Mgr. Mark Langham: in thanksgiving for his life

Many people will find the loss of Mgr. Mark Langham, who died on the 15th of January, very hard to bear.  Among their ranks are those of us whose lives he touched as chaplain of Fisher House, the Catholic student chaplaincy at Cambridge.  ‘We know what we owe him,’ I told one friend, but on reflection I am not so sure.  The problem with a man as generous as Monsignor Langham — or Father Mark, as he was to all of us — is that one never knows when or how one might have been the beneficiary of his influence and inspiration.  Would Westminster Cathedral be quite the place it is without his years of service as its Administrator?  And all his work with the Anglican Church, the bonds of ecumenical trust he strengthened: who knows what fruit these might yet bear?

When it comes to Fisher House, though, I can be more specific about my debts.  There are reasons why, when the pandemic cut us off from our home parish, it was to the chaplaincy’s online Masses that my family turned.  Even in virtual form, Fisher House has that elusive thing, an atmosphere: a presence that cannot be synthesised or conjured, but which has to grow naturally from many faithful words, actions, decisions and prayers.  All the chaplains — not least those I also knew, Sister Ann and Fr. Mark’s predecessor Fr. Alban — have had a hand in making Fisher House what it is, but I think it is fair to say that Fr. Mark has had a particular responsibility for the chaplaincy’s thriving in recent years.  Whoever sent him there had the wisdom and insight to match a man to his vocation.

Fr. Mark must have known from the beginning that a Catholic student chaplaincy has to supply two particular things.  The first is formation, which means precisely the stimulation and challenge that students have come to university to find.  The second is rootedness, emotional and spiritual.  A chaplaincy has to be both a smithy and a sanctuary; on the one hand a lively forum, and on the other a hearth-side where everything is quite safe and relaxed: a kind of Rivendell.  Those things that make Cambridge such a wonderful and exhilarating place to study — the spirit of inquiry, the effervescence of ideas, the daily demolition of the mind’s walls of ignorance, not to mention the interesting, accomplished, witty, characterful people — can also make it rather a daunting one.  At Fisher House, Fr. Mark balanced these imperatives.  From him I learned that the Christian faith is as intelligent as it is beautiful and good and true — but, more, that integrity is above intelligence.  Because at Cambridge there is a great deal of consciousness, and therefore of self-consciousness, there is also often a great deal of performance going on; but Fr. Mark taught by word and example that a life lived according to true faith needs no artificiality, no pretention.  Indeed, he made it clear that there is no point to Cambridge at all, or to any university, if its students fizz with cleverness but ignore the heart of life: wisdom, holiness, truth, love.

Perhaps ‘spirit’ would be a better word than ‘atmosphere’.  ‘Fisher House is a community that is created at Mass, and everything else is an outworking of that,’ Fr. Mark wrote last year, and indeed, the manner of the chaplaincy’s worship of God was something else which simultaneously formed and rooted us. [1]  The liturgies were uplifting and dignified, with the best and fullest-throated congregational singing I have ever heard in a Catholic church (almost up to Anglican standard!).  It helped that Fr. Mark was a fine singer, and also the finest orator I have known: in his voice the English language rang beautifully and clearly, but also entirely naturally.  Without amplification he spoke and was heard at the back of a crammed Sunday congregation (though compared to the Cathedral the chapel must have seemed to him like a seminar-room).  By the cadences of his speech he enlivened the words of Scripture with the skill of a professional voice-actor — but he was not acting; he was simply co-operating with the beauty and holiness of the verses before him.  The word ‘God’ in particular seemed always to flare out of the phrase that contained it, to hang for a moment in the air with an inner stillness, like that of a detonated firework or a tiny prayer, yet, again, always quite naturally.  He would utter the words of liturgies with sincere, unshowy reverence, especially Christ’s words at the Consecration, the summit of the Mass.  “This — is — my — body,” he would say, very deliberately, “This — is — my — blood.”  It was probably hearing Fr. Mark saying Mass that made me realise that the liturgy — the Eucharistic Prayer in particular — really is a kind of free-verse poem.  The Mass is always the Mass, of course, however it is said; but to a lover of language it was balm for the soul to hear these holy words spoken so fittingly.

It was not only how Fr. Mark spoke; there was also what he said.  His weekly lunch-time lectures were tours de force, taking a theme or a question head-on and elucidating them with delicious clarity.  What does the Church really say about this or that idea?  How did these traditions, those customs begin?  Fr. Mark would know and explain.  His homilies, likewise, looked unflinchingly into the day’s Gospel, even the puzzling or troubling readings.  Typically he would begin with some anecdotal amuse-bouche about microwaves or custard creams, and then follow it up with as hefty a serving of solidly orthodox, warmly compassionate, blazingly intelligent exegesis as we could ever have hoped for.  I remember often standing up afterwards for the Creed in a kind of daze.  And yet, as he spoke, there was an eagerness, almost a boyish wonder at the faith, at how it all hangs together, how even its mysteries mysteriously make sense.

