What Good Can Come From Grief? Quite a Lot, It Turns Out.

On the day of 1st Lt. Neil Burgess Hayes’ death, his brother, Rev. James “Jim” Hayes, S.J., ’72, unaware of the tragedy, felt a fire from within, a sensation so strong that it impelled him to pray the rosary immediately. 

It was May 22, 1970, and Fr. Hayes was driving home to Michigan with a classmate. Neil, his eldest brother, was a soldier fighting in Vietnam. 

“I remember it vividly,” Fr. Hayes says. “We drove all night. It was about 2 o’clock in the morning. My friend was asleep. I was driving and thinking about Neil, and I felt this significant burning sensation throughout my body. Something told me to pray for him.”

Days later, the family received news that Neil had died in a helicopter crash, shot down by enemy fire. In the aftermath, the Hayes family experienced unimaginable grief, but also expressions of consolation — inspiring and surprising — ones that would affect Fr. Hayes deeply, and set the course of his future ministry. 

In spring 2025, Fr. Hayes retired from his role as associate chaplain for mission. In his more than 25-year tenure at Holy Cross, he served in a variety of roles. He was superior of the Jesuit community from August 2004 to July 2010. He chaired the College’s Mission and Identity Committee, served on the Holy Cross Alumni Association’s board of directors and was chaplain for the classes of 2015 and 2021. And, he’s officiated a lot of alumni weddings. 

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In his former office on campus.

But for those members of the Holy Cross community who sustained the loss of a friend or family member during their time at the College, it may be Fr. Hayes’ Good Grief Bereavement Group that they’ll remember. Fr. Hayes initiated and supervised the group for 18 years, holding regular meetings and dinners, providing space and time for members to share and examine their grief together. Leading such a group is less of a top-down experience than an expression of solidarity, Fr. Hayes says. Grief shared, he notes, can do more than rescue people from feelings of desolation and aloneness.

According to the Spiritual Exercises, the foundation of Ignatian spirituality written by St. Ignatius of Loyola, desolation and consolation are states of being rather than feelings. Desolation is an alienation from God, Ignatius says, whereas consolation is an interior movement toward God that leads to a deep sense of peace. 

Consolation, then, can and does exist alongside grief, sorrow or contrition. 

“What I’ve learned is that consolation is a movement in our spirit,” Fr. Hayes says. “It’s often a grace, a gift that we’re given. And if we strive to engage in the ministry of consolation, then I think we listen attentively and strive to bring the good out of what another person is sharing with us and encourage them to see things in a new way, from a new perspective.” 

For Fr. Hayes, this is not a theoretical argument; it is a lived and evolving experience. 

“Jesuits are not afraid of death; it’s just a door,” he says. “I don’t know how you deal with it if you don’t have faith, but it doesn’t disturb me to hear people talk about their loss. I want to hear about it.”

‘NOW STICK TOGETHER’ 

Two months before Neil Hayes’ death, in the early spring of 1970, he sent his four brothers an open letter — bearing a hint of reprimand. He had just left the states for training in Panama. 

The family had gathered in Worcester for a send-off dinner for Neil. Their conversation had been, in his brother’s words, shallow, Fr. Hayes recalls.

“He was anticipating, first of all, going to jungle school, which was a month in Panama and on to Vietnam,” Fr. Hayes explains. “So, he’s in a heavy sort of place, and I’m a sophomore at Holy Cross and I’m in a carefree place, in a way.” 

It bears mentioning here that, in talking about his brother, Fr. Hayes often switches tenses, past to present, back and forth, sometimes in the same sentence. Spend enough time in his company and you realize this is no accident; this is the language of belief in eternal life. 

Back to the letter: In big brother fashion, Neil issued orders to his younger siblings. 

“Now stick together,” he wrote, along with a wish that the brothers look out for his newlywed wife, Paula. Of the future Fr. Hayes, Neil wrote: “Jim seems a little confused about the Navy and his future. Is he still thinking about the priesthood?”

Fr. Hayes grins at the memory: “I thought, What is he talking about? I did want to be a priest when I was little, until I was 12, then girls came into the picture.” 

An English major, he was also thinking about a career in architecture or, perhaps, he’d follow the path of his father, Neil B. Hayes ’32, an attorney for the Archdiocese of Detroit. In the wake of Neil’s death, though, Fr. Hayes was moved by the consolation he felt from classmates and, especially, the two Jesuits and one lay professor who traveled from Worcester to Detroit to attend the funeral. 

After the funeral, Neil’s wife discovered she was expecting, a lasting consolation for the Hayes family.

