Catherine Mowry LaCugna, my friend and former colleague at the University of Notre Dame, died on May 3, 1997, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. She was only 44.

Her tenth anniversary of entrance into eternal life was recently marked by an excellent tribute to her by Robert A. Krieg, another of her close friends and former colleagues at Notre Dame. Professor Krieg's piece, in the form of a meditation on her life and death, was published under the title, "A Perfect End," in the April 2 issue of America magazine.

He recalled how Catherine chose to teach her theology courses for the spring semester that year, even though she knew that her medical situation was in an exceedingly precarious state. In increasingly weakened condition, she taught her last class on April 29. Two days later she fell ill with an infection and was immediately hospitalized.

The next day she took a turn for the worse and died that evening, surrounded by her parents, sisters, and brother, most of whom had flown in from Seattle, and by several close friends.

Her father, Charles Sebastian LaCugna, had also been a university professor, having established the political science department at what was then Seattle College (now Seattle University) in 1945. He would serve on its faculty for over 40 years, retiring in 1987. Charles died on March 21 at age 93, having lived more than twice as long as his distinguished daughter.

Catherine herself (known in her family as Kate) was one of the Catholic Church's pioneers in the renewal of the theology of the Trinity. Her book, "God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life," published in 1991, marked her as a major figure in the field.

She had joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1981. Hers was one of the first two appointments I had made as the new chair of the department of Theology; the other was the Dominican theologian, Thomas F. O'Meara, still highly productive in research, writing and teaching.

Everyone makes mistakes in judgment, but recruiting and hiring Catherine and Tom were not among mine. Both brought luster and honor to the department and to the university.

Immediately after Catherine's death, I devoted a column to her memory. In it I recalled our first meeting at a crowded and noisy hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, back in the spring of 1981. She had recently completed her doctoral studies at Fordham and was still living in New York. I was visiting at my mother's in West Hartford. New Haven seemed like a convenient halfway point.

I liked her from the start and invited her to come to Notre Dame for a formal interview. She did well. We offered her an appointment, and she remained with us until her death almost 16 years later, advancing from the rank of assistant professor to an endowed professorship.

Her principal contribution to Catholic theology was her successful effort to reinstate the doctrine of the Trinity at the center of Christian faith, rather than as something to be preached about on Trinity Sunday and then returned to a dusty shelf for another year.

She helped to retrieve the doctrine as, in her words, "the most fruitful and intelligible way to articulate what it means to be 'saved by God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit'." For her, there could never be an artificial distinction between the inner life of God and the life of God in the world. The "God who is" is the "God for us" (the title of her major work).

I originally intended to summarize herein Robert Krieg's superb remembrance of Catherine LaCugna, but decided that his meditation on her life and death was far too rich in content and too eloquent in style to compress within the limited space of a single column.

All the more reason to recommend his article to every reader of this column, whether you knew Catherine LaCugna or not; indeed, whether you have ever heard of her or not. Her life and especially her noble and dignified way of dying illuminate, and resonate with, our own human experience, and help us to confront in a profoundly spiritual way the limitations of our own lives and the truth of our own mortality.

The title of Robert Krieg's meditation, "A Perfect End," was inspired by the concluding petition in the Benedictine Daily Prayer: "May the Lord grant us a peaceful night, and a perfect end."

Catherine Mowry LaCugna's death was indeed "a perfect end" to a life well-lived.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.