(OSV News) — “Prayerful,” “inspiring,” “a true son of God” — that’s how faithful across the nation are remembering three Opus Dei men who lived out their vocations following Jesus Christ to the fullest before their tragic drowning deaths last month.
Funerals were held this week in California, Missouri and Wisconsin respectively for Val Creus, Matt Anthony and Matt Schoenecker, three members of Opus Dei (“Work of God”), a personal prelature under the Holy See. Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivá to enable clergy and laity, organized hierarchically, to further the church’s evangelization in concert with Catholic dioceses.
As Opus Dei “numeraries,” the trio were lay single men and working professionals, committed to celibacy and dedicated to the mission of the prelature.
All three had perished in a June 18 drowning accident near Rattlesnake Falls, located on the North Fork American River roughly 40 miles west of Lake Tahoe in Northern California.
Tragedy and heroism
According to a July 3 statement from Opus Dei, the men “were part of a group of six hikers enjoying a day outing while taking part in a workshop at Trumbull Manor, a conference center in Novato, California.”
During the hike, which included a swim near Rattlesnake Falls — a place “well-known to several in the group” — Creus jumped into the water, but quickly found himself in distress due to the unusually cold temperature and powerful current, said Opus Dei.
Schoenecker and Anthony “immediately leaped in to rescue him,” but all three failed to resurface, according to both Opus Dei and the Placer County Sheriff’s Office.
In a June 18 Facebook post updated several times, the sheriff’s office reported that multiple rescue resources deployed to search for the men — including divers and a California Highway Patrol helicopter — were hampered by the terrain’s remoteness, high winds and poor underwater visibility. The remaining three hikers in the group were located on the evening of June 18 and retrieved by helicopter, the sheriff’s office said.
The bodies were located June 22 by diver Juan Heredia, founder of the Stockton, California-based nonprofit Angels Recovery Dive Team, which assists families in searching for loved ones who have drowned.
Heredia, who attended the funerals of all three men with his wife, announced the recovery in a June 22 Facebook post, noting that he and fellow diver Josh Robinson had to first hike over three hours to the spot, where “the waterfall was brutal” and “was pushing me hard.” The sheriff’s office dispatched a team at 9 p.m. that evening to retrieve the men, who were some 47 feet under the water’s surface, said Heredia in his post.
Opus Dei said in its statement that “the tragedy was not without a touch of heroism,” pointing to Anthony and Schoenecker’s rush to help Creus.
Remembering their lives
The 59-year-old Creus was a Philippine-born partner at an accounting firm in Los Angeles who — as fellow Opus Dei member Father Luke Mata recalled — lived an “exemplary life of faith and love for God and others.”
“All we need is to look around this beautiful church and see … how many of us are here because they have been helped by Val’s prayer, by his love, by his encouragement, his encouragement, his correction, and even — with Val’s particular style — a great spiritual kick in the butt,” said Father Mata in his homily at Creus’ July 15 funeral liturgy. It was celebrated at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Pasadena with Archbishop José H. Gómez of Los Angeles presiding.
Creus, a daily communicant and mentor for hundreds of teens and men, “exuded love and joy and peace,” said Father Mata.
His faith and business skills also blended seamlessly, added the priest. Father Mata, who lived with and knew Creus for years, prompted fond laughter among mourners when he recounted Creus’ assistance in bargaining a car purchase deal on his behalf.
Having negotiated the price “down and down,” and with a final amount almost locked in, Creus played two final angles, said Father Mata.
“The (sales) guy thought we had agreed, and Val says, ‘Now listen, he’s a priest. There has to be some sort of clerical discount,'” said the priest, adding that ahead of his signing the purchase documents, Creus stopped him to say to the salesman, “‘Listen, today is Father Luke’s birthday. There has to be a discount for that too.'”
Since 2011, St. Louis-born Matt Anthony, 44, worked for the Opus Dei administration, serving in Chicago, Rome and, most recently, New York. In particular, he focused on youth programs encouraging professional excellence and social service.
That ministry marked a divinely-led transformation, longtime friend and fellow Opus Dei numerary Peter Bancroft told OSV News.
“I remember when this guy first joined Opus Dei, he was kind of a typical lazy high school student, and somebody had to be assigned to drag him out of bed in the morning,” Bancroft quipped.
Yet, he added, Anthony “wanted to do God’s will, and he just opened up his heart to God’s grace — and God ended up turning him into a real leader.”
“The amount of stuff he did was just amazing. He organized programs for high school kids, he ran camps in the summer, he taught Latin at high school and religion classes … so many things,” Bancroft said. “He became a very inspiring person, and had a real knack for organizing other people and inspiring people.”
Father Javier del Castillo, vicar general of Opus Dei, traveled from Rome for Anthony’s funeral Mass, which took place July 16 at Immaculate Conception Church in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri.
Anthony — whose first name in Hebrew “means the gift of the Lord” — “led a holy life,” said Father del Castillo, adding that Anthony “had a very quick mind, a generous spirit and an intense love for learning.”
While the priest was serving as vicar general of the prelature for the U.S. and Canada, Anthony was “my right-hand man,” he said.
Father del Castillo also reflected on how Anthony — who completed his undergraduate degree in classics and philosophy at University of Notre Dame, and received a master’s in classics from New York University — was “very proud of having been born on the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas,” and carried flashcards to memorize Greek vocabulary.
Anthony himself “became a consummate teacher, not only in the classroom, but in life itself,” said Father del Castillo.
Writing on Facebook after Anthony’s funeral, Heredia — who dubbed Anthony “Big Matt” and Schoenecker “Little Matt” — said he had found Anthony “next to his friend Val, lying at 47 feet deep, arms touching.”
He brought them “back up together, in one single breath, honoring their brotherhood one last time.”
Like Anthony, the 50-year-old Schoenecker worked in several capacities for Opus Dei, including as director of the Tilden Study Center, a Los Angeles nonprofit owned by the prelature.
Speaking at Matt Schoenecker’s July 18 funeral liturgy, which was celebrated at St. Margaret Mary Parish in Milwaukee, his brother David Schoenecker simply said, “My best friend is my brother Matt.”
Bancroft told OSV News that Schoenecker, whom he “got to know well over the years,” was “charitable down to every single cell in his body.”
“He was so kind, and so affirming of others, and so loving,” said Bancroft, adding that Schoenecker — who held a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley — was “a science guy.”
Schoenecker’s graduate research explored improvements for cochlear implants, medical devices used to restore hearing.
“You might expect him to have been some kind of nerd … but he cared so much about people that he ended up … (having) hundreds, if not thousands, of friends,” said Bancroft. “And so many people viewed him as one of their very best friends.”
Call to embrace the Cross
In a June 19 letter, Prelate of Opus Dei Msgr. Fernando Ocáriz told Msgr. Thomas Bohlin, Opus Dei’s vicar for the U.S. and Canada, that the tragedy marked a call to embrace more deeply the cross of Jesus.
“It is natural that we ask the Lord why. It is not easy to find an answer, but we know that He knows best, and we continue our dialogue with Jesus who, through faith, fills us with hope and transforms our pain and sorrow into a path of salvation,” said Msgr. Ocáriz.
He added, “As you are already doing, continue to be very united, attentive to one another, and, even in the midst of this enormous sorrow, joyful, because we know that Jesus blesses with the Cross.”
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina
