The Late Rev. T. F. Lucas [Communicated.], The Courier, Hobart, 3 May 1858, p 3, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2462370:

"At Launceston, on 29th April, 1858, the Rev. T.F. LUCAS, aged 33 years."

How often from the Cradle to the Grave a blank which till the last Trump has sounded, shall never be filled up; or a career which tenderly and carefully is suppressed in consideration to the feelings of wretched and inconsoleable Survivors!

Such latter not the feelings, God be thanked, which should suspend our utterance as to the intervening thirty-three years of Father Lucas, though such may be the cause of a cramped articulation as regards his Virtues; for Christian piety is never so pious as when it is modest and unobtrusive, and our dear Father, now no more, wore the Jewel of modesty very prominently. This is no paradox, for Modesty is a Gem which shineth in the dark with the greatest lustre.

No want of consolation either to survivors : he will not return to us, but we, if we practice his precepts, and follow his example--(his example, who, at humble distance, but with earnest footsteps, trod in His Holy Master's narrow pathway)--we shall one day rejoin him in the seats of the Blessed.

Timothy Francis Lucas, the subject of this short notice, was born at Limerick, Ireland, in 1825. At the age of nineteen years he entered Maynooth College, and some little time afterwards went to Rome, where he remained upwards of four years, and where, with all the advantages that holy place bestowed--and bestowed, too, on one who knew full well how to deserve and appreciate them--he completed his Ecclesiastical course of study,--that course of study which sent him forth to the Antipodes to toil in the Vineyard of God, and--toiling--to die!

In 1849 he arrived in this Colony as Chaplain of a Prison-Ship, and was immediately appointed to Launceston, where he has ever since exercised his sacred Ministry, with the exception of one and a-half years which he spent at Norfolk Island as its second Catholic Chaplain. What need to dwell on the good he effected in that floating Charnel House, the Prison-Ship ! suffice it to say that his pure and ennobling influence was felt, and that men who had ceased almost to believe in the name of Goodness, recognized the nameless charm which existed in the tender piety of Father Lucas.

Let us follow him hence to Norfolk Island ! There also the same guileless, honest, gentle, tender simplicity, the same burning, sleepless, and untiring zeal--the stern zeal against the sin his soul hated, the tender compassion for the poor tempted sinner that he loved--gained the confidence of the Prisoner population in that fearful place, whose very records the soul shudders at perusing; and many a man, who had been utterly and eternally lost but for him, can now raise his head with a proud consciousness of having outlived his evil days and his contaminations ; of having outlived that hardest thing of all his antecedents, and there crushing memory ; and bless the day which brought him to the knowledge of Father Lucas, which taught him this one great fact, without which, in that Island prison, all other facts were gaunt, and hideously-mathematical, "I am not altogether lost even in this world : yonder is a Priest who sorrows with, and who prays for me!"

But not only among the Prison-population were the Christian charities of Father Lucas to be seen-- among all classes of that thickly-populated Felon Island, his influences might be discerned. Whilst he sought, as Christian Missionary, to deal comfort to the miserable prisoner, and so diffuse a few rays of light to alleviate the horrors, alas! inseparable from its gloomy populousness, the Warders and Soldiers--the prisoners outside the barred cells--he sought to help and cheer: it should be long time hence ere the Soldiers, 99th Regiment, forget him, whose kindly sympathy and cheerful assistance established an Island-library, where they, the Gaoler Redcoats and Civil Officers of the Island, with their families, inherited blessings, some not to pass away with this world. Many a thoughtless man awakened through that happy influence to feelings that cannot die ; many a person driven to self-communings and intellectual study by Father Lucas's unceasing and industrial zeal will look back on the Library which he established, and bless his now, alas ! departed memory!

Enough of Norfolk Island : let us turn to his deeds at that Launceston which now mourns him. How many now sorrow over his departure ! Selfish in their grief, as we all are in this world, how many hearts bleed at the, to them, irreparable loss! So young, so kind, so true, so pious, how inscrutable the ways of Providence, that he should be taken from the field which was white already to Harvest ; the harvest so white, the labourers so few!

