Te Deum Laudamus

Sadly, I had to fly up to Saint Mary’s College to attend the funeral of one of the Christian Brothers - Brother Donald Mansir, FSC (John Blackstock ’67, a college classmate of Brother Donald’s, was asked to be one of the Pall Bearers). Brother Donald began his teaching career here at La Salle Pasadena, where he taught and directed Music for four years. He was well-regarded and a popular teacher. From 1979 to 1986, he was a teacher and administrator at San Joaquin Memorial High School in Fresno. He left the high school arena in 1986, eventually earning a Ph.D. in Theology and Near Eastern Studies. Brother Donald spent ten years in the Middle East, first as an instructor at Bethlehem University (sponsored by the Christian Brothers), then as a member of the staff of the Apostolic Delegation in Jerusalem (the Pope’s representative in Israel). Brother Donald then joined the staff of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, eventually becoming its Director in Jerusalem and then Chief Operating Officer of the Mission’s headquarters in New York City. He concluded his service to the Holy Land when he was appointed Director of the New York office of the International Catholic Child Welfare Bureau and Permanent Observer to the United Nations’ UNICEF. He returned to California in 1988 and assumed a faculty position at Saint Mary’s College, where he would remain - happily - for the rest of his life. He succumbed to metastatic cancer just after he turned 62.


I knew Brother Donald fairly well and considered him a friend (as did many of the standing room-only crowd that attended his funeral in the College Chapel). So it was all the more surprising to me to learn of his distinguished career in the Middle East. As I reflected on my lack of knowledge of Brother Donald’s activities between the time he left Pasadena and the time he returned to Saint Mary’s College, I realized that for all of his talent and intellectual brilliance, Brother Donald did not need to showcase his accomplishments. He was content with the quiet quotidian of a professor’s life. He lived in the dormitories for the entire time he was on the faculty of the College and delighted in his duties as a tutor in the Integral Program (Saint Mary’s version of the Great Books program). Having an apartment in the dorms enabled Brother Donald to engage in one of his favorite activities - cooking. Many student members of the Integral Program would find their seminar sessions adjourning to Brother Donald’s apartment for a lavish supper.

So it should have been no surprise to me (it was) to see a number of the College students in attendance at the Mass celebrating Brother Donald’s life to be openly weeping because of their grief that such a treasured teacher was taken from them too soon. In thinking about their tears on the flight back to Pasadena, I wondered how many of us engaged in the ministry of Lasallian education would be similarly honored by the students entrusted to our care at the time of our passing. For the first time in my 20 years working in Lasallian schools, I could fully appreciate the oft-quoted encouragement written by Saint John Baptist de La Salle over 300 years ago:

You, too, can create miracles by touching the hearts of the students entrusted to your care!

Those tears of grief represented (for me) the profound ability of Brother Donald to “touch the hearts” of the students entrusted to his care. The significance of this outcome is made even more powerful by the fact that two alums from La Salle, Pasadena flew up to attend Brother Donald’s funeral. Brother Donald had taught one of them, Alan Cabral ‘78 for each of his four years at La Salle; and that experience was still memorable to him almost 30 years later. De La Salle in his Sixteenth Meditation for the Time of Retreat captured this amazing outcome:

Oh what glory there will be for those who have instructed youth, when their zeal and devotion to procure the salvation of children will be made public before all people!

All heaven will resound with the thanksgiving which these blessed children will render to

those who have taught them the road to heaven!

Rest easily, Brother Donald, in God’s presence and, through your intercession, may we who continue the work of Lasallian education merit a similar reaction when it is time for us to meet our Maker.