Mike’s socks would dangle halfway off his feet when he’d sit late into the night, asking thought-provoking questions of his captive audience of applicants.
… what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it (1Jn 1:1).
At Madonna House, we often talk about our life. We use the expression “the life.” We strive to live it, fall short of it, are inspired by it, and are formed by it.
But what is “the life”? For me, Michael Fagan’s life provides a bit of an answer to this question.
It was a life revealed to him, and, in turn, God used Mike to reveal this life to me.
One evening, soon after I joined Madonna House, we watched some recently unearthed film footage dating back to the Apostolate’s early days.
It was a striking experience, for it was the first time I had seen the pioneer generation moving around, living life, in the very setting in which I had begun living.
There were Fr. Briere, Fr. Eddie, Catherine Doherty, Fr. Callahan, Jim Guinan — now in front of Madonna House, now out by the river, now down by the parish ball field.
Not only was the landscape the same; it seemed to me that there was a recognizable spirit, a shared celebratory love for life. The family life that had started then was still going now. The DNA of the spirit that I saw in that footage was what was alive and active in the present.
After seeing that footage, I walked outside thinking, “It’s still going on. It’s still here. What they loved, what enlivened them, what they heard, saw, looked upon, touched — it’s here. It’s what I’m seeing, looking at, and touching. It’s what I love. It’s what’s enlivening me too.”
But what was still there? What was enlivening me?
In the midst of that footage was a shot of Michael Fagan walking out of the main house with other members of the pioneer generation. He had a cigarette sticking out of his mouth, and he threw his head back and laughed. That image of joviality stuck with me.
Fagan had already become for me the stuff of legend — the stuff of stories I had heard from those whom he had raised, a generation that was now raising me.
I had heard about how Mike’s socks would dangle halfway off his feet when he’d sit late into the night, asking thought-provoking questions of his captive audience of applicants. One day, seeing my unmatched socks, Carolyn Desch told me, “Michael used to wear unmatched socks. And that was before it was okay to do so.”
I heard about Mike’s words of advice. I heard about the clever ways he resolved conflicts, and his unexpected answers to quandaries. I saw the remains of some of his cleverly-constructed carts for doing chores around the property, and heard that on the dump run he brought back more stuff from the dump than he had taken to the dump.
Gather the fragments, lest they be lost (Jn 6:12) was a verse attached to Mike before he ever stepped off the screen of that old reel-to-reel footage and into my daily life.
Mike spent over 30 years at Marian Centre in Edmonton, Alberta. He made a first step into my heart when he visited Combermere in the fall of 2018. He struck me as a man of zeal. Having wobbled up to the microphone with his walker at a staff meeting, he gave an impassioned address.
A few days later, I had the opportunity to sit next to him at the farm for supper, when he told me his story of arriving at MH and falling in love with this family.
After supper, Mike, with his walker, went to look around the farmhouse a bit. Pausing in the kitchen, he recalled the earliest days of St Ben’s, before they had electricity. He recalled Laurette Patenaude’s work in the kitchen.
Love for the family shone palpably from Mike’s heart. For me, it was like encountering a red-hot glowing coal. When that hot coal was placed next to me, my own heart began to quicken.
After that, I didn’t know if I’d see Mike again. At Easter 2023, my director, Larry Klein, told me I was assigned to Marian Centre Edmonton, but Mike was in the hospital at that time, and it looked as though he would never return to Marian Centre.
However, within a week of my arrival, Hugo, director of MCE, drove Mike home from the hospital and into our courtyard. I distinctly remember greeting Mike there and his entry by wheelchair into our house.
I remember sitting with him for that first lunch. He was a man fully alive, and he immediately began holding court at the family dinner table.
He was smaller than when I had met him previously, and a good deal smaller than he had looked in the many pictures I had seen of him as a younger man. But his spirit was as large as ever.
It’s hard to believe that I only lived with Mike for less than a year. During that year, he became one of my best friends, I dare say.
◈◈◈
In the wee hours of the morning last February 21, I woke up and heard Mike rummaging in his room and muttering to himself. It was unusual for Mike to be moving about a bit after midnight, so I went over to his room to see how he was doing.
“Ah, this bloody hot water bottle opened up and leaked all over the place,” he explained to me with his inimitable combination of charm and exasperation. Together we set about switching wet sheets for dry ones.
After that was taken care of (I suppose it was nearing 1a.m.) he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?” And so, we got his little hot water kettle going there in his room.
I plopped down on his walker and he sat in his wheelchair, and we ushered in what we suddenly realized was the beginning of my 36th birthday, with a midnight cup of coffee and a chat about some of the things that matter most: God’s call, his tasks for us, the gifts he gives us, and the mystery of how God puts us to use for his mission and kingdom.
When I moved into Marian Centre early last September, Mike was a veteran and I was a rookie. I told him, “We don’t know each other very well yet, but you have in truth been my spiritual director for several years!”
For indeed, much of what Fr. Kieran had been telling me in spiritual direction, he attributed to Mike, often in the form of verbatim quotes, brogue and all!
What endures as my lasting impression of dear Mike — from when I first saw that old film footage of him up through this past year of intensively sharing a living space with him — was this:
this guy has touched, seen, and loved something that I want to touch, see, and love. He has fallen in love with something that I want to fall in love with. He has thrown in his lot, he has sold all he has for the pearl of great price, he has left all behind in order to follow this life.
Mike looked upon, saw, heard, and touched Christ in Madonna House. Thanks for testifying to “the life,” Michael Fagan.
