The ongoing publication of the works of Robert Crouse is a welcome (perhaps urgent) invitation to encounter one of great theological minds of the past half century. For those who knew him, they are also a reminder of his unmatched capacity for clarity and wisdom in the context of what Crouse himself recognized as the perennial apocalypse of world history, recently alluded to in Eucharistic lections for the season of Advent with their end-of-the world anticipations: ‘The signs are always propitious, it seems’ writes Crouse in a sermon for The Second Sunday in Advent, ‘[d]istress of nations, with perplexity, and fearful hearts. These are no uncommon experiences; they are our daily diet’.
I first encountered Robert Crouse in 1994, while a student in Canada’s first Great Books programme, the Foundation Year at the University of King’s College. Subsequently, as a young Christian seeking a golden thread to lead me from the early Church through centuries of reform and theological development that might sustain me in the apparent wilderness of contemporary spirituality, I encountered Crouse as a priest and pastor before finally, and all too briefly, joining him as a colleague at the College where we first met. In these encounters, brief as many were and as awkward as I was when faced by the astoundingly resonant silence that inevitably accompanied Crouse, I discovered a diagnosis of my own spiritual malaise, was pointed towards its cure, and confronted by an apocalyptic promise that simultaneously judged and freed me. It is this trinity of gifts I would like to discuss.
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