William McGurn reflects on the life and death of a priest

Understandably, nonbelievers might find it a romantic idealization of pain and ugliness to extract any beauty from the drawn-out death inflicted on this gentle man–the chemo, the probes, the constant sickness and (perhaps worst of all) the boredom. The only answer is the one Tom would have given: He was consecrated to an idealized way of life. Dylan Thomas raged against the dying of the light. In Tom’s world, learning that he would greet his Maker carrying a cross was deemed a tremendous gift.

Not least of this gift was something he had to learn during this illness: to let those he had served finally begin to serve him. A sister ever by his bedside. A nurse who gave her nights to his care so that others might sleep. Priest friends who had him hear their confessions to remind him that the potency of his vocation remained even as his body withered.