[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 6, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E996-E998]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            A MOVING TRIBUTE

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 6, 2012

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit remarks delivered at the recent 
memorial service, at Washington National Cathedral, for the late Chuck 
Colson.
  Emily Colson, Chuck's daughter, gave a compelling personal eulogy 
which gave us a glimpse into Chuck as a father and grandfather--his 
undying love and devotion to his family were beautiful to behold.
  The Reverend Dr. Timothy George delivered the homily--a stirring 
charge to those Chuck left behind to ``be not afraid.''
  I commend these eloquent, heartfelt tributes which honor a man whose 
prophetic voice will be sorely missed.

                Emily Colson Memorial Service Transcript

       Good morning. My name is Emily Colson, and I am very 
     blessed to be Chuck Colson's daughter. Today we celebrate a 
     life well lived. I am thankful to be old enough to have known 
     my father before he became a Christian and to see the change, 
     the transformation in my father when Christ ruled in his 
     heart. My father still had the same intellect and drive and 
     passion for life, but a softness came over him. I think about 
     my dad's office in his home in Florida, the desk highly 
     polished where he worked tirelessly, and I think about the 
     over-stuffed green chair in the corner where every morning he 
     would kneel and pray. I think of the 3x5 cards my dad carried 
     in his pocket underneath his jacket. There were 15 or 20 of 
     them there, an ever growing to do list. But in that list he 
     also had names, people that he prayed for every day. My dad 
     became, as Scripture says, a new creation, and he loved his 
     family differently.
       My father in his work changed people all over the world and 
     he also changed his family. That drive became a source of an 
     affectionate joke in our family. We love to get together for 
     family reunions and vacations and all of our family would be 
     so excited to relax for a week together. And we would find 
     ourselves in one scheduled fun activity to the next scheduled 
     fun activity. And then my father would announce, he would 
     declare, let's all take five minutes and relax. I was teasing 
     him about it one day, and he looked at me just with a hint of 
     a smile, and he said ``Emily, six minutes would be 
     wasteful.''
       But even with that drive when I would call my dad or when 
     he would call me, which was daily (sometimes it was more than 
     once a day), you would think my dad had nothing else to do in 
     his life. He was fully present. I thought he only did that 
     for me. But I now know he has done it for everyone in our 
     family. He put God first, family second above all else. 
     That's the mark of a great father and a great leader. I 
     encourage all of you who are fathers to understand the 
     powerful impact you can have in your children's lives. Don't 
     miss it. My father loved his family. He and Patty just 
     celebrated 48 years. Patty has been there as a partner in 
     ministry; has kept my dad humble and well fed. My dad loved 
     his three children, his grandchildren, and he almost lived to 
     see his first great-grandchild, who will be born next month.
       But perhaps for me the greatest mark of my dad's character 
     has been his relationship with my son, Max. Max is 21 with a 
     diagnosis of autism. And when we would come, which was 
     frequently, my dad would clear his schedule and do nothing 
     else but be present for Max and do everything Max loved, 
     because Max needed his grandfather. And as it turns out, his 
     grandfather needed Max.
       My father has stood by his convictions even when no one 
     else was looking. My father has been a defender of the weak. 
     We will miss his zest for life. He was always the first to 
     laugh and the last one to stop laughing. Every meal he ate 
     was the best one he'd ever had, or so he would tell us. He 
     was our advisor, mentor, friend, shoulder and encourager.
       I think of that encouragement today. Today is a celebration 
     of my father's life. But today is also about us, you and me. 
     What will we do in the shadow of such an extraordinary role 
     model. There is work to be done. I encourage you to continue 
     the work God has begun through my father's life. Do the right 
     thing. Seek the truth. Defend the weak. Live courageous 
     lives. My father left a wonderful legacy and he left many 
     writings for us to follow, to learn from. He left something 
     for us this morning, for this moment today. ``I want my 
     funeral services to be joyful. I don't want people to be sad 
     because I believe with every ounce of conviction in my body 
     that death is but a homecoming and that we will be in the 
     presence of God. It is the culmination of life. It's a 
     celebration.''