“That was a joy for us in this loss,” he says. “There’s no death without new life: That’s the message of the Gospel. And we have to focus on the new life. We have to grieve, yes, Jesus says, ‘Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’ So, we have to mourn and grieve, but we also have to pay attention to new life.” 

Neil Hayes III says that although he never met his father, his Uncle Jim made sure he knew him. The younger Hayes speaks of regular visits, long phone calls and the “shameless letter-writing campaign” his uncle has kept up over the years. 

“Uncle Jim is my godfather, too. It’s pretty good luck on my part; it’s hard to get a lot more godly than that,” he says. “What is interesting about Jim is that he doesn’t have to have the first word or the last word, but he always has a compelling word. He’s most focused on how he can contribute something valuable and meaningful and deep to others. I don’t think he revels in the small talk; he revels in substance.” 

In the telling of this part of his family story, Fr. Hayes recites a quote by German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner that lands like a benediction:

“The great and sad mistake of many people, among them, even pious persons, is to imagine that those whom death has taken leave us. They do not leave us. They remain! ... We do not see them, but they see us. Their eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our eyes full of tears. Oh, infinite consolation! Though invisible to us, our dead are not absent.”

IN GRIEF, THERE IS CONNECTION 

In 2019, talk show hosts Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert had a conversation about grief and consolation that went viral. The two share an awful symmetry in their respective childhoods. Cooper lost his father to a succession of heart attacks during open heart surgery, and his brother to suicide. Colbert’s two teenage brothers and their father, James W. Colbert Jr. ’42, died in a 1974 plane crash.

At one point in their conversation, Colbert framed his loss as a gift, saying, “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. If you are grateful for your life, which, I think, is a positive thing ... then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for. … So what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person.” 

Fr. Hayes has felt that connection to his brother and to many others in his ministry of consolation. 

In the evening hours of June 30, 1972, just a week into his three-year active duty service obligation, then-Ensign Jim Hayes was walking back to his quarters on the Navy’s Norfolk, Virginia, base when what he describes as a profound sense of peace descended upon him.

“I had gone to a movie on the base and I was walking a distance, not quite a mile, but a fair distance,” Fr. Hayes recalls. “And it was a beautiful night. And all I can say is this feeling of peace just swept over me, and I heard a voice say, ‘You’re going to be a Jesuit priest.’ I don’t know who was speaking, but I really think it was my brother Neil speaking because that was his last message.” 

In 1975, three months after fulfilling his commitment to the Navy, he began his novitiate with the Society of Jesus. He was ordained at Holy Cross’ St. Joseph Memorial Chapel in 1985.

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Clockwise from left: Fr. Hayes as a regular presence at alumni events; his Purple Patcher photo; as a frequent celebrant for alumni marriages and their children's baptisms; at the JCC with students.

GOOD GRIEF 

Fr. Hayes’ ministry has taken him to the far-flung and the familiar. He’s worked in Uganda and Jamaica, at Fairfield University and at Holy Cross. In 2004, after five years as vocation director for the New England Province of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Hayes got the call to return to Mount St. James. He was assigned as superior of the Jesuits and resumed the role of associate chaplain. 

In 2005, Fr. Hayes was grieving the death of a dear friend who had taken his own life. He began keeping track of the losses of others in the Holy Cross community: students, faculty and staff. He sent an email inviting the bereaved to meet in Hogan Campus Center and just talk.

“So, I was dealing with grief myself, but I didn’t want to make myself the focus of it,” Fr. Hayes says. “The thing is, we’re always dealing with loss, even if it’s not of individuals. It might be losing a job or moving away. There’s always loss in life. So, Good Grief came out of the fact that I needed consolation just as much as anyone else. It was really a grace for me to be part of it. 

“I think there must’ve been 25 people there,” he continues. “And I said to myself, ‘We’re going to do this regularly.’”

The meetings were loosely structured. Over time, dinners were added that occasionally featured guest speakers sharing their losses and the ways they moved through the experience of grief. Dinners would always feature a sparkling apple cider toast to the deceased. But the thing that was most important to Fr. Hayes was that those gathered had the chance to talk about their losses. 

“I really believe in the power of your story,” he says. “Every time you tell your story, you shed a little more light on it. And if there was a theme or a thread there, we’d follow up on that, but it wasn’t all that structured, except for the fact that we’d always begin by retelling our stories.”

