Remembering Father Harold Cooper

By Monsignor Mark Duchaine
Sept. 27, 2007

O my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart: the salvation of souls, the forgiveness of sins, the reunion of Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops, of all apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month.

Many Catholics recite this prayer, The Morning Offering, upon rising from bed. It is the prayer that consecrates the day just beginning, a day that is unknown to us in terms of what may unfold and develop. Not knowing what might occur as the day progresses, we offer to the Lord all that He inspires in us, whether spiritual, physical, or emotional.

I am certain that The Morning Offering was Father Harold Cooper's first prayer each and every day. Father Cooper, who died at the age of 83 on Sept. 1, was an exceptionally prayerful priest: his love of Jesus, built upon a deep devotion to Mary, served as both spiritual bedrock and pastoral springboard. Throughout his long and productive life as an active priest - nearly 50 years at parishes in Algona, Moville, Larchwood, Coon Rapids, Vail (both as assistant pastor and pastor), Sioux City (St. Joseph) and Jefferson - Father Cooper first and foremost sought to imbue his parishioners with a love of God through a devotion to the Mother of God.

Thus it was that on Nov. 6, 1999, Father Cooper began his day by this act of dedication to Jesus through Mary. He could not have known that he would shortly thereafter fall down a flight of stairs, seriously injuring himself to such an extent that he would never again be able to walk, talk or care for himself.

For the next eight years Father Cooper's life was seemingly reduced to one of emptiness and pain, its quality so apparently diminished that many who visited his bedside might well have offered prayers for a merciful deliverance through death. But was that really the case? Was Father Cooper's life without meaning and value once its active personification came to an end?

To such questions, so frequently propounded by advocates of assisted suicide and euthanasia, I fervently and unhesitatingly answer, "No!" And I return to The Morning Offering to prove the point: ...all my prayers, works, joys and sufferings ... for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart.

We believe that those divine intentions - the salvation of souls, the forgiveness of sins, the reunion of Christians - were incalculably advanced by virtue of Father Cooper's long vigil of nearly eight years. Each and every one of those many days spent in disability and distress - 2,500 of them in all - were as a continual prayer being lifted up to the Lord Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. How many souls were saved? How many sinners were brought to repentance and conversion? How far was the cause of unity among believers advanced? God alone knows.

These days it may be theologically clumsy to write of "ransoming souls from purgatory," but even if such terminology be technically inaccurate or piously quaint, the fact is that our prayers do assist those who have died and who long for the beatific vision. And it is equally well for us to remember that the greatest of all prayers was that of Christ upon the cross, both in the words he uttered ("Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" [Luke 23.34]) and in the agony and death he endured for our sakes. That being so, how many blessed souls now counted among the communion of saints were aided in their quest by Father Cooper's own suffering and the consecratory prayer that had preceded it?

The whole of Father Cooper's life - his active pursuits and his spiritual dynamism - is inspirational. His was a life that helps us understand the meaning of life: that each person formed in the image of God enjoys a dignity which no one and nothing can destroy, that each of us is of inestimable value, "for God so loved the world he gave His only Son" (John 3.16), and that having been redeemed through the Cross of Christ we are "not called to be successful, but faithful" (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta).

"God of mercy and love, grant to Harold, your servant and priest, a glorious place at your heavenly table, for you made him here on earth a faithful minister of your word and sacrament. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen."

(Monsignor Mark Duchaine is Vicar General/Vicar Judicial of the Diocese of Sioux City and Pastor of St. Mary Parishes in Mapleton and Oto, and the author of Living Stones: Priests in the Diocese of Sioux City: 1856-2004.)