Frail of body and strong of soul, Joshua Hicks appeared to already possess many gifts of ministry as a postulant studying to become a priest with the Anglican Church in North America.

“Josh was one of the few people I’ve ever met whose heart was actually bigger than his body,’’ said his close friend Joe Merrill, who was studying with Mr. Hicks at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton. “He could make you happier about your own good news than you were about it before you talked with him. He had that gift to make you ecstatically happy, more so than you ever were before he was in the room.’’

Severe allergies and asthma brought Mr. Hicks close to death as a child and filled his days as an adult with a series of careful choices about which foods to avoid and even what air to breathe, if pets were near. But he made the weight of such decisions seem light.

“Josh was one of the most joyous people you would ever meet,’’ said a roommate and fellow student, Chase Carlisle. “He just found joy in everything, to the point where you often couldn’t watch movies with him because you couldn’t hear the movie over him laughing. He was absolutely full of joy and love. Things just never got him down.’’

Mr. Hicks, who had been scheduled to preach this past Sunday at Hope Chapel in Ipswich, died April 6, on Good Friday, en route from his Ipswich home to Beverly Hospital. He was 27 and his father said his heart stopped, apparently because of an allergic reaction to something he ate.

“He had a transcendent focus on God as he led worship, which drew us up and out of ourselves, and gave us a sense of being filled with God’s holy spirit,’’ said the Rev. Mario Bergner, rector of Hope Chapel and a mentor to Mr. Hicks in his seminary studies.