In 1998 Eleanor asked me to be her health care proxy and along with a copy of the form I had signed to this effect, she attached a note to me, part of which read as follows: “I am enclosing my health care proxy form. As you can see from the directions, I do not want any prolonged extraordinary means. To tell you the truth, death holds no fear for me.”

And that is how she lived. She lived, it seems to me, having absorbed well the message of the readings that she selected for this funeral Mass. Her “inmost self” in the language of both psalms, “kept Yahweh before her always” and “close behind and close in front.” Yahweh “fenced her round, shielding her with Yahweh’s hand.” No wonder she could write, “to tell you the truth, death holds no fear for me”!

Raymond Brown, the late great American biblical scholar, in his commentary on the part of John’s gospel that we have just heard, about Martha and Mary and Lazarus and Jesus, writes: “…in Joannine realized eschatology, the gift of life that conquers death is a present reality in Jesus Christ.” This is what Jesus offers us – life now (not just after death). Somehow I have seen in Eleanor a realization of that profound truth: in Jesus she found the gift of life, now. (If she were to interrupt me at this point, I have a feeling she’d say “Now, really, Beth, Let’s not get carried away!”)

I first met Mary Eleanor in l949 when I came here to enter the Newburgh Dominicans. She was the assistant novice mistress. Before this assignment, she had been teaching at Holy Family School, New Rochelle, New York. In later years, I learned that she was too young to be the director—she was only 33 and canon law said you must be 35 for the job. In any case, we postulants and novices experienced her as a rock of common sense, a pillar of sanity in that confusing world of novitiate. Among many lessons, she showed us how to both meditate and how to celebrate, two traits that characterized her life as long as I knew her. Many years after, she had been principal at St. Augustine’s in Larchmont and received her doctorate in Theology from St. Mary’s at Notre Dame in Indiana. Later we were colleagues in the earliest days of the college. In the mid-60s,when I arrived, it was a time there at the college of “all hands to the pump.” She did admissions work, registrar work, Philosophy and Theology teaching work, and she lived with students in one of our few residence halls—all at the same time and incidentally, she truly loved every bit of it—but that was not all. There was, also, much activity within the congregation. In the 60s Vatican Council II happened and all religious congregations of women tackled with great energy and seriousness the tasks of aggiornomento. Eleanor served on the coordinating committee of our renewal process, preparing for our first-ever “Chapter of Affairs.” It was unknown territory to all of us. Eleanor brought her creative energy, her dynamic theological expertise, her openness to risk-taking, and her generous good humor. Just as she was good both praying and playing so in this she showed herself theologically both progressive and traditional. She loved the ancient traditions of the order; she also knew they had to be somehow updated.

Her life, it seems to me, was one long movement toward greater and greater wholeness, the integration of the two “sides” of her person, of her “inmost being.” At the same time that she loved people and was what we might call a “people person” (Why else would she be named Admission Director in the college?), she was also a lover of solitude, so necessary for both prayer and study. Just as she loved and was dedicated to the intellectual life, the life of the mind, she simply loved people, the more diverse the better. (Why else would she, in her senior years, join the Grandmothers’ group at St. Luke’s to spend time simply holding babies in need of that loving gesture?) Throughout her life she knew much suffering of body and spirit, often excruciating suffering, yet I will always think of her as a joyful, grateful person. In addition, when given a task to perform or a vision to implement, she could show a remarkable single-mindedness of purpose. Some would call it stubbornness. At the same time her interests were many and very expansive. Her enduring love of beauty was perhaps best exemplified in the room she called home here for many years in the “tower” on the 4th floor. With its floor to ceiling window overlooking the Hudson—a view she treasured—it was lovingly appointed with a few carefully selected pictures on the wall, a rocking chair from which to enjoy the view, a cassette player with a few well-chosen music tapes, and her beloved books and flowering plants. The room described the woman in those later years of integration.

I could go on and on.

Each of us brings her/his own memories of Eleanor here tonight, memories that might lead us to adapt the words we heard from Psalm 139, to say: “For all these mysteries, we thank you, O God; for the wonder of Mary Eleanor Mahoney, for the wonder of your work in and through her, O God, we thank you.

Eulogy by Beth McCormick, OP

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