In Memoriam

Sheehan, James T. SJ

posted by: webkmccarthy on Wednesday, March 12, 2008

(New England) Fr. James T. Sheehan, 78, died at Campion Center in Weston, Massachusetts, on January 2, 2008. He was a Jesuit for 61 years, a priest for 48 years years. His brother and closest confidante John, also a Jesuit priest, had died six months earlier in St. Louis.

Jim entered the Society on July 30, 1946, at age 17, after graduating from Cathedral High School in his native Springfield, Massachusetts,.and did the usual course at Shadowbrook and Weston, along with regency, teaching chemistry at Fairfield Prep. He was ordained June 13, 1959. After tertianship at Pomfret, Connecticut, he did a year of graduate studies in chemistry at Boston College and then became one of the founding fathers of the Province’s new Xavier High School in Concord, Massachusetts, where he taught physics, chemistry and religion for eight years. When Xavier closed in 1970 he began a three-year program for accreditation in clinical pastoral education at Boston State Hospital.

In 1971-72 he served as assistant director of novices, then began an eight-year stint at B.C. High as director of counseling. During this time he had a serious bout with cancer, requiring several surgeries, but he bore all this courageously and gracefully and repeatedly came back to work with vigor and cheerfulness. He was unfazed and a full-time worker. A wag might say that he was a full-time talker, too. He loved to talk and was interested in everything and everybody. After his surgeries he walked with a long staff someone had given him, and along with his luxuriant beard, the effect was something the like holy card images of St. Christopher. – a talkative St. Christopher.
   
After a year’s involvement in spiritual direction at the Province’s Center for Religious Development in Cambridge, he returned to B.C. High as rector of the community, assistant director of educational counseling and on staff with campus ministry. In 1986-87 he had a sabbatical year at Berkeley, then returned to Burke House in Boston for five years to do spiritual direction ministry and serve also as community treasurer, followed by another five years in the same work at Loyola House. Worsening medical problems required him to move to Campion Health Center in 1998, but he continued to be quite active as assistant chaplain there almost to the end.

It is worth noting that when space limitations at Campion Health Center led to his transfer for several months to an outside and less spacious nursing home, he was a cheerful, steady and grateful practitioner of Ignatian indifference.