Identity is complex. We are all made in the image of God, and God is infinitely complex. We spend a great deal of our lives trying to figure out who we are, who we want to be. I think of these things as I reflect on the life of Fr. Anthony/Mr. Weiler/Uncle George/George Weiler/Little George Oliver. The priest/English teacher/brother—son—uncle/artist/intellectual/bon vivant/great friend/orphan. What a complex person he was, what a joyous mixture of God’s gifts and graces.

What an honor it is to try to eulogize him. Let us take a brief moment to thank God for having Fr. Anthony in our lives.`

Let us remember all those who have returned to the Lord before us.

The word “remember” literally means to put the pieces  back together. I always think of George as the Great Rememberer. First because he never forgot anything, or—more to the point—anyone. He could remember every person at a gathering from decades ago.

But more importantly, he was the Great Rememberer because he re-membered his own birth family, which had been shaken when his mother, Mary Lamb Oliver, suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. The death of her husband, John Oliver of Gloucester, MA, while serving aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S Hornet in the Battle of Midway effectively shattered the shaky unity of the Oliver household. George, his sister Joan and his brothers, John, James LeRoy, David, and Donald were left orphans, taken in by the Catholic Sisters of Charity.

My father, David, was very young when this happened. So, years later, he didn’t recognize the handsome, lanky teen who pedaled up to him at the park in Arlington, hopped off the bike, thrust his hand out to shake Dave’s and introduced himself, “David, I’m your brother, George.” Likewise, his sister, Roy’s twin, Joan, had no idea what she was in for when she agreed to a movie date with the tall, somehow familiar young man who, during that date said,  “Joan, I’m your brother, George.”

The Great Rememberer was not going to forget his family. One layer of Fr. Anthony’s complexity is explained.

Some, who knew him and worked or studied with him would think of him as Mr. Weiler, the distinguished English teacher with the sonorous, booming voice and the penchant for the bon mot. Mr. Weiler was, by turns, humorous and serious. And explaining, always explaining.

The educational theorist Howard Gardner talks about the concept of multiple intelligences, George was gifted in a variety of these, which added layers of complexity to him. He was a painter, a poet, a philosopher, a logician, a critic, on and on.

His incredible interpersonal communication skills made him a remarkable number and variety of friends. His verbal skills made him entertaining, compelling and were a very significant part of his essence. As an example, he sums up his extensive study of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in some scratched out marginalia in one of his last missives in this way:

Potency and Act arrange,

giving us what we call change.

Sense and intellect re- arrange

these two elements of change.

Hence, pure Potency cannot be

and sheer Act is God.

So there you have it: Western realist  Scholastic philosophy in, as Fr. Anthony himself put it, a nutshell.

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The Rev. Father Anthony Weiler, the Summa—if you will—of previous identities, was known to Maronite communities in a variety of American cities and towns: Fall River, Massachusetts, Bedford, Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts; St. Paul, Minnesota; and in his assignment of longest duration at the Saint Rafqa Retreat Center in Shelburne, Vermont.

In each of these places, his natural gregariousness, his hearty laugh, his dry wit and keen intelligence, his enjoyment of life and generosity, his love of and devotion to his parishioners made him popular, respected, and loved in return. One look at the moving on-line tributes shows this dimension of Fr. Anthony’s life.

And then there are those of us who knew him as George Weiler, Uncle George. This person was a treasure: a brother who brought together a scattered family, an uncle who was always avuncular – and who would teach you what that meant if you didn't know. The man whose enjoyment of life and the people he shared that life with was contagious.

This George loved to hold forth on the issues of the day. He liked nothing better than burning the midnight oil—conducting a non-stop ongoing disquisition on politics, philosophy, art, pop culture, religion, history and language. At transitional points in these hours-long seminars, he would give you the look, arch an eyebrow and in that stentorian voice with that New England flair, George would say in his patented way, “Isn’t that incredible?” pausing ever so slightly to deliver the gently prodding, “Huh?” The rhetorical question could never be treated as a rhetorical question with George for he insisted on an answer.  "Am I right?” He would wait for two seconds before following with, "Huh?" then would come possibly up to an hour of explication and exploration. Father Anthony had an inimitable verbal style that reflected a keen appetite for learning and an orderly, organized mind that enjoyed the freedom of a good talk.

Similarly, a ride with uncle George – the classic one would be a “quick” trip from Main Street in Rockport around Cape Ann over to Woodman's in Ipswich for fried clams. This drive was scenic and lovely and with George a travelogue involving seemingly every house along the route—and the route consisted exclusively of New England back roads—with complicated genealogies of the inhabitants and a cornucopia of memories of different events in his life triggered by the changing scenery. All punctuated with "Right?" and "Huh?" And rumbles of laughter and good humor filling the car. An even more intense version of this experience was the required route one sojourn from York, Maine down the coast to Cape Ann.

And at the end of this road, nearing the home land, coming up the back way to Ipswich, we would go through Rowley, and if dad was in the car he and George would play their game with that word, "Rowley." Rowley morphed to really to rally to rarely to Raleigh and back again to Rowley. The idea was to concoct a feasible sequence of sentences hinging on these words, thusly:

Are we really in Rowley?

I’ve rarely been to Rowley.

I have been to Raleigh.

Really?

To go to a rally.

In Raleigh, not Rowley…

Rarely in Rowley.

And as we drove through Rowley, the inspection of the architecture took a front seat and Royal Barry Wills would be duly noted and appreciated, salt boxes would be identified and lionized, and old colonials would take center stage. I never saw two guys that loved the old houses the way these guys did. I mean, they wrote a poem about them.

The Old Colonial

Don't demean

those old

colonial houses

you have seen

Standing under

ancient elm or oak,

Bearing the burden

of all the years

of their yoke...

For each year

you will see one

disappear

and won't recall

what caused its fall.

Was it by fire?

Was it under the weight

of the winter snow?

Or was it that everything

just let go?

This poem is vaguely Frost-like in meter and in rhyme, as well as tone and sentiment. It is oddly elegiac, and is appropriate to the life we celebrate and miss and mourn the loss of today. It displays the quirky intelligence, the unfailing sense of humor and the appreciation of the ordinary in the world around us so characteristic of Fr. Anthony.

And I know and you know that Fr. Anthony would want us to laugh at his little joke. This mock elegy is so characteristic of the quick mind and relentless positive spirit of George Weiler that I almost feel that he left it for this eulogizing as a convenient ending. Now, if he were here we would now embark on a quick lesson of the etymologies of elegy and eulogy, after which no one present here would ever confuse these two terms again. But we'll leave that for another day.

For today, let us go forth and face the world that is temporarily a little less buoyant, and for a while, a brief while, less joyful as we feel the loss of Father Anthony Weiler who was, a friend, a brother, a priest, a teacher, a counselor, an artist, a bon vivant, an intellectual, and a devoted disciple of our Lord.

He rests in the peace of the Lord now.

He did just let go.

Now we let him go.

Amen