                             Be Not Afraid!


 A homily delivered by The Reverend Dr. Timothy George at the Memorial 
 Service for Charles W. Colson at Washington National Cathedral on May 
                                16, 2012

       Invocation: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 
     of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
       In the ancient book of Joshua we read: ``Now after the 
     death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that 
     the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun saying, `Moses my 
     servant is dead: now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, 
     thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to 
     them, even to the children of Israel. . . . As I was with 
     Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor 
     forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage. Be thou strong 
     and very courageous. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and 
     of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: 
     for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.'' 
     (Joshua 1:1 9, selected verses)
       Charles Wendell Colson was once the youngest captain in the 
     United States Marines and, at his request, he was laid to 
     rest several days ago at Quantico National Cemetery. He loved 
     his country fiercely and served it well. But we are here 
     today, in this the nation's church, to celebrate the life of 
     one who ended his days as a soldier in another army, the 
     militia Christi, a battalion without bullets, soldiers of 
     Christ, arrayed in truth, wielding weapons of faith, prayer, 
     and love. To describe this change in the life of Chuck Colson 
     requires us to use freighted words such as conversion, 
     redemption, transformation.
       Not that Chuck ever completely outgrew the Marines. There 
     was an intensity and drivenness about him that could be 
     formidable. He did not suffer fools gladly and he was not 
     blessed with an overabundance of patience. Chuck loved to 
     tell the story about a man who accosted him on a plane one 
     day, pushing, shoving, jostling for a seat. Chuck said to 
     him, ``Fella, do you know who you're messing with? I'm an ex-
     marine, an ex-con, and if I weren't a Christian you'd be on 
     the floor of this plane!'' Then he presented the Gospel to 
     him.
       Chuck was not perfect, but he was forgiven. He never got 
     over the wonder and surprise of having encountered Jesus 
     Christ as a real person, a living reality; the one person in 
     human history who passed through the gossamer veil of death 
     and came back to tell us what was on the other side and how 
     we should prepare for that journey by living every day in the 
     light of eternity. Chuck's autobiography, Born Again, tells 
     the story of a man born in Boston on the wrong side of the 
     tracks. He clawed his way up the ever-spiraling ladder of 
     success until he reached the pinnacle of power as Special 
     Counsel to the President of the United States.
       But when his career was shattered in the wake of Watergate, 
     he found himself in the position of another henchman, Thomas 
     a Becket, who had done the bidding of King Henry II in the 
     twelfth century. In a play about his life, Becket stands on 
     stage, stripped of the insignia of his high office, and 
     exclaims, ``Oh, God, there must be more, there must be 
     something more!''
       Chuck Colson had such a moment in the summer of 1973. 
     Sitting alone late one night in the driveway of his friend 
     Tom Phillips, filled with guilt and despair, he burst into 
     tears ``crying so hard,'' he later said, ``it was like tying 
     to swim underwater.'' That night he prayed his first real 
     prayer, ``God, I don't know how to find you. But I'm going to 
     try. Somehow I want to give myself to you.'' Take me, take 
     me, take me, he repeated over and over.
       And God did take Chuck Colson from that moment of surrender 
     to a federal prison in Alabama, to the experience of baptism 
     as a new believer in Christ, to the founding of Prison 
     Fellowship, a wonderful ministry to prisoners and their 
     families now chartered in 113 countries around the world. And 
     God took Chuck to the side of Mary Kay Beard, a former inmate 
     and bank robber who could boast of being on the FBI's Ten 
     Most Wanted list. At our fundraisers, Chuck used to say that 
     no one could ask for money like Mary Kay! Together with Chuck 
     she founded a ministry called Angel Tree that has served some 
     six million children of prisoners over the last three 
     decades. Chuck never forgot that he served a Savior who had 
     been crucified as a prisoner, one who knew what it was like 
     to be stripped, sentenced, beaten, and mocked. He never 
     forgot Jesus' words: ``I was in prison and you visited me.''
       Chuck's conversion was not only emotional, it was also 
     intellectual and moral as well. ``I could not sidestep,'' he 
     said, ``the central question God had placed squarely before 
     me. Was I to accept without reservation Jesus Christ as Lord 
     of my life? It was like a gate before me. There was no way to 
     walk around it. I would step through or I would remain 
     outside. A `maybe' or `I need more time' was kidding myself. 
     The phrase `accept Jesus Christ' had sounded at first both 
     pious and mystical, the language of the zealot, maybe black 
     magic stuff. But the question was: did I believe what Jesus 
     said? If I did, then I accepted. Not mystical or weird at 
     all, and with no in-between ground left. Either I would 
     believe or I would not--and believe it all or none of it.''
       Of course, there have been and still are the critics. When 
     Born Again was released, Chuck's hometown newspaper, The 
     Boston Globe, wrote: ``If Colson can repent, there just has 
     to be hope for everyone!'' To which

[[Page E997]]

     Chuck would be the first to say, Yes! that's exactly the 
     point. Hope for everyone, anyone. The invitation has gone out 
     with your name on it. It says RSVP. There is no limit to this 
     love of God. His grace and forgiveness reach to the least, 
     the last, and the lost, which, at the end of the day, is all 
     of us, each of us sooner or later, in one way or other.
       Of all the tributes that have been written about Chuck in 
     recent days, the one that touched me most deeply was by Mr. 
     Lanny Davis, who served as Special Counsel to President 
     Clinton, the same title Chuck Colson had in his work at the 
     White House with President Nixon. Mr. Davis described his 
     meeting with Chuck several years ago at a dinner before the 
     National Prayer Breakfast. They greeted one another, and 
     Chuck said to Mr. Davis, ``I've wanted for a very long time 
     to say something to you: I am sorry, may God forgive me.'' 
     ``I looked at him, stunned,'' Mr. Davis wrote. Chuck 
     continued, ``You know, I'm the guy who put you on the enemies 
     list--that was wrong, please forgive me.'' Mr. Davis said, 
     ``I looked into his eyes and I felt a strange and deep peace. 
     It was eerie. I also saw a profound goodness and 
     spirituality. My eyes teared up. `Of course I forgive you, 
     Mr. Colson.' Mr. Davis then asked for Chuck's forgiveness, as 
     years before he himself had spoken with hatred about Chuck. 
     Immediately, Chuck hugged him. ``I learned an important 
     lesson that night,'' Lanny Davis said. ``I vowed that I would 
     never use the word `hate' about people in politics with whom 
     I disagreed.''
       Over the years, Chuck came to see the close connection 
     between the despair he witnessed within the prisons and the 
     ``culture of death'' in society on the outside. He knew that 
     genuine reform had to embrace the family, the community, and 
     the church as well as the state. He came to see that the work 
     he had done, and continued to do, in the prisons would 
     ultimately fail unless it was undergirded by a robust 
     Christian worldview, an understanding of what it is we 
     believe and how it applies to our lives.
       This perspective was reinforced by the three great 
     intellectual heroes to whom Chuck turned again and again. 
     William Wilberforce, the young member of Parliament who 
     devoted his life to the abolition of the slave trade. And 
     Abraham Kuyper, the Reformed theologian and prime minister of 
     the Netherlands whom Chuck quoted, I believe, more than 
     anyone else. Kuyper said: ``There is not one square inch in 
     the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, 
     who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: `Mine, that belongs 
     to me!' '' And there was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a champion of 
     faith and conscience in one of the darkest moments of human 
     history. Bonhoeffer, who preached a gospel of costly grace 
     and who, in 1937, wrote ``When Christ calls a man, he bids 
     him come and die.''
       Chuck Colson was a Baptist but he had a passion for 
     Christian unity that reached far beyond his own denomination. 
     In the early nineteen-nineties, Chuck and his close friend, 
     the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, brought together a 
     group known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together--not a 
     mere coalition but a fellowship of earnest Evangelicals and 
     faithful Catholics who recognized that beyond all the 
     differences that continued to separate us, we shared a 
     fundamental unity as brothers and sisters in Christ, a vision 
     for reconciliation that continues still.
       This same impulse was behind the 2009 Manhattan 
     Declaration, which began as a statement and has now become a 
     movement of more than half a million Protestant, Catholic, 
     and Orthodox believers all committed to the three most 
     pressing, and increasingly contested moral issues of our 
     time: the sanctity of life for every single person including 
     the elderly, the weak, and the pre-born, each of whom is made 
     in the image of God (imago Dei) and is worthy of our respect 
     and protection; the historic institution of marriage, not for 
