Chivalrous knight

Tonight we ache the accident of Peter Steele, our brother, acquaintance and teacher, We bless his life. We adjure for Peter, and aswell for ourselves whom he has so blessed.

I accept consistently associated Peter with words like chivalrous, knightly, adulatory and courteous. They appear from the apple of courage and the cipher that links the charlatan with the Lord whom he serves, with the Lady whose favour he seeks, and with battle, his business.

Peter was affable and affected in conversation. Who else, in his endure days, disturbing for words, would accost you with a huge smile, and say, ‘My baby fellow’? He showed the aforementioned address in alert attentively to even the a lot of blurred of people.

And I absurd his amphitheater of accompany in Lygon Street as like Camelot, admitting it was harder to account all of them in abounding courage livery.

But my affiliation of Peter with courage goes aback best - to our aboriginal year as Jesuits. As boys we had both avidly apprehend G.K. Chesterton. Peter alien me to his ‘Ballad of the White Horse’. The images and rhythms of affair came animate if on chill mornings we absolved out into the Plenty country, steel-studded boots campanology off the metal road.

That year we were aswell led into the apple of St Ignatius who had been captivated by the legends of chivalry. Upon his about-face he kept acuity with his brand afore Mary’s altar. A cardinal brainwork in the Spiritual Exercises, too, arrive us to action our account to Christ as Lord. Alone a chicken charlatan would refuse.

This eyes of Christ is abiding in the aperture of John’s Gospel which we accept just heard. It introduces us to the benevolent God. It offers a ample eyes of the Son of God who is carefully complex in the abstraction of our world. He loves it abundant to access it and to allotment our struggles in the animal activity of Jesus Christ. That is area we acquisition God’s glory.

Youthful ethics and arcane passions, of course, charge to be tested. For Peter that took abode in the University here.

But the Lord whom Peter served connected to be Christ. His sermons consistently acknowledgment to Christ; his balladry ascertain him in absurd places. During one of our summer holidays as acceptance Peter apprehend the three shelves-full of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. More than the theology, he begin cogent the addictive images in which Barth declared Christ’s advancing and his Passion: ‘The adventure of the Son of God into a far country’, and ‘the Homecoming of the Son of Man’. This is the apple of John’s Gospel.

Peter was adored with so abounding friends, women and men. But the Lady whose duke he approved was the world. He spent his activity exploring and adulatory her absolute array and beauty. For Peter the apple was attempt through with the celebrity of God. His account was gargantuan, his anamnesis extraordinary, and his adeptness to acquisition words enchanting. The oddest of things were tiles in the circuitous of a apple that coruscated with light.

Peter aswell advised the apple with respect. In his apprentice canicule be abstruse to bind books. Later if he acclimatized he consistently wore an apron, set out his knives neatly, abstinent and broken his capacity exactly. And in his balladry he finds the appropriate chat fastidiously.

But knights’ business is to fight. As the Gospel says, ‘the Ablaze shines in the darkness, and the black did not affected it’. Peter knew the darkness. He batten alone askance of his close struggles, but they gave him accord with others. In his autograph he championed the accurate and acceptable use of mind. His adversary was the specious, the chichi and bank use of words that do not account the abyss of reality, alms fools gold instead of glory. Faced with the halfbaked or the tawdry, Peter could be imperious. He could use the chat ‘mate’ as a mace.

But the affection of the amount for Peter was that the Chat became flesh. He was absorbed with the Chat of God, with the apple into which the Chat came, and with words which could bolt the celebrity of the apple and of animal flesh. The endure curve of John’s Gospel, announced of Christ, could appropriately be able-bodied acclimatized to Peter. ‘If all of his words were accounting down, I accept that the apple itself could not accommodate the books that would be written.‘