Father Matthias Lu, a Catholic priest, scholar, teacher, and translator, and an Affiliated Member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, died on Wednesday, June 25, 2008, in Napa, California, at the age of 89.  Father Lu had been resident in the Holy Family Community of retired Christian Brothers at Mont La Salle in Napa since 2005.

An internationally recognized scholar in philosophy and theology, a devoted teacher and busy chaplain, and an advocate on behalf of persecuted Catholics in China, Father Lu was born in China, studied in Rome, Canada, and the United States, and taught and lectured internationally. He made the San Francisco Bay Area his home for the latter half of his long and productive career, beginning in 1963 an association with Saint Mary’s College of California – as teacher, researcher, chaplain, and director of the International Saint Thomas Aquinas Center – that inspired the Christian Brothers to honor him in 1988 by naming him an Affiliated Member (AFSC) of their Institute.

The web site of the International Saint Thomas Aquinas Center at www.everyonesaquinas.org. is a monument to Father Lu’s conviction that Thomas Aquinas is "everyone’s Aquinas," a universal teacher who speaks to ordinary people and whose works should be available to them. His own pioneering translations of Aquinas into Mandarin, and his commentaries on the works, have been published in multiple editions. The 'everyonesaquinas' web site remains a rich source of information about Father Lu's many accomplishments and wide range of interests.

Funeral services will be held on Saturday, July 5, 2008, in the Mont La Salle Chapel, 4401 Redwood Road, Napa, California.  Visitation will start at 9:00 a.m. in the Chapel Rotunda, to be followed by the funeral liturgy at 10:00 a.m. and burial in the Mont La Salle cemetery. Notes and remembrances may be sent to Archives, District of San Francisco, De La Salle Institute, 4401 Redwood Road, Napa, CA 94558.

Matthias Lu was born on June 2, 1919, in a village fifteen miles south of Peking (now Beijing) into the large family of Paul and Rose Lu. His mother taught catechism lessons to the children of the village; his father was a schoolteacher in the winter, a farmer in spring and summer, a part-time carpenter and architect, and a political leader, who had to flee during the Communist takeover of China in 1949.

Remembering his boyhood, Father Lu wrote in The Catholic Voice (June 18, 2007), “I can say that I was born a ‘boy-priest’ because I was born and lived in a house which served the missionary fathers as a House Church.  Under the encouragement of my mother I always wanted to become a priest so I could distribute the sacraments as the missionary fathers were doing…. I learned the Latin prayers to serve Mass and in turn I taught Chinese to young missionaries newly arrived from France and Holland. From them I began to learn English and French as well. At this same time, in my father’s library I found Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, for which I experienced a deep fascination with an irresistible attraction. Ever since, the priestly life and the scholarly intellectual life in me are intertwined into one life inseparably throughout these 88 years.”
Young Matthias entered the junior seminary in Paoting in 1929 and went on to Saint Vincent’s major seminary in Peking in 1937. In 1938 the Society for the Propagation of the Faith awarded four scholarships to the Catholic Church in China for higher studies at the Vatican. Matthias received one of these prestigious scholarships and went to Rome, where he studied from 1938 to 1946. He was ordained a priest in December 1942, and received his licentiate in theology in 1944 and his doctorate in philosophy in 1946, both from the Pontifical Urbanian University.

In 1946 he returned to China to be professor of philosophy and theology at the Catholic Fujen University of Peking. He was named to head a translation committee with the goal of translating the Church Fathers, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas into Chinese. For the furtherance of his scholarly projects and to improve his English, he was sent to America in 1948 to visit various philosophy departments, and traveled from San Francisco to eastern Canada, where he did postdoctoral work in Toronto and Nova Scotia, as well as doing parish ministry and spiritual direction. 
The war in China and Communist takeover in 1949 not only cut off support from his university and dissolved his translation committee, but also made it impossible for him to return home.  Not until 1979 was he able to return to China to see his relatives, including his mother -- a year before her death. In his moving remarks in 1988 at the ceremony marking his acceptance of Affiliation with the Christian Brothers, Father Lu thanked the Brothers for giving him "not only a highest honor but also a rejuvenation of my life and a rededication of my heart." He said, in part, "My life history as a priest and as a scholar was a history of dislocation. It was a series of frequent displacements, multiple exiles, frustration, and suffering. I was given to taste the bitterness of being a part of the Universal Church which, like our Suffering Lord, is a Suffering Church. .. This affiliation gives me a sense of identity and belonging which I need for my health in mind and body under stress and privation."

In 1963 Father Lu assumed the dual duties of assistant professor in Philosophy and chaplain to the Student Brothers at Saint Mary’s College of California, the Christian Brothers’ institution in Moraga. He served as chaplain to other Brothers’ communities as well. In the Bay Area he also served as chaplain for Chinese students at various collegiate institutions and as Vicar to Chinese and East Asian Catholics for the Diocese of Oakland, often helping with liturgies in Asian languages at several different parishes in the East Bay.

Meanwhile his scholarships and writing continued unabated, and he filled positions as research associate, lecturer, instructor, and visiting professor at many institutions of higher learning both in the U.S. and abroad. He translated patristic texts and works by Aristotle and Aquinas from Greek and Latin into Chinese, and wrote many articles and books. Among the books is Critical Theoretical Inquiry on the Notion of Act in the Metaphysics of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas (which was composed in Latin). His privately published booklet Bishop Fan tells the story Catholic Bishop Peter Joseph Fan, a personal acquaintance, who was imprisoned by the Chinese government for more than 30 years and died in captivity in 1992.  With the Cardinal Kung Foundation and on his own he worked tirelessly for the freedom of the Catholic Church in China, and was interviewed in Bay Area media on this topic.  

Matthias Lu was affiliated with many professional and scholarly associations, and his many honors included papal medals and honorary doctorates. Father Lu became a citizen of the United States in 1969. His complete curriculum vitae can be found at www.everyonesaquinas.org, the Web site of the International Saint Thomas Aquinas Center.

In concluding his remarks at his ceremony of Affiliation to the Christian Brothers in 1988 in San Francisco, Father Lu said, "Dear Brothers of Saint John Baptist de La Salle, I love you. I am your Brother. All human beings within the Four Seas are brothers and sisters, Confucius says. God bless us all!"