Rebecca Cole ’06 is the executive director of the Gaithersburg Beloved Community Initiative in Maryland, a nonprofit whose mission is to realize Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community” through intergenerational relationships and programming for the youth, families and older adults of the city. Cole lost her older brother in a car crash in 1999; then, in 2004, when Cole was a junior at Holy Cross, a close friend of her brother’s committed suicide. After Cole shared her story of loss with the late Katherine M. “Kim” McElaney ’76, then-director of the Office of the College Chaplains, McElaney urged her to reach out to Fr. Hayes, who invited her to assist him in forming and facilitating Good Grief. 

“Our culture has a strange, avoidant relationship with grief,” Cole says. “I loved Fr. Hayes’ framework because it invited us to talk about it. His first question to me was, ‘Can you tell me about your brother?’ He wanted to know who he was in spirit, offering me a safe space to talk about our relationship and the pain of the loss.”

Fr. Hayes’ words and example changed Cole’s relationship with grief — both her own and others’. 

“The more we engage with grief, the more we’ll become comfortable with it,” Cole says. “Well, it’s never comfortable, but it’s a reality in our lives. We all experience grief at some point.”

In the spring and fall of 2005, Fr. Hayes, Cole and another student volunteer ran four sessions a semester. In the process, Cole found her calling. 

“From there, my involvement with campus ministry just dominoed. I started learning about the Jesuits and the values around community, spirituality, simple living, service and education. It all connected for me — with who I was at that time in my life. I participated in pretty much everything campus ministry offered and was drawn to Fr. Hayes’ approach; that is, first asking to hear people’s stories. It was a way to learn more about God.” 

The Good Grief Bereavement Group, recently renamed Grief in Common, is now in its 22nd year.

COMPASSION AND CONNECTION 

Emily Rauer Davis ’99 is associate director in the Office of the College Chaplains. In the 11 years the two worked together, their relationship evolved from student and mentor to friend and colleague. They’ve led immersion experiences, retreats and days of reflection together. Fr. Hayes has been an important part of Rauer Davis’ family life as well, as a guest at Christmas dinner and at the First Communion celebrations of her children. 

“One of the things I’ve appreciated most from him over the years is his encouragement of women in ministry in the Catholic Church. Jim’s support has been constant and unwavering from the time I was a student until now. I can’t overstate how much this has meant to me, and I am forever grateful to him for it,” Rauer Davis says. “I admire many qualities of Jim’s, but there are certainly some that rise to the top: his humility and commitment to the Gospel, the depth of his prayer life, his sense of humor and good-natured ability to not take himself too seriously, and above all, his compassionate and pure heart.”

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With his 1972 classmates outside St. Joseph Memorial Chapel, celebrating their 50th reunion.

Thomas M. Landy, director of the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, calls Fr. Hayes a “consummate connector.” 

“Jim is always figuring out who he knows, who might be connected to whom,” Landy says. “I remember one Holy Cross event where we were sitting next to an older couple: He was a doctor at a major hospital, and she was an attorney at a major firm whose brothers had attended Holy Cross, something not possible for women of her generation. When Jim started making who-knows-who connections, it took about a minute before we learned that they were none other than Conan O’Brien’s parents.”

Susan Crawford Sullivan is a professor of sociology at Holy Cross. She, too, highlights Fr. Hayes’ prodigious powers as a conversationalist. 

“What I most admire about him is his compassion tied to his ability to truly listen. I have never before met anyone who can remember so many details of people’s lives and past conversations had with him,” Sullivan says. “He makes you really feel heard and seen. He has a remarkable gift to be able to care, pay attention, deeply listen and remember.”

‘TREAT THE DEAD AS IF THEY ARE LIVING AND TREAT THE LIVING AS IF THEY ARE DYING’ 

Fr. Hayes spent his first few months post Holy Cross back in the classroom, but this time at Boston College, where he audited a course on the Gospel of Luke as well as The History of Theological Ethics and The Wisdom of Discernment of Spirits. 

In January 2026, he embarked on an extended trip abroad with stops in Australia, the Philippines and Vietnam. One of his goals is to visit the general area where Neil was killed. One of the men who served with Neil gave him the latitude and longitude coordinates. “So that’s going to be special,” Fr. Hayes says. 

For someone who thinks of the deceased as companions, accessible and ever-present, this is as much a visit to Neil as a visit with him. 

“The Communion of Saints is one of my favorite doctrines of faith, you know, that we are surrounded by this ‘cloud of witnesses,’ and they’re all rooting for us and waiting for us to call upon them,” he says. “‘Treat the dead as if they are living and treat the living as if they are dying.’ That’s the way I live. As Catholics, we believe in the seen and the unseen, and the older I get, the more in touch I am with the unseen.”