May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be

always acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my Strength and my

Redeemer. Amen.

Little boys like to discover how their bodies compare to their

fathers. They place small hands against large hands. Feel for

whiskers. See if the fingers of both their hands are able yet to

stretch around larger, gruffer, firmer arms. In his final days, I

felt very much like a little boy. Smoothing my fingers up and

down my father’s arms. Running my fingers across the scruff

of his face. Placing both of my hands around his, to help him

hold a small wooden cross, which he held his right hand.

Strength is probably the most universal of sons’ first

fascinations with their fathers. How they have so little. How

he has so much. “Let your hand be on the man of your right

hand, upon the Son of man whom you yourself made strong.” It

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is no accident that the history of infant Israel is so saturated

with spectacles of strength. Overthrowing Pharaohs.

Tumbling down walls. Slaying giants. But sons too grow

strong. And fathers forfeit strength. All according to time. And

character. Had my childish fascination with my father’s

strength persisted until the end, perhaps his feeble body,

suddenly vulnerable to the many cancers of a fallen world,

might have provoked my horror and anguish. Perhaps I would

have sought to shield him from all vulnerability, at any cost. Or

perhaps even shield myself from his vulnerability. But my

father dedicated his mature years to helping others, especially

men—whether as husbands or fathers or sons—to journey

into the heart of vulnerability, into disarmedness, into stillness.

My father knew of a strength and a courage far greater and far

stronger than that which fascinates a small child.

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My father died vulnerable, even to the point of touch.

Immobile. And robbed of language.

Over the 358 days of my father’s journey toward ultimate

stillness, my mother and sisters and I walked with him down a

path ever increasing submission. His arms withered. His gate

faltered. And the words of even his inner voice fell all but

silent. As a seemingly impervious existence continued ever on.

Just beyond his skin.

The day we told my father his prognosis, the sun was high and

warm, and a very gentle breeze failed to stir branches that

didn’t have any leaves. All that week the skies had been a cold

chalky gray, late snows fell, and for days the snows held on to

the north and south of everything. The nurse didn’t correct

him when he told her it was winter. It had only been spring a

week and from his window it hadn’t been very obvious what

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season it was. The skies cleared the day we told him. I was

angry the day was so beautiful.

For a year now I have been thinking much about the quiet of

the world. The everywhere quiet of hills, trees, stars, our

bodies. I am easily overcome. Sometimes while driving, I look

out at the quiet beauty of everything, and I want to stop the car

and walk out into the hills. Sometimes I do. My father was

always so amazed by stars and astronomy, how we can

perceive the light of stars that have long since passed. I haven’t

the foggiest, he’d always say.

My father had just that sort of strength that we see in the world

of our Creator’s creation. Over the years, downtrodden men

poured in and out of my father’s and mother’s home like blood

through a heart. My father employed them, loved them, often

provided for their material needs, well beyond wages, fathered

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them. Sometimes these men called my father The Captain.

When I came home from all of my many wherevers, these men

made me feel as though the prince of some great empire.

But I was a son who had very nearly grown into the stature of

his father. And the nearer I came to my father’s full form—in

strength, in knowledge—the more I searched elsewhere, for

other fathers, whom I felt far surpassed the great threshold

that, ever more narrowly, separated me from my father. There

were philosophers. Theologians. Novelists. Poets. Men whose

strength had little to do with the expanse of their bodies or the

gruffness of their faces. The more intently I sought after these

great men, for a time, the wider that grew a separation

between my father and me.

It is no accident that the first two Commandments of Moses

speak to the idolatrous eyes of self-fulfillment, that the first

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great sin of Adam and Eve was an act of self-nourishment, and

that the great sin of the Prodigal Son was not his wantonness

or his squandering, but his self-possession. When the Son

asked his Father for his share of inheritance, he asked his

father for his ousia, which not only means substance, but also

quite commonly means: Being. Ousia also means Being. The

Son desired to possess his own Being, to own himself, apart

from his Father, loosed of all relational bonds. But this, of

course, was not his nature. He was a Son. Of a Father. And

when husbands and wives share in the divine ecstasy of their

communion, never as individuals, but only ever as one, as a

Communion, life, Being, arises. We exist only in Communion.

Within the inescapable bonds of our mutuality.

This mutuality is the gift my father so generously bestowed.

On me. On many. And like a Prodigal, intent upon the

idolatries of my very many declarations of independence, and

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my likewise cries for ever new kings, to fight my wars, to

defend me from my enemies, I so often sought elsewhere.

Elsewhere than from whom I came. The gaze of my many

wishes fell upon many men, according to my many whims, and

in the flurry of such searching, each time, my gaze, ultimately,

turned upon itself. And I saw only: myself. My own desires.

But I did not know myself. Or my desires. Because I did not

know the person from whom I came.

St. Augustine once wrote: “And now regarding love, which the

apostle says is greater than the other two - that is, faith and

hope - for the more richly it dwells in a man, the better the man

in whom it dwells. For when we ask whether someone is a

good man, we are not asking what he believes, or hopes, but

what he loves.

