John J. O’Brien, C.P. (1941–2010)

John J. O’Brien, a Passionist priest, died at the University of Connecticut Medical Center on October 15, 2010, after a brief illness. He was sixty-nine years old. Eldest son of the late John O’Brien and Kathleen Castiner O’Brien, Father O’Brien graduated from Cathedral High School in Brooklyn, NY, in 1959.After earning an associate’s degree at Cathedral College, he entered the Passionist community in 1961. After earning a master’s degree from St. Michael’s Seminary in Union City, NJ, he professed vows as a Passionist in 1962 and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Edgerton Clark in 1969. In 1977, Father O’Brien earned a second master’s degree in liturgical studies from St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN.

Father O’Brien engaged in retreat ministry at the Passionist retreat centers in North Palm Beach, FL, and West Hartford, CT, from 1970 to 1978. After serving as a member of the itinerant preaching band, he was named pastor of St. Gabriel’s Parish in Brighton, MA, in 1980. He served as formation director for Passionist students at the prenovitiate and theologate levels from 1983 to 1990. For most of the past twenty years, Father O’Brien ministered in Massachusetts at Calvary Passionist Retreat Center in Shrewsbury, St. Malachy’s Parish in Burlington, Sacred Heart Parish in Lexington, and at Anna Maria College in Worcester and Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston as a professor of theology. He earned his doctorate in theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in 2002.

Whether writing, preaching, teaching, researching, or engaged in conversation, his passion was to instill knowledge and excitement for lived religion. He relished people, his fellow Passionists and family. In particular, he enjoyed books and visits to the archives staff at The Catholic University of America. There he studied the papers of Catholic labor activist Monsignor George Higgins, which led to the publication of George G. Higgins and the Quest for Worker Justice (Lanham, MD, 2005). He authored a number of publications in theology, including articles on liturgy for scholarly journals and entries in the New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, the New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, and the Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of Biblical Theology. He also was an active member of a number of professional societies, including the North American Academy of Liturgy, the American Catholic Historical Association (from 1999 to 2010), Pax Christi, and the International Merton Society.