Late yesterday morning, our
priest and pastor and father passed away.
Dropping Mother off at the
church this morning – so she could walk right in, and I could park the car down
the block a bit – I noticed that the doorway was draped in black bunting. I
hoped that this was just to mark Lent, the season wherein we focus on our own
Lord's terrible death, but I suspected worse, and could think of no one else's
passing – not even a pope's – that might bring one of our many busy church
committees to so decorate our great front door.
Father Wayne Funk had been
diagnosed some years ago with terminal cancer, which had begun as prostate
cancer and (I believe) since spread to his bones and vital organs. How did he
respond to his prognosis? He simply went on with how he'd been living his life
for decades, made no mention of it to the parish at large (only over a longer
span of time did word reach us in our kneelers). He continued leading –
pastoring/shepherding – the parish, preaching the Gospel and the teachings of
our Lord and our Church, raving on about cruelty and bitterness and war and
coldness of heart and the sufferings of women and minorities and the poor.
Like yours truly – but as a
powerful role model, and activist, and not merely lip service, as in my case –
Father Wayne was very far to the left politically, yet also anti-abortion… and
(as I'll show in another posting soon) that is in fact quite true to what the
left is really about, if you truly think about it with your heart and soul.
Father was also to the left of orthodox as well (certainly more than me), even
while remaining true to the heart and history of Catholicism, and obedient to
Rome. Yet at the same time he did favor the ordination of women (which I do not
– on the surface, a seemingly hard thing to juggle when one is also feminist),
and the option of priests to marry (which I do also favor).
As the years of his
affliction drew on, and his strength began to wane, Father called in a friend
of his of some decades, Father Dick Murphy, to add his hands to the helm and be
co-Pastor – a title the Archdiocese did not recognize, but a position which
nonetheless Father Murphy held in function. And in his couple years with us
thus far – while tending personally to his old friend Father Wayne's needs –
Father Murphy has taken the reins entirely in his own hands… in a gentle and
subtle transition that left no change in our church's daily and weekly and
seasonal routines.
(I've brought Father Wayne and his words
and example into this blog more than once, and will be reflecting on him and
his role in my life, over upcoming days and weeks.)
Baltimore-bred and born,
though a man of Rome and a quiet, mighty mover of little people's souls within
the worldwide church, Father Wayne could be counted on to be unrelenting not
just against the injustices of the world (even within the church), but also in
his unwavering devotion to Baltimore's major-league teams, the Ravens
(football) and the Orioles (baseball), regardless of how consistently poorly
they did on the field.
It just now occurs to me
that this parallels his ever-undeterred work on his parishioners' (and their
church's) behalf: not on our own negligible merits, but knowing clearly what we
were fully capable of doing, and indeed called on to do. He never turned away
from his teams, and never turned away from his flock.
Even in his last few weeks,
at a bit of an ebb in his stamina (he'd been regularly going through days and
weeks, right after a chemo or radiation treatment, that his energy was
completely sapped), he was still preaching firmly, his rich, firm voice still
ringing clear and loud. (I kidded him more than once that he never needed a
microphone; he laughed at this.)
At Mass this morning, Father
Murphy – choking up once or twice, but blowing his nose several times and
plowing on – told us how Father Wayne had come home from a radiation treatment
this past Wednesday particularly exhausted, spending most of the evening and
night in his La-Z-Boy. The next day, it became clear that this time Father
Wayne was not regaining his energy, as he'd done before, but was in fact
sinking. Father's doctor was called, and he told the priests and staff that
Father should immediately be brought to the emergency room.
Father was so weak that it
was an ambulance that took him on his last living road trip, rather than a
fellow priest or beloved staff member. There at the hospital, the specialists
looked him over, and explained gently that nothing more could be done for him –
the stents he'd received just last week (I'm not sure if these had been put in
his heart, or some other veins or elsewhere – I know he'd had some kind of
stomach problem then) were all blocked up again by the cancer; the best that
could be done for him would be to just make him as comfortable as possible
until the Lord took him back home.
In very typical manner,
Father Wayne responded with a simple, accepting statement: "Sounds like a
game plan." (This brought smiles and chuckles to us hearing Father
Murphy's words now.) So he was put on a morphine drip, which eased his pain
considerably. In the company of Father Murphy, our Father Raphael (who serves
our Hispanic community), Father Kevin (former associate pastor, now pastoring
his own church after some years serving in the Archdiocesan office of vocations
– in which he'd counseled me), possibly our military-based Father Dan and I
think also our semi-retired Father Leo (also of failing health), Father Wayne
received the final sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, and the prayers of
his fellow priests.
And as Father Murphy spoke a
particular prayer for this Christian soldier soon to come home, Father Wayne
breathed his last.
At the pulpit – actually,
striding back and forth before the altar, microphone (needlessly) at his collar
– Father Wayne Funk stood a solid six-plus, face red at times with the
intensity of his words, voice always strong and keen (though not extremely
deep), even shouting a particularly stressed word or sentence. As I
mentioned here over Christmas, he was nonetheless a first-rate, stunning
role-model of the needful (and oft-neglected) virtue of simplicity, and
humility. He pounded home not just the plight of the poor,
but their very right to ownership of our own overabundances, and
indeed their very ownership of Heaven itself.
We made him cry before the entire church, a
few weeks ago, when we stood and applauded his long years of service to the
church. And I got a private chuckle out of him the very next Sunday, when I
spoke to him obliquely of his through-and-through humility, quoting and EWTN
priest's line of how when you realize you've got humility, you've lost
it.
Father was not conscious of
his humility, or his living as an example for us, beyond his very-conscious
service to his duties and responsibilities as priest and pastor, at whatever
the cost. Other than the most extremes of discomfort and weariness brought on
by his cancer, as well as by its aggressive treatments, he ignored his own
slow, drawn-out death and continued living fully and firmly. Even while quick
to bark out a frustrated word (once or twice even off-color in my hearing) at
the plight of the needy, and at some of the stupider things that some men up
and down in the church hierarchy have done, he was even quicker to laugh loud
and long at things little and big, too. His own life he disregarded (other than
fighting to keep it going – for the sake of his flock), and focused instead on how
other lives so badly needed what he'd long since taken to heart and been living
out.
Our hymn during Holy
Eucharist today began with the line, "We remember how You loved us to Your
death – and still we celebrate, for You are with us here..." Certainly those
words are addressed to Jesus, and were written out of reflection and meditation
on Christ's suffering and death for us. But we are each and all also called to
live like Jesus, emulate Him: He himself told us we had it in ourselves,
in fact, to do greater things than even He had done. Father Wayne would have
snorted at the idea of besting Jesus, of course. He never lived by that
objective, but simply by doing as Jesus and His Church instructed him, guided
by clear, gentle heart and loving, honest, humble soul... and an awesome
capacity for righteous indignation.
Even lying now at rest, he
remains standing tall as a loving, devoted giant, a beacon and guide to those
of us in need of light and example and strength and big voice and loving heart.
Followup: a couple days after I posted this, a
fellow parishioner (I don't recognize his/her name) found it, came by, and
added a comment:
M Brennan Feb
19, 2008
Father
Wayne and I were on both ends of the political spectrum but on the importatnt
issues such as abortion and respect for human life we agreed completely. In his
homily during this past Christmas Season in the church hall, he spoke about
societies focus on personal possessions. With fire in his voice dispite his
failing health, he said "How dare we live in luxury when others don't have
enough to eat". Father Wayne has softened my heart as a christian. Rest in
Peace, Father
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