Br. Juan Diego Kryzanauskas

Francis Kryzanauskas was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1915 to pious Lithuanian parents. His parents were shopkeepers, and his father was for many years the sacristan at his neighborhood Catholic church. Br. Juan kept a childhood custom alive throughout his life: On Easter morning all the kids in his neighborhood would run out into the street with baskets of Easter eggs hollering "epper, epper!" The kids would knock the eggs together, and if your egg cracked the other kid's egg, leaving yours uncracked, you got to keep his. Br. Juan and I "eppered" at breakfast this past Easter Sunday. Mine cracked his, but the cracked egg is a symbol of the Resurrection, so I guess Br. Juan was really the winner.

In 1932, at the age of seventeen, Frankie Kryzanauskas ran away from home, not to join the circus, but to enter the Abbey of Our Lady of the Valley in Rhode Island as a Trappist monk. It was against the wishes of his parents. I've seen a photograph of Br. Juan Diego with his mother at the Trappist abbey, so I gather the accepted his decision to choose the religious life. Br. Juan's religious name as a Trappist, if memory doesn't fail me, was Eustachius. Eustachius Kryzanauskas: quite a mouthful!

After thirteen years as a Trappist, Brother left to live with the Carthusian monks for nine years as a donatus brother in Vermont and in England. A donatus brother is similar to out claustral oblates. Following his years with the Carthusians, he was a tertiary with the Franciscans and a claustral oblate with the Camaldolese in Big Sur, California. Br. Juan was responsible for the baking of the Camaldolese fruitcakes, and no fruitcake anywhere could hold a candle to his.

Br. Juan Diego didn't speak much about his past, but I could get him going on the subject if I used the right approach. Sometime between these many years of community living, Br. Juan was actually a home owner in Philadelphia for a few years. He worked as an operating room orderly in a local hospital. Br. Juan could be eloquent about his little house, with the six rose bushes in the front yard and another six in the back yard. And he kept it clean. "Brother," he would tell me, "I had a concrete floor in the basement, and it was so clean you could have eaten off of it."

I asked him one time if he ever had a date and he said he did, just one. He did not remember where they went, but he did recall that he had picked a bouquet of roses for the woman. I asked him if he took her home when it was all over, but he said no. When I asked him why not, he said, "My bus stop came first."

Br. Juan Diego spent some years in the late 1970s at Holy Apostles' College in Cromwell, Connecticut. in 1980 he entered St. Mark's School of Theology in South Union, Kentucky, run by the Benedictine monks of St. Mark's Priory. Br. Juan Diego was studying for the Diocese of Gallup, New Mexico, at that time. It was at St. Mark's that I got to know him. When the School of Theology closed in 1984, Br. Juan entered St. Mark's community as a claustral oblate. He professed vows in 1987.

Br. Juan lead an exemplary life of work and prayer. He was very thorough in everything he did. I remember one afternoon coming up the basement stairs into the kitchen at St. Mark's, hearing some strange noise. The closer I got to the kitchen, the more distinct the noise became. "Whap, 132!" "Whap, 133!" When I arrived in the kitchen I saw that Br. Juan was killing houseflies. That incident became a part of the oral history of St. Mark's, and by adoption, part of our own here at Assumption Abbey. Br. Juan thought the only good fly was a dead fly. The display of artifacts by his casket should have a fly swatter, and probably also an onion bagel, given his love for them.

I think a word that helps to define Br. Juan's character is tenacity in the best sense of that word. Br. Juan was tenacious in his faith and in his love for God. He had a highly developed contemplative aspect which he had learned from his many years in religious formation. He wasn't always the easiest guy to live with. When he was in charge of the kitchen at St. Mark's, meat was not necessarily a priority in his menu planning. A Trappist trained kitchen manager can pose certain difficulties for a meat and potatoes nurtured Benedictine.

All his life, Br. Juan Diego wanted to be a priest. He also wanted the grace of martyrdom, and who's to say that over the last many years of suffering with chronic leukemia he didn't attain that witness to Christ's way?

I think I can honestly say that over the last ten years in North Dakota, Br. Juan had known his greatest earthly happiness. His teaching catechism to the Indian children at Twin Buttes fulfilled something in Br. Juan that not being ordained had left unfulfilled. He would spend hours and hours on his lesson plans and probably sent a semi load of paper through the copy machine over the years in the name of ministry.

Brother was quite the evangelist. When he had an appointment with his doctor in Bismarck, he would go with several manila envelopes filled with short, pious stories, xeroxed prayers and booklets. Everyone in the doctor's waiting room and all of the nurses would get a packet. When I informed a friend in Alabama of Brother's death, she mentioned that she had gotten a large envelope from Brother at Christmas just stuffed with these materials. I suggested that Br. Juan might have realized that he wouldn't have another opportunity and decided to make it worthwhile.

Br. Juan Diego had fought the good fight. St. Paul says in this evening's reading: "There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." Br. Juan embodied these virtues. "May God love you," this was Br. Juan's prayer always.