Born in Tourneena, Dungarven, Co. Waterford, Ireland on 14 February 1821
Took the habit in N.-D. de l’Osier on 3 May 1843
Oblation in N.-D. de l’Osier on 14 June 1844 (No. 122)
Priestly ordination in Marseilles on 28 June 1846
Died in London on 18 June 1882.

Robert Cooke was born in Tourneena, Dungarven, Co. Waterford, Ireland on 14 February 1821. As a young man Robert studied law and medicine in Dublin. By his own account, as told by Father Thomas Dawson, it was a dream or vision of Mary Immaculate that led him to the Oblates. He sought out Father Casimir Aubert and went with him to Penzance at Easter 1843. From there he went to begin his novitiate in Notre-Dame de l’Osier on 3 May 1843. After his oblation in Notre-Dame de l’Osier on 14 June 1844, Brother Cooke studied theology in the Marseilles major seminary until his priestly ordination by the Founder on 28 June 1846.

Bishop de Mazenod saw him often at that time and wrote on 1 July 1846: “Father Cooke, an Irish priest of our congregation, whom I ordained the other day, came to say farewell. He is going to leave for England. He is an excellent religious, a capable man who does a lot of good among the English who work in St. Henri [railway line Marseilles-Avignon]. He has got a good number of them to return to the bosom of the Church.” The preceding autumn he had been ill. The Founder had sent him for a rest in Aix and on 8 October had advised Father Courtès: “Precious Brother Cooke… I am counting on him for the direction of our missions in England and Ireland.”

Arriving in Grace Dieu in the summer of 1846, he preached missions, sometimes alone and sometimes with Father Noble. As there was no church, he often had to preach in the open air. After Father Perron died in February 1848, Father Cooke was named superior of the Priory community, near Everingham, and the Founder already looked on him as the Oblate superior when Father Aubert was absent from England. Bishop Jolivet knew him in these years and described his preaching: “Although I had heard the best preachers of the day; although I had followed the conferences of Lacordaire at Notre Dame de Paris, I had no difficulty, even with my imperfect knowledge of English, in discerning in Father Cooke’s sermons the true ring of Christian eloquence. He wrote his sermons carefully, but seldom followed in the delivery what he had written. He often read his sermons to me before preaching; but when I heard him in the pulpit I could hardly recognize his written composition; what was originally a mere detail had become the leading idea round which cropped up new details all illumined with brilliant imagery and delivered in the most impressive manner. In a sense, therefore, his sermons were never written, and if written, they would probably have lost their most striking feature, the sudden burst of inspired eloquence.” An insight into the message he preached is found in one of his printed sermons, one that he gave for the feast of St. Teresa in Dublin in 1869. “All solid piety is grounded on a filial fear of God. In the preaching of our Blessed Lord, we find frequent allusions made to such subjects as are calculated to awaken this holy fear. He often spoke of death; he vividly depicted judgment; and he held up the terrors of a miserable eternity before the minds of His hearers. A false piety prevails amongst many of the present day: it shrinks from all thoughts of those soul-moving subjects, it never alludes to them, it affects to be without fear, it puts forth the show of a sentimental confidence in God, and of a sickly love of Him. This sort of piety is essentially opposed to that with which our Divine Lord would inspire His disciples. It is full of delusion, it serves the purposes of self-conceit, and it leaves the passions unconquered. The action of this holy fear upon the soul is to give entire freedom to her higher and nobler impulses…” The fruit of this freedom is unbounded joy: “Grace when resisted is the sharpest of tormentors; grace when yielded to is the sweetest of consolers. Nothing but the glory of Heaven goes beyond efficacious grace in its joy-giving power within the soul, which nothing but itself can truly gladden.”

With Father Casimir Aubert, he laid a solid foundation for the mission of the Anglo-Irish province. When the congregation was divided into provinces in 1851, Father Casimir Aubert was named provincial and Father Cooke vice-provincial. Father Aubert was immediately recalled to France and Father Cooke replaced him, even though Bishop de Mazenod goes on calling him vice-provincial into 1853. He is provincial from 1851-1867 and from 1873 to 1877. Already on 1 September 1849 the Founder had written to Bishop Guigues: “We have in that Province some real saints who would sooner die than commit the least voluntary breach of the Rule. There was never a superior more regular, exact, severe even than Father Cooke and he is a model of zeal and every religious virtue carried to an heroic degree.”

Until 1850 there had been a practice of accepting the invitations of the great English families and setting up foundations close to their mansions. As provincial Father Cooke concentrated on foundations in the large towns and cities in the service of Irish workers. He brought to all his activities as a pastor an effective concern for the temporal as well as the spiritual well being of his flock. He was the superior of the new mission in Leeds in 1851. As provincial he was responsible for the foundations in Sicklinghall (Yorkshire) and Galashiels (Scotland) in 1852, Inchicore and Glencree (Ireland) in 1856 and 1858 respectively, then in 1859 in Leith (Scotland), the novitiate in Glen Mary (Ireland) in 1859, the College of the Immaculate Conception, Dublin 1861, Rock Ferry in 1862, Belmont House novitiate 1863, Tower Hill and Kilburn, London, in 1865, Kilburn Juniorate 1865. In 1877, when his second term as provincial ended, he was appointed as superior to Tower Hill. Denny writes: “In October 1877 Fr. Cooke led 17 Oblates at a general mission in Belfast. In 1878 and 1879 he preached the Annual Retreat in Inchicore. In March 1881 he preached the mission in St. Peter’s Drogheda and in the same year he gave the annual mission in Newbridge. During all this time he was much occupied in writing the ‘Sketches of the Life of the Founder’.”

Father Cooke was a very active man. During all the time he directed the province he never stopped preaching and, especially at the end of his life, he wrote a number of reports and various works: reports on the province in Missions OMI, 1862, p.6-30; 1863, p. 569-615; Pictures of youthful holiness (London 1872, 116 pages), Catholic Memories of the Tower of London (London, 1875), Sketches of the Life of Monsignor de Mazenod (Dublin 1879, 1882, 2 vols.). He took part in a number of General Chapters: 1856, 1861, 1867, 1873 and 1879.

He died in Tower Hill on 18 June 1882, after a few days’ illness.

The author of his obituary concludes with these words: “The deceased was 61 years old, of which he spent 39 as a religious Oblate of Mary Immaculate. He was a priest for 36 years. The obsequies took place on Wednesday 21 June and his mortal remains lie in St. Mary’s cemetery, Kensal Green […] A man of the rule, a pious priest, a zealous missionary, a prudent administrator, a select author, our dear deceased will remain in the memory of every Oblate as one of the purest glories of the Anglo-Irish province and the entire congregation.”

In the printed sermon of 1869 referred to above, in speaking of the vocation of St. Teresa of Avila, Fr. Cooke reveals the core of his own spirituality: “It is a rule in spiritual things, that the more closely we draw to God, by interior union, the more we have to withdraw ourselves from such external things as do not concern His glory, or our appointed duties. A mystical death must take place, with regard to the world and its vanities, before the mystical union with God is perfected. As our real death must precede our union with God in Heaven, so must that mystical death, to which our Lord so often alludes in the gospel, precede the complete union between the soul and God on earth…’The grain of wheat, if it die, bringeth forth much fruit’ When God intends that any one should be employed in promoting His glory on a great scale, He gently, but persuasively and constantly, urges the soul of such an one to die the mystical death”. Robert Cooke was called promote God’s glory and his life gives every indication that he responded in the depths of his spirit.

Yvon Beaudoin
and Michael Hughes, o.m.i.