murray spoke to this; more, he validated and accommodated this. In the world he created, it was okay to be tender (but not “prissy” as he would say); it was okay to have your soul soar.

And did he ever know about the value of “team.” While he had an enormous, compelling and refined artistic vision, he always collaborated with his directors, musicians, dance masters and construction managers. When I directed for him, I always got the sense that I could take chances. So long as nothing compromised the ultimate goal of the formation of the students, he was flexible. Not otherwise! 

 Fr. Murray set the standard and made the style of dramatics at St. Paul’s. His genius at set design was unparalleled. Coloured tissue paper and toilet paper rolls and became magnificent stain-glass windows. Old velvet curtains from commercial theatres became costumes for kings and queens. Greenboard, a kind of pressed paper, was carved by x-acto knives into castle parapets and crenellation. 

He selected plays with huge casts so that more students could be involved and each student player got a costume, usually made by him. And he paid as much attention to the costume of the smallest extra as he paid to that of the lead.  When the script called for a forest or a garden, he costumed us as trees! Salons were decked by portrait pictures….with a live, costumed actor as the portrait. Anything to get one more student involved.

Fr. Murray knew as much about team as any coach. The stage crew who built the sets and operated the often complex stage machinery were just a much a part of the production as were the actors….maybe even more, since they worked directly with Fr. Murray. Fr. Murray valued the “Joe jobs” as more formative than the glittering ones. Indeed, each spring he insisted on doing the floors of his workshop himself rather than having the caretakers do them.

 In my adult years, I got to know him as a friend as well as a mentor. He had a witty sense of humour, an infectious laugh and gracious, almost courtly manners. His pleasures in life were cigarettes, black coffee, a glass of scotch and bridge….which he played impulsively and dramatically…anything but scientifically.

After he left St. Paul’s in the early 1980s, he discovered a new ministry in parish work and, astoundingly, finally learned to drive a car. His homilies were always well prepared and concise, written out in his precise longhand and his masses usually took 38 minutes—the length of a St. Paul’s class period! And the parish’s seasonal decorations had never been more elaborate, colourful and plentiful. Fr. Murray was Rococo, not Minimalist.

Fr. Murray’s favourite musical was Man from La Mancha and his favorite song “To Dream the Impossible Dream.” From him I learned to give and not to count the cost; to make no compromise with mediocrity; to laugh with those who laugh and cry with those who cry; to seize the moment, for it is all we have; and always to focus on the mission, whether it is teaching a class or scrubbing a floor. When he died, he was interred here in Winnipeg, the community to which he had dedicated his life. His real work, of course, was not the costumes and the sets, but the people. And he built well.