Fr. Tony Way RIP 30th June 2009 St Margaret, Ditchling

I only got to know Tony seven years ago when he phoned me to see if I would hear his confession. A good indicator! If he had his flaws Fr. Tony was matter of fact about them. As a sinner he knew that sinners sin.

Don’t worry, the seal of the confessional won’t be broken! I wanted to signal to begin with how seriously he took his Christianity, something that, as adopted confessor, I came to see over the years I knew him. I learned a lot about faith from his mature Christianity, that there’s no ‘storm-free’ faith and that doubt is always shadowing us, even if, to quote Chesterton, a thousand difficulties do not make a doubt.

Saint John the Divine’s vision from our first reading is of the new things established in principle by Christ’s resurrection and anticipated in the life of the church. We see these new things now, though veiled in word and sacrament. Fr. Tony certainly had his aperitif – in both senses, I know! What I mean is he experienced in this life the foretaste Christians have of Jesus our risen, veiled Lord through the ‘roller coaster’ of varied, fragile, joyful and painful things we live through.

Today we of Christian faith celebrate with Tony because, to paraphrase the second reading, The Son of God became the Son of Man so that children of men could become children of God.

Tony saw the light shining in the darkness that darkness can’t overcome. As he welcomed that light day by day in the divine office, in scripture, the teaching of the Fathers, in art, in creation, in human society and, most important to him, in the Blessed Sacrament, he was lit up – and he lit up others. Chris, Robin and I were privileged to celebrate some Eucharists together with him over these last months at which his Christian devotion was most evident.

Just before his death Chris, who was privileged to be with him, caught three smiles. Tony’s smiles lit us all up – no wonder so many of us have come here to celebrate his passing to his Lord and to mourn his death.

You need from me an awful lot more if we are to do justice to the varied career of Anthony Hilton Way.

No comment on that rather superior sounding middle name!

Born Brighton 1921, Brighton School of Art, Army Service including 3 years in Burma and India, thesis on Swedish Domestic Architecture – a prophet of IKEA’s coming among us! Tony worked with a firm of architects in Chichester landing up at the Theological College there from 1957-9. His title was served in Chichester at St Paul’s and then he served at St Richard, Hangleton until 1963, Horam until 1970 and here at St Margaret’s in Ditchling from 1970-77. From Ditchling he moved to a role in Church House, serving as assistant diocesan secretary from 1977-83. He then returned to parish life at Lynchmere, over near Midhurst, serving from 1983 to 1991.

He retired with Margaret - Betty - to Lindfield in 1991 where I caught up with him 10 years into retirement. Their happy marriage stretched back to Tony’s eventful time in India. They were married in the Anglican Cathedral at New Delhi and went to the Taj Mahal on their honeymoon. Earlier in India Tony had learned Urdu so he could go into the jungle and find where the Japanese were. The Indian episode was quite an adventure.

Here’s an extract from his journal:

1944, March, India: Four days in hospital in Chittagong with suspected dengue fever

1944, July: Brought out of the jungle to Imphal to a tented field hospital with jungle sores. Two weeks later ready to return to my battalion when it was discovered I had typhus fever. In a coma for 10 days and ran a temperature between 100 and 104 degrees.

1944, August: Flown out on a stretcher to Comilla. Recovered sufficiently to be able to walk to the loos at the other end of the ward where I discovered I had dysentery. Ready to go on sick leave to Darjeeling when my temperature went up again through boils. Sister had not taken my leave papers away so I got a friend stationed nearby to collect me under cover of dark in his jeep. I climbed out of the window of the ward and he took me to the station. Four days later, after a rather ghastly journey, I was in the Hills and rapidly recovered.

1944, September 25^th: Down-graded medically to ‘C’ and sent back to Deolali, the big transit camp inland from Bombay.

1944, November 14^th: Regraded ‘B’ and posted to New Delhi as an administrative officer in the Camp Commandant’s Office. Finished up as a Staff Captain in GHQ after Betty and I married 1^st January 1946.

Today we gather with the fruit of that marriage: Chris, married to Robin with Michael and Elizabeth; grandchildren: Andrew married to Liz, Rupert married to Olga; and Ton’s one great-grandchild baby Ella.

As we can sense from his Indian journal Tony liked his travels. His daughter Elizabeth told me through Chris of their 2003 visit to Venice where Tony tripped over a hole and fell injuring his eye. The next day he had a real shiner. Everywhere the waiters asked what he’d done to it. One even asked Elizabeth if she’d done it! Tony kept saying, ‘You should see the other fella’.

The family recalls how Tony would tease his son, Michael. When they were camping in Switzerland in the 1960s Michael went around saying ‘Pooh – Silage’. This seems to have been because of the family awareness of the pong of the cider-making business at Horam in those days. ‘We’re hundreds of miles away from Horam’, Tony would say to Michael, ‘and we still hear you saying ‘Pooh – Silage’!’

Fr. Tony served on many diocesan boards linked to church architecture, schools, diocesan building and liturgy. With others he helped oversee the building of 14 new churches in the 1960s and a number of church schools.

When I came month by month with the Sacrament the picture of Tony with Princess Diana would catch my eye. As a founder member of the Sussex Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus he helped set up a ‘halfway house’ in Worthing to train young men and women with Spina bifida to be independent. The picture showed Tony at its opening by Princess Diana in 1986.

Tony was a holy, thoughtful and compassionate priest. He’d an eye, like his Lord, for those on the margins of our society as he looked for the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. He saw this completion of God’s church being prepared and worked at here on earth.

As a priest his vision of God has influenced tens of thousands through his long, faithful ministry. This year marks his 50 years as a deacon. Next year would have been his priestly golden jubilee.

In recent years he was forced to take a back seat as a Christian minister. This he did with grace, grateful for his involvement in St. George’s, to whom the family would like me to pay tribute.

Now for him there is the vision of God. No less, no more - for what could be less or more than feasting with the saints on the vision of the one who is true light, the fulfilment of all desires, the joy that knows no ending, gladness unalloyed and perfect bliss. May Tony, God’s priest, assist now in heavenly worship and may his life inspire us to set our sights that bit higher.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.