Death
With his death only 23 months after arrival in Natchez, Bishop Van de Velde had little time to make any lasting impact on his new diocese. At 7AM on November 15, 1855, after weeks of fever and five final hours of paroxysms and sliding in and out of consciousness, Van de Velde expired on the feast day of St. Stanislaus, to whom he had reportedly just completed a novena. He was sixty years old.
His body was placed on view in lavish vestments with his eyes still partially open and his casket displayed on a tilt, "so as to give the impression of being partially erect," according to a letter sent back to Europe by a Jesuit priest informing fellow Jesuits and other European Catholics of Van de Veldes' death. His wake lasted long into the night and he was buried the next day, November 14, after a funeral Mass sung at the St. Mary's Cathedral by the Archbishop of New Orleans, Anthony Blanc. .
Read more about this topic: James Oliver Van De Velde
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject.”
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