And Fr. Mark taught the faith not only with his intelligent words, but in his person.  There was a tremendous confidence about him: not self-confidence, not pride, but faith and trust in a source of goodness beyond himself.  He was the real thing.  He was neither ignorant nor afraid of the world or the age, but at the same time somehow transcended it; he was in it but not of it.  He was convivial; he had a tremendous sense of humour; his warmth put even the most hesitant at ease.  A deep joy burned in him.  He was generous, as I have said: generous with his talents, with his time, with his attention, with his broad smile.  He made it clear that he offered, if needed, a listening ear.

He was as wise as he was kind — ‘the wisest man in Westminster diocese,’ as my friend reports his parish priest saying — and his wisdom was often so clear and so essential that I would wonder how I had ever managed without it.  His words and his presence put our insecurities, our blunders, our essay-crises in perspective.  In his homily at the Leavers’ Mass at the end of my last term, knowing that many good friends were about to part from each other, he observed that one sign of a true friendship is that, on meeting again for the first time after months or even years, both friends simply pick up where they left off, as if they had never been apart.  I have since found this to be quite true.

Fr. Mark’s determined ecumenism was also an inspiration to me.  Before he came to Fisher House he had been working in Rome at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for Anglican-Catholic relations in particular, and it is worth noting how many of the kind messages since his death have come from Anglicans.  He was under no illusions about the formal obstacles that currently bar the way to Christian unity, but he saw just as clearly that we must, as Christ commanded, pray and work to overcome them.  ‘To be Catholic is to be ecumenical,’ he declared, quoting St. John Paul II, but this was no mere platitude: he went on to explain why. [2]  He saw, too, that ecumenism is often not simply a matter of kind words and gestures, but of tackling problems with patience, purpose and humility, studying each other’s positions closely, pressing for mutual understanding, making sacrifices.  Sometimes, though, it is simply about kind words and gestures.  Invited once to preach at Evensong at St. John’s College, he told a remarkable story which reveals much about Pope Benedict XVI, and indeed much about Fr. Mark that he thought it worth telling:

During the 2010 visit of Pope Benedict to England, I was privileged to be present at a meeting between Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops at Lambeth Palace in the presence of Archbishop Rowan [Williams] and Pope Benedict.  At the conclusion of the speeches we prayed together the Lord’s Prayer, and we came to that awkward bit, the bit where the Roman Catholics stop and Anglicans carry on.  The Anglican bishops, sensitive to the Roman Catholic tradition, graciously concluded, “But deliver us from evil,” and there was a pause.  And then one voice continued, “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.”  It was the voice of Pope Benedict. [3]

Fr. Mark may have mingled with bishops and holders of high office, but he did not overlook lowlier folk.  One Sunday several years after graduating, I was in Cambridge and went back to Fisher House for Mass.  I did not particularly expect to be recognised, but I was, firstly by Sister Ann, who asked me beforehand to carry the gifts up to the altar at the Offertory — and then, as I approached the altar during Mass itself, by Fr. Mark.  As he leaned forward to take the vessels from my hands, he looked straight at me, smiled and said, quietly but unmistakably, “Welcome back.”  My astonishment must have been obvious, but he was already getting on with the business of the Mass.  I was only one and not in any way remarkable among the hundreds of students Fr. Mark had known, let alone everyone else he had met in his lifetime.  I find it extraordinary that he remembered me.

Fuller and worthier tributes will be written by others who knew him better and for longer, but I hope my words have made it clear why this is such a hard parting.  To lose Fr. Mark at the age of only sixty, to be hit so squarely where we cannot afford the loss, is such a heavy and direct blow that it looks to me very much like a test.  Will it make us more determined to follow his example, which means to follow the good Lord whom he served so faithfully?

There is one final memory of Fr. Mark that is much in my mind at the moment, and that is his singing of the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil Mass last year.  Hearing his voice then, thinned though it was by the Internet live-stream, as he sang this great hymn of the end of Lent, when the night of Holy Saturday, the night of the tomb, is defeated utterly by the fire and life of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, something seemed to lift and brighten for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.  He sang it beautifully, even heroically, and, though he must already have been quite ill, I remember thinking at the time how full of life his voice seemed, how full of the confidence of life that defies death.  I am thinking this again now, and realising that for consolation we need only look to the consolation that he himself preached: the Gospel to whose proclamation he dedicated his life.

Fr. Mark was a tremendous priest and chaplain, a man of kindness and wisdom and great faith, one of the inspirations of my student days and indeed of my life.  How much so many owe him, whether they know it or not.  God grant him the joy of life eternal, and to us even a flicker of his fire.

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[1] Mgr. Mark Langham, ‘Despite Cambridge’s Protestant history, Catholic students are at home here’.  Catholic Herald, 25th June 2020. Retrieved 26th January 2020 from <https://catholicherald.co.uk/despite-cambridges-protestant-history-catholic-students-are-at-home-here/>.

[2] Mgr. Mark Langham, ‘To be Catholic is to be ecumenical: a talk for Christian Unity Week’, 25th January 2020.  Retrieved 28th January 2021 from <https://chaplain86.wixsite.com/mysite/post/to-be-catholic-is-to-be-ecumenical>.

[3] Mgr. Mark Langham, ‘Journeying together: pilgrims on the ecumenical journey’, sermon delivered in the chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge, February 2014.  Retrieved 20th January 2021 from <https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1662198>.  The passage quoted begins at 5'58".