In Memoriam — Chuck Helms

“It Is Right and Just”
When we gather at Mass, we hear: “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy.” Those words are more
than a cue in the liturgy; they proclaim how a Catholic views the world. To say
something is right and just is to say it conforms to truth. In honoring our friend, mentor,
husband, father, and teacher, Charles “Chuck” Robert Helms, we are not merely
indulging in sentiment. We are fulfilling something our faith requires: gratitude toward
God for a life that testified, as Saint Paul said, “to the good fight, the kept faith, the
finished race.”

Chuck passed away, fittingly, on All Souls Day. The readings for that day speak directly
to his life. From the Book of Wisdom: “The souls of the just are in the hands of God, and
no torment shall touch them.” And from Matthew’s Gospel: “Blessed are the meek…
Blessed are the pure of heart… Blessed are the peacemakers.” Together, those
readings are a map of Chuck’s spiritual geography—his journey from struggle, through
fidelity, into peace.

 

Souls of the just
When the Book of Wisdom describes the “souls of the just,” it casts justice not as
human achievement but as participation in the life of God. True justice, as Chuck
believed and taught, has divine origins. He understood—along with Scott Hahn and
Brandon McGinley in their book, It Is Right and Just—that “worship is the foundation of
justice.”

Chuck’s life was an extended act of worship. He prayed not only in church but through
his vocation as husband, father, scholar, lawyer, and friend. He believed that the truth of
human dignity, the sanctity of life, and the primacy of love were not personal opinions,
but objective realities revealed by God. In his classroom, in the courtroom, and in
conversations about faith or politics, he bore witness to what the authors call the public
claim of truth: religion, properly lived, orders the world rightly.
So, when we say tonight that it is “right and just” to honor Chuck, we are not using
poetic language. We are naming an act of justice toward the same divine order he spent
his life defending and manifesting.

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Beatitudes in action
On the day Chuck went to be with his Lord and Savior, the Gospel reading was the
Beatitudes—and rightly so. The Beatitudes were the moral architecture of his life.

•  “Blessed are the meek.” Chuck’s meekness was never weakness. It was the

strength of a man who could yield his ego in the service of others; his intellect
was piercing, but his courtesy even sharper.

• “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Few phrases better

capture him. He pursued justice even when it cost him and engaged in debate
not to win, but to clarify truth.

• “Blessed are the merciful.” Despite his sharp wit, he was tender with those who

suffered, especially students and friends who struggled with faith. In him, mercy
and truth embraced.

• “Blessed are the peacemakers.” His peace was the peace of integrity—the peace

of a man whose interior world was aligned with his belief, even in illness and
pain.
This is what the Beatitudes describe: the soul of the just, in God’s hand and at peace.

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A knight’s vocation
Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak that true vocation “is not a goal to be
achieved but a gift to be received.” Chuck lived as someone who listened for God’s call
rather than trying to write his own story. With degrees from Princeton and Oxford, he
could have pursued prestige and comfort, but instead he followed a quieter summons:
service to truth, to students, and to the Church.
At his funeral, his son described him as a Christian knight—“the gentleman, the pious,
and the unbreakable.” Like the knights of his beloved literature, he pledged his strength
to what is pure, beautiful, and true. His weapons were conviction and intellect; his armor
was humility and prayer.
My oldest son Jonathan experienced this vocation firsthand. Several years ago, Chuck
invited him to shadow for a summer, even picking him up so he wouldn’t have to pay for
parking downtown. From those car rides, meetings, and lunches, Jonathan’s own
vocation toward law—and toward what is right and just—was solidified. On one of our
last visits, Chuck was so proud to hear how Jonathan’s schooling was going and how
he was defending the faith as a Knights of Columbus officer on campus.​

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Religion and civilization
Palmer invites us to ask whether our lives “speak the truth of who we are.” Chuck’s life
clearly did. That truth was not one-dimensional—it contained paradox.
He was an athlete and a scholar. He could quote Aquinas and argue law, but he also
teased, laughed, and loved freely. That wholeness was not accidental—it was the fruit
of a faith integrated.
Wisdom’s line—“Their hope is full of immortality”—was not just comfort; it was the hope
he built his intellectual house upon.

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School as legacy
So why commemorate him tonight, beyond my personal friendship and his role as an
MSMCS dad? Because the mission of Catholic education—forming intellects and souls
together—was Chuck’s deepest work. He stood in the same intellectual stream as the
authors we have mentioned: Aquinas, Newman, Hahn, Palmer. Through him, a
generation learned to see faith not as private opinion but as the architecture of meaning.
Hahn and McGinley argue that civilization’s future depends on true religion; Palmer
adds that each person must discover where personal truth meets the world’s need.
Chuck merged both insights. He sought to heal civilization through forms of faith that
begin in the personal conscience but extend outward to public life. That synthesis is
exactly what Catholic education aims for. It is right and just to sustain schools that form
“souls of the just,” who will carry God’s order into law, medicine, art, technology, and
beyond.

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Tested and welcomed home
The Book of Wisdom describes the just as “tested like gold in the furnace.” Chuck’s
testing was real. The illness of his last year was not an interruption of vocation; it was its
completion. Aquinas wrote that endurance is the peak of fortitude, and Chuck
endured—not with bitterness, but with piety and even humor.
Saint Matthew ends the Beatitudes not with earthly satisfaction but with the Kingdom:
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.” The voice that debated
philosophy and law now joins the liturgy of heaven where truth is sung, not argued.
For those who remain, his life is both consolation and commission. The consolation is
knowing that a soul so righteous rests in peace. The commission is to order our world
as he ordered his—under God’s sovereignty.

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Our duty and our salvation
Tonight, at this gala, we do more than remember. We participate in what the Mass calls
our duty and our salvation.​

• It is right and just to thank God for a man whose life proved that holiness and

intellect, worship and work, can coexist beautifully.

• It is right and just to continue his mission by forming students who see their lives

not as careers to be chosen but as vocations to be received.

• It is right and just to recall that civilizations endure only when they recognize God

as their beginning and end, and that our deepest calling is to let our lives speak
the voice of God within us.
Chuck did that. His life spoke clearly of faith, courage, love, discipline, and joy. Now the
“soul of the just” rests in the hand of God, his hope fulfilled and his truth vindicated. As
we recommit ourselves tonight to the formation of young souls—so that justice, truth,
and vocation might live on—we do so with gratitude and confidence that his intercession
is still at work among us.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May he rest in peace—and may we, in loving faithfulness, carry his torch forward.