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My father believed much. And, as evidenced by this Funeral

Mass, his beliefs changed through time. My father hoped much.

(I think for a time he hoped I’d really love air filters, and that

one day I’d take over his business. He saw half of this hope

come to fulfillment!) But my father loved me. He loved my

mother. He loved my sisters. He loved God. He loved justice.

Mercy. Compassion. Uprightness. Which only ever meant that

—actively—he loved justly, mercifully, compassionately, and

uprightly. In an age when so much of our talk is about ideals,

values, and beliefs, and goals, ambitions, and plans—THINGS—

my father was a prophetic example of the sublime quietude

and activity of Love. Which is the active manifestation of a

WHO. Not a WHAT. Show me the campaign of love. The

platform. The quarterly statement. The agenda. Love shows

itself. Love is it itself. Enacted. Incarnate.

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If Christ came not to be served but to serve, my father indeed

was a Christ to those who knew him. And he asked for no

reward. Sought no acclaim. He showed me, exemplified, the

meaning of servanthood, and compassion, and patience, and

gentleness; how justice in fact is mercy; how might, true might,

is love; how love is self-sacrifice, and how sacrifice is a gift not

to be spoken or conjectured, but shown. My father was my

image of the Incarnation. I came to Christ Incarnate through

the gentle shepherding, example, and love of my father.

My father once wrote: “Find the courage to face your personal

giants and you will find the Lord to be a kind and loving Father.

Be not afraid.”

Echoing St. Matthew, he also wrote: “Clean the inside of your

cup and the outside will be clean also.”

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I saw my father’s strength when he could no longer lift his

razor to his face and I asked him if he wanted me—whom he

had taught—to help him, and he said simply: Yes. The end of

my father’s life was the resounding Incarnate silence of a

Mother’s fiat. “Let it be done according to Your will.” He

avoided no trial. He left not a moment early. And through all

this he would kiss my lips upon all my comings and goings. He

would tell my mother to sit in front of him so that he could

massage her shoulders. He played with grandchildren as best

as his body and his mind allowed him. He fathered the sons in

whom my sisters saw his image. All the while giving over his

mind, his body, and eventually, his spirit.

When my father passed, I prepared two bowls of warm water,

a hot towel, a washcloth, a barber’s brush, and a razor. And I

gave him one final shave—perhaps the most iconic of skills a

son learns from a father. I gave him a closer shave than I had

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ever given him, or myself. I rubbed in a cool cream over

everywhere my razor had been. And then I sat a long while

beside him feeling his cooling skin. Sitting beside him,

recollecting his great loves, I saw, as Augustine said: a great

man. And the light of his soul shone even after his passing.

Like the celestial wonders that so captivated him.

I cried out for no king, sitting beside him, and no inheritance,

no image of another. Just him. And the Great Him welcoming

him home. And as my father showed me, as a man, as a son, the

Incarnate way to The Eternal Father, so, in my recollections of

my father’s lavish love, I see more clearly that Eternal Father

from whom Love’s lavishness always and ever is.

When I was an infant my father would lie down on the ground

and lay me upon his chest, listening to records of Cynthia

Clawson. I once did this with my sister’s son, James. We were

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down the hall, at Mercy Hospital, during my father’s rehab after

surgery. I didn’t have any vinyls of Cynthia so I sang to him

Twinkle, Twinkle, Litter Star over and over, until I finally was

whispering the words and James was sleeping. For nearly a

whole half hour he slept right there on my chest. That was a

first for me. I was very aware of my breathing, trying to make

sure that I didn’t make too much noise, and that the rise and

fall of my chest kept a constant rhythm. I did pretty well, but

after half an hour he woke up. He couldn’t see Rebekah

anywhere and so he cried out for her with that little cry of his.

That half hour was remarkable. So much vulnerability. And so

narrowly and particularly located. Between my belt and chin.

Just sleeping. Trusting.

The quiet acceptance of an infant receiving his father’s chest, of

a baby her mother’s breast, this is the stuff faith is made of.

Not rubrics and doctrines and history’s many and lovely

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eloquences. Just trusting nourishment. From the Giver of

one’s being. Of all Being. This is the justice my father showed

me. The truth. The hope he had inside him, of which he was

ever ready to make proclamation. Like the infant son he

himself once was, again he rests, alive, upon the breast of his

Eternal Father. Immortal. Invisible. And we, those whom my

father touched, nurtured, guided, befriended, we stand now

beholding the brilliance of a star that has passed, but whose

light still reaches our eyes. Is not consumed by darkness.

Behold. I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former

heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was

no more. I saw also the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming

down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for

her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“Behold, God's dwelling is with Man. He will dwell with them

and they will be his people, and God himself, always, will be

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with them, as their God. He will wipe every tear from their

eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or

pain, for the old order has passed away.” “Behold, I make all

things new.” “IT. IS. ACCOMPLISHED. I AM. The Alpha and the

Omega. The beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give a

gift from the spring of life-giving water. The victor will inherit

these gifts. And I shall be his God. And he will be my son.”

Amen.

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