Jesuit Father Edward Reese, the president of St. Ignatius Prep School in San Francisco, offered prayers in both Phoenix and Washington, including a homily at the National Cathedral in Washington, after the death of John McCain, the senator from Arizona who died Aug. 25 at age 81 after a long struggle with brain cancer.
Father Reese knew the McCain family when he was president at another Jesuit high school, Brophy Prep in Phoenix, for 20 years. Two of McCain’s sons attended Brophy and McCain’s wife, Cindy, served on the board of trustees.
In his Sept. 1 homily, Father Reese quoted from Gerard Manley Hopkins, himself a Jesuit priest and poet: “What I do is me: for that I came. But, I say more: the just man justices; keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. We are not recommending John for sainthood. He was so very human and for that reason we can see God in his life,” Father Reese said.
McCain “was the just man justicing,” he added. “For John McCain, every human being deserved to be treated justly. He saw God our Father through the features of every person, especially those poor, persecuted by power and those in need.”