(RNS) — When I heard on Christmas Eve that Jeffrey R. Holland, 85, a beloved apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was back in the hospital, it was not a total surprise. In April 2023, we got the alarming news that he and his wife, Patricia, had both been diagnosed with COVID-19 and would have to miss General Conference. The church had earlier revealed that Elder Holland was on dialysis. Kidney problems not being a great combination with COVID-19, this seemed like a bad omen.
Though he returned to church work that June, it was short-lived. The next month, his wife died at age 81; in early August, the church issued a rare update on Elder Holland’s health, saying he had been hospitalized again for his kidney problems.
And yet his death early this morning (Dec. 27) from kidney disease complications was still a shock, because Elder Holland lived to become “President Holland” — the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. For the last two years, he seemed to have a new lease on life, despite his grief about his wife’s death and his own health concerns.
President Holland has been a beloved presence almost since the very beginning of my time as a member of the church — I joined in 1993, and he became an apostle in 1994. Through the years, I have loved many of his General Conference talks, especially the ones that provided a window into his stubbornly faithful heart.
For me, a standout was “Like a Broken Vessel,” one of the first personal admissions of depression I’d ever heard from the General Conference pulpit. When then-Elder Holland gave this talk in October 2013, he quietly upended a long-standing tradition in the church that there was no mental health problem that couldn’t be prayed away with faith and a positive attitude.
“These afflictions,” he said, “are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor.”
He didn’t stop there, having normalized depression as a medical disorder rather than a moral failing. He also personalized it, saying that years before, as a father beset with “financial fears” and “staggering fatigue,” he’d experienced depression “that was as unanticipated as it was real.”
I cried tears of relief at his willingness to be vulnerable and at his closing promises about a resurrected life: “I bear witness of that day when loved ones whom we knew to have disabilities in mortality will stand before us glorified and grand, breathtakingly perfect in body and mind. What a thrilling moment that will be! … Until that hour when Christ’s consummate gift is evident to us all, may we live by faith, hold fast to hope and show ‘compassion one of another.’”
A Yale University-trained English scholar, Holland often peppered his sermons with Shakespeare quotations and poetry, but never in an ostentatious way. He seemed to have a deep and abiding intellectual curiosity and a particular fervor when a piece of literature touched his soul. I share that love of books and will miss that about him.
I’ll also miss his character. He’s always been less guarded than other church leaders, and more capable of apologizing when wrong. I never met President Holland in person, but I have several friends who did, and I know from their stories that he was a compassionate listener as well as a passionate disciple of Christ.
That’s not to say I always agreed with President Holland. At times I’ve disagreed sharply, especially on LGBTQ+ issues. I hated his 2021 “musket fire” speech, for example, and the way it invoked a violent metaphor for defending the church and its flagship university.
But I have always loved and respected him, which made disagreeing all the more painful. It’s fully possible to disagree with someone about certain things — even very important things — and still love that person. To be grateful that they exist in the world.
And now President Holland is gone, and I’m imagining the welcome he’ll receive in heaven. As he once taught in conference, our welcome in heaven may be contingent upon the love we offered here on earth, however imperfectly.
“I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: ‘Did you love me?’ I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all. … And if at such a moment we can stammer out, ‘Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,’ then He may remind us that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.” (“The First Great Commandment,” October 2012)
Yea, Lord, thou knowest that President Holland loved thee. Make him welcome at thy table and give him a seat next to the Bard, so he can ask all the literary questions he always wanted to.
Related content about Jeffrey R. Holland:
Mormon leaders and the fear of apologizing
“No more shame”: A Mormon apostle sheds light on mental illness—and his own struggles