Father Lawrence Hannan, S.M.

The story I feel I must tell this month is the very personal one of my brother Larry. He died recently at the age of 94 having spent 69 of those years in Fiji as a missionary priest of the Society of Mary. When he first arrived there as a newly ordained priest there was a lot of pent-up energy waiting to be released. He had found his years of the study of Philosophy and Theology, like many of us did at that time, a frustrating experience. This meant that for much of his early life as a priest he was a man of action with little time to cultivate the intellectual and reflective side of himself. He noticed the impoverishing effect of this on various renewal courses he was sent on but he was not able to make space in his life to do much about it even if he knew how. It was not till he was 53 that, during a year long course in Manila, that he realized what he had to do and developed the will to do it.

The last of life, for which the first was made
I was 12 years younger than Larry and I did not get to know him until he was in his sixties. An opportunity to know him better came in 1989 when, at Larry’s invitation, I spent 3 months in Fiji giving a variety of courses to lay groups. It was during a week at the end of my visit when we travelled around all the places Larry had worked that we had time to share where life had taken us. Before I left Fiji, he asked me to recommend some books he should read on his forthcoming sabbatical and I am reported to have said: “Don’t read other people’s books; read your own”. Even though this was his little brother’s recommendation he took it and produced a very honest, fascinating and beautifully written account of his life. It was in writing this that Larry’s two selves came together: the side that loved people and the other that learned to love in a new way by being loved.

Love After Love
The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott

 Sit. Feast on your life
Larry’s journal has remained for me over the years like the box of memories in the following story: As the book of Wisdom says, we neglect these memories at our peril

 Least falling into deep forgetfulness we get cut off from your kindness. Wis16:11

 The box of memories
An elderly married pair auctioned their house. As they sat for the last night in what had been their home, it seemed very bare. Just before they went to bed the husband took out a little tin box in which he had stored the memories of their life together, of the ways they had been blessed, the joys they had shared, and even their times of darkness that had turned out to be blessings in disguise.

As he took these memories out of the box and dwelt on each one in turn, he and his wife were no longer conscious of their stark surroundings. They re-lived the richness of their life together and they were grateful to God.

That night he died in his sleep. When he was laid out, she replaced the rosary between his joined hands with his box of memories, for she knew that it was with these that he prayed best. The evening of the funeral she opened her own store of memories. There she placed all the words of appreciation of her husband she had heard at the funeral. In the years that remained to her, she was sustained on her solitary journey, by the grace-filled memory of their life together.

The Larry I knew
I think that the sense of a person fully alive and happy will be my abiding memory of Larry. He had a zest or a lust for life that was seen in the huge energy with which he did everything; he always seemed to live out the principle that you should never walk when you can run. He was always full of new initiatives and plans and it was never advisable to stand in the way of these. Later in his life he made time to play and there was a child-like quality to this that was charming. The following shrewd comment of someone who knew Larry well highlights these “two Larries”.

I remember two Larries really. Of the earlier years I have the image of a rather severe man, a bit straight-laced, an administrator. Then he did a renewal in Manila and after that I remember him as a very caring man, as seminary rector in Suva and as formator in Tutu. I have always cherished the story of Larry as rector of PRS replacing the washing of the feet with a kava ceremony in which he, as rector, took the role of the servant mixing the brew and carrying it to the attendants. It shocked the seminarians but they admitted later, it was the first time they had understood the meaning of the Maundy Thursday ceremony! Larry must have held just about every post and parish in the country. The Lord will have received him right at the gate! Jan Snijders, S.M

With others and also alone

One who loved people and being with them
I think that we will always remember and admire Larry’s great love of people and of being with them. We the members of his family have memories of him home on holidays in Ireland. His great joy was to divide his time between visiting, reporting back to us what happened on his journeys and planning where he might go next. He could never get enough of his family, his friends and of the people of Fiji among whom he spent 69 years of his life. Some years ago we suggested that he come back to Ireland for his remaining years but he told us that his real home was with the people of Fiji.

 Even though he was a very forceful person abounding in energy he was also, especially after the year he spent in Manila, a very warm and affectionate person. In his later years he went out of his way to keep in touch with each member of his family and he would not leave you without expressing his love in a way that never ceased to surprise. He had an unusual capacity to love people and an even more unusual capacity to express it in a way that always sounded genuine. There is a beautiful testimony to this side of Larry written by Cardinal Soane Patita Paini Mafi a former student of the Pacific Regional Seminary when Larry was rector there:

This writing space can not cover fully if I was to do justice here and describe to you what I would consider a man who had saved me to re-possess my call to the priesthood during a time of great struggle and personal confusion in my early years at the seminary.  Larry was not only a Rector, but a mentor and companion in my own journey as a young seminarian at the time. It’s hard for me to forget the soft voice of your dear uncle which to me was so full of sincere love and tenderness of a true shepherd.  … I am so fortunate to have seen that last look of a true saint before I continue my pilgrimage to Rome.

 I have a memory of Larry that captures something very special about him. The memory is of visiting him in Fiji in 1989 when he was rector of the seminary. Every week we would go out for an afternoon together and a major feature of the day would be that after a swim he would get two of the largest ice-cream cones you have ever seen. It was a very challenging experience to get to the ice-cream before it dripped down the side of the cone onto the floor or even worse, onto your lap. My memory of Larry is of being amazed at how he could keep the car on the road and at the same time never allow a drop of that delicious ice-cream to go astray.

 What I treasure about this memory is the way it captures Larry’s love of life and his determination to enjoy every last drop of it. Larry in this way gives us an impression of what life in all its abundance is like; the life Christ ambitions for each of us.

Feeding the sweet tooth

Give them an impression of the Great King
A young peasant lad was summoned by a great king to come and see him. When he arrived at the palace, the king said to him, “My kingdom is so large that I cannot meet all my people and touch their lives as I would want to. My wish is that you would give them an impression of who I am.”

As symbols of the new role he was to play, the king gave the youth a sceptre, a robe and a crown. Now, since he did not know the king, the young lad was very confused about what he was being sent to do. He was too awe-struck to ask the king what he meant, so he went to consult a wise person who told him to go back to his little farm and just to be himself.

As time went on, more and more people came to visit him for they found in him a sympathetic ear and a compassionate heart. Gradually he realised that this was what the great king had sent him to do. This was the way he was to give people an impression of what the Great King was like.

The greatest thing we can do in life is to give those around us a glimpse of what love is like. Though the impression of love that Larry gave us is human and thus limited it makes God’s love that bit more tangible, colourful and credible.

 For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men`s faces.
G M Hopkins

Going out in a blaze of glory