Luky:
I have sung the praises of the late Father Norbert Jansen many times. Perhaps I loved him so much because he was so like my own dad, even to having the same Christian name. Shortly after I met Fr Jansen my own father died, and perhaps I transferred my affection to the priest.
Not only I but my whole family did. When Father Jansen arrived, which was seldom because he did not believe in favouritism, everybody dropped whatever he or she was doing and sat around him in the sitting room. Even the cat would jump on to his lap.
He'd sit there, beaming benevolently, as though thinking: "What a lovely Catholic family this is", and it would make you determined once again to pull up where you'd been slipping.
Different sorts
My husband and I had two rather different natures. He was reserved, distant and a fiercely private person. I am outgoing, a lover of people. This cost us both a lot of friends.
When we became engaged we found that his old friends couldn't really fancy me and that my friends weren't all that crazy about him. So on the principle "love me, love my dog", both of us turned away from our erstwhile cronies and became a somewhat isolated couple - except for all those children.
But Fr Jansen loved us both. I think he loved everyone. He brought out the best in all of us.
Author, too
We were talking about him one day. I asked my husband what the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are and he couldn't remember them all. I took Fr Jansen's book The Sacramental We and opened it on the very page I sought, though I hadn't looked at the book for years.
We started talking about him again and about the letter he wrote to us when he was very ill and my husband had just had his first heart attack.
"I have asked our Lord to take away your illness, Sean, and let me suffer it on your behalf," he wrote, "because I'm old but you still have so many children to look after."
That was many years ago. His prayer was certainly heard.
Diplomatic
But it is neither his holiness nor his longsuffering we remember when we talk about him. It is his sweetness and humour that we recall, and above all his diplomacy.
A friend of mine was having hassles with her husband, and went to Fr Jansen to complain. After some discussion they arranged that she would keep out of the way one day her husband was sure to be in so that Fr Jansen could call, be terribly surprised to find her out, and (so she assumed) wipe the floor with her husband.
But that's not the way things worked out. "I gave them an hour and a half together", she recalled bitterly. "Then I came home, determined to have things out with my old man in front of Father, once and for all. And what do you think I found?
"There they were sitting, smoking and having a drink together like blood brothers. That was the sum total of Fr Jansen's efforts on my behalf."
That was Father Jansen for you. He united, he did not divide. By taking sides against one marriage partner he would have created a rift. But by loving both he was in fact saying: "I love both of you. Won't you please love each other the way I love each of you?"
I feel that put him in the top of the tree where marriage guidance was concerned.
Catherine Nicolette
When I was a little girl, Dad and Fr Norbert Jansen were my great heroes. So when the two of them encouraged me to consider studying theology and philosophy - which I loved - I was enthusiastic. Dad, who had degrees in philosophy, used to sit me on the high bar stool and teach me from the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In one of his philosophy lessons, Dad tried to get me to guess how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I told him none, because angels are great spirits that a. wouldn't fit on a pinhead and b. they aren't stupid. "Besides," I went on, "they are too important to be bothered with pins."
Dad looked at me quietly. "Why are they important?" he asked. "Well, they're busy keeping the planets going as regular as clockwork, and keeping asteroids from hitting us, and listening to God, and helping us with problems," I firmly replied. Pins indeed! Dad looked at me quietly. "Well," he said, "I never thought there would be a match for my philosophy professor. But a nine-year-old girl would surely have made him think." I left Dad brooding gloomily over the hours he and his fellow students had wasted on the conundrum. . .
Shortly thereafter, I agreed when Fr Jansen - supported by Dad - asked me to promise that I would eventually study for Doctorate of Theology. I credit my heroes with planting the seeds of my great love for theophilosophical research.
If you are reading this, I would ask you also to consider studies about the deep things of God [1 Corinthians 2:10]. The Kingdom of God always has need of able theologians ...
