There are simply no words to describe Toby Danna and his role in the formation of the Parousians. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say we’ve never really known anyone quite like him. Toby is my true brother in Christ, a friend unlike any other friend I’ve had, and I’m so very grateful for so many things he’s done.
Toby did his utmost to prepare me for my job at our campus newspaper, The Daily Reveille. I was awfully nervous about applying for the job, and I’m not sure I would have had the guts to really go for it if Toby wouldn’t have believed in me.
Toby was the first person to point me to Rod Dreher’s book, Crunchy Cons, and over the past year he’s loaned me more great books than I could ever finish. Toby has taught me to love G. K. Chesterton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. More importantly, he’s taught me to appreciate the heroic qualities and talents of those more familiar to me: the profound inner strength of Ryan Hallford, Will Newman’s remarkable capacity for un-complicating the complicated, the tireless dedication of Michael Denton and his uncanny ability to channel the wisdom of Fulton Sheen, Philip de Mahy’s newfound fidelity to Holy Mother Church, the passion of Juliette Lapeyrouse for the authentic feminism of holy women like St. Edith Stein, Liz Johnson's academic discipline and her love for all things literary, Mary Grace Westphal’s constant witness of Christian joy and hospitality… I’ve come to see many of these virtues in my friends because Toby saw them first.
And then, of course, there are the heroic qualities in Toby himself: his steadfast generosity, his apostolic zeal, his sense of sacrifice, his honesty, his enthusiasm for apologetics, and his knack for affirming each of us when we’re most in need of encouragement. Toby often sees things in us that we can’t see in ourselves. So many of us are Parousians because Toby gave us a personal invitation to be a part of the group. He saw in each of us something unique, some talent to be shared, some aspect of ourselves that would compliment the group as a whole.
I remember Toby first telling me about his idea for the Parousians one evening at Highland Coffees. As he racked his brain for the right words to describe the Parousians — academic society, something like the Inklings, something like the Sons and Daughters of the Apocalypse — I think I stopped him with something like: “Don’t worry, I know exactly what you’re talking about." And I did.
I hardly knew it then, but I’d always been looking for the Parousians. I never imagined that anyone I knew possessed the necessary ambition to bring such a group to fruition — apparently, I didn’t know Toby well enough yet.
Toby is so earnestly devoted to the well-being of our group, and yet he certainly isn’t without his comic moments. Only Toby would suggest “Jimmy Buffet Slept Here” for our group’s Latin motto. Only Toby would attempt to explain the themes of mankind’s fall and redemption deeply embedded in movies like The Last Days of Disco.
If this is indeed the final post before our anniversary celebration tomorrow evening, it will be most fitting. While we certainly look to Father Sibley as our group’s beloved patriarch, Toby has been a patriarch of sorts as well. The Parousians has meant so much to all of us, and if it weren’t for Toby, we wouldn’t have the Parousians at all.
Toby, on this our First Anniversary, we’d like to say how grateful we are to you. Thanks for everything, dear friend. You’re one of our heroes, too.
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