     the sake of traditionalism but for the flourishing of 
     families and the nurture of children, an institution Cardinal 
     Timothy Dolan has called the cornerstone of society; and 
     religious freedom, not only for Christians, but for all 
     persons everywhere, and for religious institutions as well as 
     for individuals, for synagogues, mosques, temples and 
     churches and the work they do on behalf of the common good in 
     education and benevolence. Chuck believed in these things and 
     he stood for them with courage, charity and civility.
       For those who thought that this was just the old political 
     Colson in a new disguise, he reminded them that while 
     citizens in a representative democracy such as ours have a 
     special responsibility, the fundamental issue is not 
     political but spiritual. What Chuck advocated was a chastened 
     form of civic virtue based on the fact that Christians hold a 
     dual citizenship, one in this world, and the other, as St. 
     Paul said, in heaven. With St. Augustine, Chuck wanted us to 
     avoid two mistakes that Christians have often made and that 
     still tempt us today.
       One is the lure of utopianism, the mistake of thinking that 
     we can produce a human society that will solve our problems 
     and bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. This was the 
     basic error of both liberalism and Marxism in the nineteenth 
     century. But the other error is equally disastrous: cynicism. 
     This happens when we become so jaded by the evil around us 
     that we are tempted to give up on this world altogether, 
     to retreat into our own self-contained circle of 
     contentment, which can be either a pious holy huddle or a 
     secular skeptics club. How are we to avoid such reactions?
       Perhaps Francis of Assisi can help us here. One day after 
     his conversion to Christ when he was riding back to Assisi, 
     he saw a leper on the road. He reached out to embrace the 
     leper and actually gave him a kiss. It was the kiss of peace. 
     In that moment when he embraced this filthy diseased outcast, 
     Francis said that he was overcome by a dual sensation. On the 
     one hand, he was nauseated. He wanted to throw up. On the 
     other hand, he was permeated with a sense of sweetness 
     (suavitas) and well-being, and both sensations were in that 
     one embrace.
       Chuck Colson knew that both reactions were critical to our 
     faith. If all we experience is nausea, we will become cynics. 
     We will give up on the world and turn away from it in 
     despair. But if all we have is sweetness, then our faith will 
     amount to little more that sentimental fluff, what 
     Schopenhauer called an ``unscrupulous optimism that leads us 
     nowhere but to vanity.'' Genuine faith and true ministry take 
     place on the thin edge between nausea and sweetness.
       Chuck Colson often experienced that thin edge. Once while 
     visiting Trivandrum, India, he was taken to a camp with more 
     than a thousand inmates, most of them ``untouchables.'' Caged 
     in squalid holes, with no toilets or running water, they were 
     totally dehumanized, treated as outcasts. Speaking through a 
     Hindi translator, Chuck shared his own testimony of grace and 
     forgiveness. After the closing prayer, acting against the 
     advice he had been given, he jumped down from the platform 
     and ran to touch the men before him. Later, he wrote about 
     this event: ``Suddenly, like a flight of birds, men rose to 
     their feet and circled around me. I shook every hand I could. 
     Most of the men just reached and touched; they were desperate 
     to `touch,' to know that the love God offers is real.'' 
     Later, they went back to their grim cells. But that night, 
     through the witness of Chuck Colson, they had received some 
     good news: in Jesus Christ there are no untouchables. All of 
     us bear that message whenever we walk the thin edge of costly 
     discipleship.
       John Calvin was right when he warned against extravagant 
     speculation in the mystery of death. There is much we do not 
     know. And this is a good occasion for each of us to think 
     about our own deaths, for death waits for each of us around 
     the next corner, or the next. John Donne spoke of the 
