Edward Frederick SORIN - Sanctuaire Basile Moreau (original) (raw)

October 31, 1893

On October 31, 1893, Edward Frederick Sorin, the religious and priest who labored so diligently in the vineyard of the Lord, breathed his last. The toil of this man of unceasing optimism and extraordinary resilience was finally ended, but the works he accomplished through the blessing of God and the protection of Our Lady continue to bear abundant fruit. He rests in the community cemetery, among his Holy Cross family, and beside the lake he had beheld carpeted with snow on that fateful November day in 1842.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. […]
Come, share your master’s joy.’” (Matthew 25:23)

IN MEMORIAM

Let others praise in him the saint,
The champion of our Christ and God;
Let others all his virtues paint…

For me, I love the poet best,
Idealist! Idealist!
Who sees beyond the clouds at rest
The clearer space with sunrise kist.

He was a dreamer of fair dreams;
A doer of great deeds was he,
And hence our Lady, golden, gleams
Above the oak and maple tree.

And hence She speaks to all the land
That Christ took flesh – this flesh of ours –
And ever stretches forth Her hand
Against the doubt of evil powers.

Poet, whose work can never die,
Because his Faith was never dim,
His songs he sings near the Most High,
The songs of poets seraphim.

His song on earth still lives for us…

(Maurice Francis Egan)

Information drawn from Edward Sorin, by Marvin R. O’Connell and from Le Père Edouard SORIN (1814-1893), fondateur de l’Université Notre-Dame- du-Lac (Indiana, Etats-Unis), by Father Charles Lemarié, C.S.C.