Tonsor – Memorial Service for Henry Regnery

Henry Regnery

Stephen A. Tonsor

Memorial Service for Henry Regnery

St. Chrysostom Church

Chicago, Illinois

I wish to speak with you about the way in which Henry put on immortality
rather than what he did to become famous. We are all of us beneficiaries
of Henry’s actions in the public realm. Those deeds are the stuff
of obituary notices. They do not give us the man, however, and
report only those deeds that are of public interest. They are
the fabric of history and not the essence of immortality. These
reports can not give us the man we loved and respected. They can
not teach us what we ought to learn and remember from Henry’s
life.

That as a publisher he lived much in the public eye and acted
in the public interest is deceptive for his nature was essentially
contemplative, and among the writers he reverenced and read, Plato,
Meister Eckhardt and St. John of the Cross, he crossed the boundary
from contemplation to mysticism. He greatly admired TS. Eliot
and he liked to quote a friend who said that Eliot was "a
saint." Henry understood what being a saint meant; that it
was often aspiration of the most intense sort rather than achievement–aspiration
and attunement to the Divine without which there can be no center
to our lives.

Henry was spirited, a "pneumatic" man in the Greek-Stoic
and Christian sense. To spend any time at all with him was to
be caught up in his enthusiasms which now and then had something
of the character of the enthusiasms of Mr. Toad in The Wind
in the Willows. There were always great projects, exciting
new manuscripts to read, the dream of buying an added forty acres
of land, of planting a vineyard and making wine, or the special
trees he planted and tended.

One of the collects of the day repeatedly recited in the course
of the year begins, "God our Father, You created us for joy.
However, disappointment and sorrow accompany our lives."
Henry’s life was not an exception to this Christian affirmation
of the mystery of the Cross. There were disappointments and sorrows
in plenty which Henry transmuted into laughter and if not joy,
into gratitude. After recounting a particularly heavy run of difficulties
and sorrows Henry would add triumphantly, "but we have much
to be grateful for." This constant refrain in his conversation
and letters was an affirmation of his abiding trust and gratitude.

Henry’s interest in literature, art, and especially gardening
and music were not simply aesthetic enthusiasms but ways in which
he touched the seamless robe of the eternal. To these things he
brought a passionate quest for order, harmony and beauty. This
quest he physically enacted. He was never simply a spectator and
consequently when he could no longer make music he did not want
to listen to it on the CD player.

He was an accomplished musician but in this, as in all of his
other undertakings he was a man of great humility always believing
that someone else could bring a greater mastery to the task than
he could. It was not that he distrusted his own powers but rather
that he was not vainglorious, and respected so profoundly the
abilities of others. This deep humility amounted nearly to undervaluation
of his own achievements.

Henry’s personality was one in which charity and love prevailed.
His generosity of spirit was equaled only by his expenditure of
money and time in behalf of people and worthy causes. About these
he was very quiet so that his left hand did not know what his
right hand was doing. His capacity for friendship and love was
extraordinary as was his contempt for mean and uncharitable conversation.

He had taken the admonition of St. Paul seriously: "Whatever
is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, if there be
any excellence, if there by anything worthy of praise, think about
these things."

In remembering Henry we call to mind the quality of Henry’s life
and we model our own on these sure virtues.