     democracy of the dead. Mortality is egalitarian. It comes 
     equally to each of us, and when it comes, it makes us all 
     equal. Today we mourn with Chuck's beloved Patty, the Colson 
     family, and countless citizens across our land and around the 
     world who have lost a great friend, champion, leader, and 
     world Christian statesman. But we do not grieve as those who 
     have no hope, for as St. Paul has reminded us, to live is 
     Christ and to die is gain.
       It has been said that this life is a chasm of light 
     suspended between two eternities of darkness. But the Gospel 
     Chuck Colson believed and proclaimed tells a different story: 
     this life is the real shadowland, and often a vale of tears, 
     suspended between two eternities of light. We come into this 
     world, each of us, from the hands of the invisible God who 
     dwells in light inaccessible. And, we leave this world, 
     trusting in Jesus Christ, to go into what the African 
     American preacher calls the land of ``no more,'' no more 
     sorrow, no more crying, no more pain or death, no more crime 
     or violence, no more prison and no more night, for we go into 
     that land beyond the shadows where we shall have no need of 
     candles, nor light of the sun, for the Lord God will give 
     light to all those gathered around his throne and that of the 
     Lamb.
       And in the meantime? How now shall we live?
       One of Chuck's last books was titled The Good Life. And it 
     closes with these words: ``The good life? A life worth 
     living? Indeed. But the good life is possible only if we live 
     in expectation that life will end as richly as we lived it, 
     if we laugh off the maggots and affirm that these bones shall 
     live in the resurrection. Live each day as if it were the 
     best of days and the last of days. And when the last of days 
     comes, live it as the best of days.''
       And who will take the place of Chuck Colson? Earlier this 
     year I visited the grave of the great evangelist D.L. Moody 
     who died in 1899 in Northfield, Massachusetts. At that time, 
     everyone was saying, who can fill the shoes of the great D.L. 
     Moody? There seemed no one on the horizon who commanded the 
     respect and loyalty that Moody had. It's quite depressing to 
     read the religious press of those days. But unbeknownst to 
     anyone on earth at the time, a little baby named John was 
     about to be born to Sir Arnold Stott and his wife Lily. About 
     the same time, another little boy named Billy entered the 
     Graham family in Charlotte. A few years later, Pastor and 
     Sister King in Atlanta celebrated the birth of baby Martin. 
     And in 1931, in a hardscrabble section of Boston, a baby 
     named Charlie Colson arrived.
       Today the servant of God named Chuck Colson is dead and the 
     Lord is saying to us as he said to Joshua and the children of 
     Israel long ago: as I was with Chuck, so I will be with you. 
     Be not afraid! I will not fail you, nor forsake you. Be 
     strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid! Be not dismayed. 
     For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
       Let us pray: Oh, God, whose days are without end and whose 
     mercies cannot be numbered: Make us, we beseech thee, deeply 
     sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of life. Remind us 
     of the wonderful promise of our

[[Page E998]]

     Lord Jesus Christ who said: ``Come unto me, all ye that labor 
     and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. We praise thee 
     that through his atoning death on the cross, and his glorious 
     resurrection, Jesus has opened wide the gates of eternal life 
     to all who believe.
       Today we give thanks for thy servant Charles Wendell 
     Colson, for his steadfastness in faith, obedience to thy 
     Word, and love for thy Church, for his gracious smile, loving 
     touch, and contagious confidence in Jesus Christ his only 
     comfort in life and death, and ours as well. We say farewell 
     in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, until we 
     meet again in that blessed land of ``no more'', through Jesus 
     Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the 
     Holy Ghost now and forevermore. Amen.

                          ____________________