Let the St. Joseph's Young Men's Society at Launceston be an instance of what zeal can do when exerted in the service of God. That Society which in October last our departed friend and pastor Father Lucas, (for we all claim a share in his Ministry, as we all had a share in his tenderness and his prayers), that Society which he established has, as we all so well know, as its greatest and noblest end, the advancement of God's glory by the religious, moral, and intellectual improvement of our Colony's Youth.

Let St. Mary's Library of Launceston also cry aloud, trumpet-tongued, and established by Father Lucas for the advantage of immigrant girls and others, proclaim his holy ardour, his thoughtful tenderness, and his self-denying and enlightened zealous Christian Charity. And let the numerous instances of converted souls, of penitent sinners, of sincere mourners, and of afflicted friends, be taken as a slight --and only as a slight--manifestation of the sense of loss that Tasmania has sustained, inasmuch as we can ill afford, in this remote quarter of the world, to lose so early the one whose departure we now deplore.

But if those who suffer from the loss of his spiritual Ministrations deplore him whose gain is our loss, what shall we say of those who, having known him for years, sorrow for him as a friend and a brother!

If we mourn him as a Clergyman and a Christian, who has done all in his power, in the spirit of Charity, to diffuse Catholic Christianity through the land, and who has exercised his holy zeal in assisting at, and perhaps instigating, the establishment of Religious Confraternities, and Associations among both Priests and Laymen, what can be said when we turn from the cold recognition of his excellent and pious conduct to realize his loss as amongst friends!

He has died: and whilst that sad record is made, and friendly hands have shaken mould on the hollow- sounding coffin, and earth and ashes are rendered back to kindred dust, and with a sorrow not wholly unselfish mourn as his survivors, recalling with aching hearts we his many virtues, and that gentle, endearing, playful, tenderness, which was his charm of charms, let us cultivate the thought which should be our dearest comfort, as it is indeed his most beautiful and happy-ordered Epitaph ;--"He was ready for the Grave: whilst that Grave robbed us, it enriched him." How seldom has any one in this colony died better loved by those who knew him; how seldom has the grave snatched from loving friends one less unfit to die!

Then could a truer sentence be spoken over that fresh closed grave, or one which he would better love to have deserved,--"all those who knew him, though even in faith they differed, loved his pious works, and admired his character and his virtues."--Requiescat in pace.

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Death of the Rev. T. F. Lucas, Launceston Examiner, 4 May 1858, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38991553:

The funeral of the Rev. Timothy F. Lucas, whose death of consumption at the early age of 36 years was announced in our issue of Saturday, took place on the afternoon of that day. At ten o'clock on Saturday morning solemn requiem mass was celebrated in the chapel and the absolution given by the Vicar-General. At two o'clock the funeral procession left the church, the coffin being borne by the members of the congregation at their own particular request. The order of procession was as follows:
The children of St. Joseph's School,
The Processional Cross and Acolites,
The Vicar-General
The Coffin,
(the pall being borne by the Revs. Messrs. Butler, O'Connell, O.S.B., Hogan and Fitzgerald),
The Mayor, the Police Magistrate, and Dr. Casey. A. Clerke, Esq., M.H.A., and a large number of other gentlemen, in all about 300 three abreast.
At his own request the body of Father Lucas was interred near the place selected for the erection of the Cemetery Cross. The burial service was read by the Vicar-General. The deceased arrived in the colony early in 1849 in a delicate state of health, and was immediately appointed by the Bishop to assist the Rev. T. Butler at St. Joseph's. During the nine years he labored so assiduously Father Lucas by his meek and affable manners gained the affection of his flock and the esteem of all to whom he was known. He stood high in the regards of his Bishop and brother priests, who would have paid the last tribute of respect by following his remains to the grave had they not been prevented by their Sunday duties.