Father Julian M. Gnall, CAPT, CHC, USN (Ret.)

I met Father Julian at my first Naval duty station at the Naval Air Station (NAS) North Island in Coronado, San Diego, California. I had the blessing of knowing Father for eight beautiful years. To me, he was many things: a priest, a  retired Navy chaplain, a grandfather, a father, and a friend. But perhaps most importantly, he was someone who knew how to see.

In his later years, Father developed macular degeneration and gradually lost most of his physical vision. Yet even as his ability to see the world around him diminished, his faith and devotion to the Servant of God, Father Vincent Capodanno, and his hope for a miracle remained steadfast to the end.

Father may not have received the physical miracle of restored vision in this life. But he accompanied my own vision through some of life's darkest moments. He helped me see when I could not yet fully see for myself—that suffering was not the whole story, that hope could remain when circumstances offered little reason for it, and that there could still be something ahead that I had not yet imagined.

His life was, in many ways, a witness to moral imagination—to the ability to see beyond what is immediately before us and remain open to what might still be possible. Father taught me that vision is not only a matter of what our eyes can behold. Sometimes it is the courage to look again, and to trust beyond what we can presently see, remaining faithful to a reality that has not yet fully revealed itself.

I will always be grateful for the years I was given with him, for the priesthood he lived so faithfully, for his service as a Navy chaplain, and most of all, for the way he accompanied and saw me—unable with his eyes, but fully with his heart. 

Father could not see everything with his eyes. But he taught me to see more with mine through his.

Until we meet again, dearest Father Julian...fair winds and following seas...

Hand salute and embrace.

Your 'Maggie'

ETERNAL MEMORY - Father Julian M. Gnall, Captain USN Retired - The Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh