MY FAVORITE PRIEST

A man's man

By Arthur J. Brew

n He had an unusual background for a priest and his early schooling and life experiences served him very well for more than forty years as a Jesuit.

Before Father Thomas M. Brew entered the Society of Jesus in 1937, he had been a United States Senate page, an all-star athlete in high school and college, a semi-professional football player, a teacher of Latin and Greek and a member of the District of Columbia Bar, and admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 1926 football team he played on at Gonzaga Prep in Washington, D.C., was undefeated, untied, and unscored on and was ranked number one in the country. He also starred in baseball and basketball in high school and college.

After graduating from its college, Father Brew first entered the seminary at Mt. St. Mary's in Emmitsburg, Maryland, but had to withdraw when his father died. He immediately returned home to help support his mother and five younger brothers and sisters.

Another brother, Father Fred A. Brew, S.J., had already joined the Jesuits and has been a priest for more than fifty years. He now lives in retirement at the Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania.

When things stabilized somewhat at his Washington, D.C. home near Capitol Hill, Father Brew went into the priesthood again. This time he joined his brother, Fred, in the Jesuits and was ordained in 1945. After teaching in the Maryland Province for a few years, he was assigned to the Manresa Retreat House, at Annapolis, Maryland where he discovered his true calling as a devout priest, homilist, and administrator. He served as director of Manresa from 1948 to 1964, welcoming more than 65,000 retreatants on weekends from all over the East Coast.

It was quickly apparent that Father Tom was ideally suited for this role of giving spiritual guidance and encouragement to men from all walks of life-lawyers, bricklayers, students, mail carriers, doctors, and clerks, as well as midshipmen from the nearby U.S. Naval Academy. His hard-hitting and humorous talks based on his own varied career reflected his deep love for Our Lord and especially for the Blessed Mother. They drew these men back year after year to the beautiful retreat house on the banks of the Severn River where they were enriched by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the faithful Jesuits who served there.

In 1964, Father Brew was appointed director of the new Jesuit Retreat House at Faulkner, Maryland where he was instrumental in helping to finance and establish Loyola-on-the Potomac. Two years later he was sent to Baltimore to serve as chaplain at Mercy Hospital where he continued to console and give spiritual nourishment for seventeen years.

Having been in the civilian world, during good times and bad, and having been raised in a large family with devoted parents, Father Tom could easily relate to the many problems and worries encountered by others of all ages. He was often described as "a man's man" who could talk about the Faith, sports, politics-the world we live in, and the world that awaits those who trust in God and follow his precepts.

Sister Mary Thomas Zinkand, R.S.M., Mercy Hospital president, described his chaplaincy as "prayerful and conscientious," noting that he visited the sick day and night, even when he was suffering from the cancer that ended his life in 1983.

"By firm counsel," she said, "he kept many on the straight and narrow path and brought back souls who had been outside the fold for 30, 40, even 50 years." n