As he built a career as a comedic actor, first at Second City in Chicago and then in Hollywood, Pat Finn, Sp ’87, carried a piece of Marquette with him.
It was a slip of paper — in time, a tattered scrap — bearing words shared by a favorite Marquette priest and professor. Finn would pull it out of his wallet and read it before big auditions, as did his friend and fellow comedian Chris Farley, Sp ’86. “As I stumble through life,” Finn prayed, “help me to create more laughter than tears, dispense more happiness than gloom, spread more cheer than despair … .”
In this way, he read A Clown’s Prayer en route to many fondly remembered roles: Jerry’s friend Joe Mayo on Seinfeld, Monica’s boyfriend Dr. Roger on Friends and genial neighbor Bill Norwood on The Middle from 2011 through the show’s finale in 2018. And the prayer was with him to the end, which came too early, in late December after a struggle with bladder cancer.
No average prayer, this one had been shared by no average priest-professor either. Alumni from many generations will recognize in it the hand of Rev. John Naus, S.J., who was legendary across a half century for contributions including leading Tuesday night Masses in St. Joan of Arc Chapel, teaching philosophy courses to packed classrooms and dispensing big-hearted advice to students to treat everyone they met as if the phrase “Make me feel important” were imprinted on their foreheads. Father Naus worked tirelessly to light up others’ lives and, it should not be overlooked, appeared regularly on campus in a clown suit. He attended the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Florida and “could make a mean balloon animal,” one student noted amid a flurry of tributes published in this magazine when he passed away in 2013 at 89, a year into his retirement.
As a student, Finn took Father Naus’ Philosophy of Humor course with Farley and found out on his report card that it was no laughing matter. For his trouble, though, Finn received not just a petition to raise to a Higher Power, but words that resonated in his life with wife Donna, family and friends.
Spread more cheer than despair? He achieved that by a lopsided margin. “I’ve never met a single person who had a bad thing to say about my dad,” his daughter Cassidy wrote after his passing. “The least surprising thing was hearing the nurses say they have never seen so many people show up at a hospital for someone.”
“A good way to say it is that in all things, Pat led with positivity and joy. He wasn’t a skeptic or a cynic,” says his friend and former roommate Mike Brennan, Arts ’87. “His first instinct was to expect that any person he ran into was good, and certainly worthy of sharing a smile and a joke.”
Finn’s generosity brought him home to Marquette to teach a course, Improvisation and Communication, as part of the Diederich Learning Labs. He mentored 10 students through Marquette Mentors.
At his visitation in January, Finn lay dressed in a Marquette pullover and Chicago Bears hat. Father Naus’ meditation was on the prayer card. Finn’s children — Cassidy, Caitlin and Ryan, Comm ’25 — read it at the end of a memorial Mass attended by 50 Marquette friends.
“Never let me forget that my total effort is to cheer people … and make them forget — at least momentarily — all the unpleasantness in their lives,” they said, as their father had before them.
Then came the closing line suggesting a meetup with an approving Creator (in this case, joined just maybe by a saintly figure dressed for a celestial circus): “And in my final moment, may I hear You whisper, ‘When you made My people smile, you made Me smile.’”
