On behalf of the staff here at St. Joseph’s and all of our parishioners, I’d like to extend our deepest sympathy to all of Gloria’s family and friends…  Please know of our prayers today and in the days to come.

Gloria was a very faithful woman, but she was also pretty private about her faith. What was public about her faith was that she was here at Mass every Saturday at 4:15, and daily Mass when she could. She worked in the General Store of the Pork Roast till the end, and she prayed before every meal.  

You would never see her praying the Rosary, but her Rosary had a special spot on the bed stand, and it always moved, so her family knew it wasn’t just for decoration, she was actually using it to pray!

Gloria was a true servant, in thinking about our Gospel which said “where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”  She would drop everything to help anyone who needed anything, and in that sense she really embodied that Gospel reading of dying to self in order to produce fruit.  

“A grain of wheat” that “falls to the ground and dies” is an analogy for people that sacrifice and die to themselves for the love of others, just like Jesus did, and Gloria did for her family, providing, giving everything, which has produced abundant fruit in how large and how great and how close your family is now.

Gloria was also described as caring and family oriented, she didn’t travel much except to be with and see her family, her “fruit” if you will, her 22 grandkids and 45 great grandkids, playing sports, performing at recitals, musicals, 4-H events, rodeos, birthdays, milestone moments, etc. Beth told me “they poured their love into us through the gift of their presence.”    

In fact Rich and Gloria didn’t want to travel because they didn’t want to miss anything, even the simple things, but through that, you knew how much they loved you. As I was thinking about her life and how she loved you all and how she lived her faith, two things really stood out to me.  

First, we heard that reading from the book of Ecclesiastes which started with “There is an appointed time for everything… under the heavens.”  We understand that, there is a season for everything in our lives, there are always new chapters, and that’s how life is, there is constant change.  

For some people that is difficult, they hate change, but for Gloria, and for Rich, they embraced the seasons, they loved the seasons, and they were very consistent within them, both our earthly seasons and the seasons of their lives.  

They would garden in the spring and summer, cut wood in the fall for the winter, they did what they had to do, and apparently they wouldn't have it any other way, and they shared the fruit of their labor.  When their parents had all died, they realized they were up next, not a fun season, but they accepted the reality.

So I believe Gloria would have really loved having this reading from Ecclesiastes at her funeral Mass.  Actually, as I was planning the funeral Mass with Mark, Jim, Joan, Sandy, Chuck, and Cindy, they didn’t like any of the 7 first reading options. 

That had never happened to me before so I said, “well, there is one from Ecclesiastes that we use sometimes but it isn’t in the book.”  So I read it to them and they were like, “that’s it, that’s the one,” because it fits her (or them) so well.

I’d like to read one more line from it. To me it is the most powerful line of it, the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “I have considered the task which God has appointed for us to be busied about. He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into our hearts, without our ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.”

In these seasons, in every season, we are so busy.  Everything is appropriate to its time, things change, seasons come and go, but God is working through it all.  And it is so subtle, you can barely see it.  It is like a Rosary moving on a bed stand, you have to be paying attention to it. So many people these days forget to pay attention to it, to the work that God is doing.  This is 100% by design, this is God’s design in order to give us the free will to choose to pay attention to Him or not.

We can go about our busy lives, floating from one season to the next, ignoring God if we want to - this is our free will - or we can be like Gloria and and still be busy, yet prioritize the important things, like prayer and worship of God, and being with family, and enjoying the simple things of life, sharing our love with the people that matter the most.  

God gives us free will, God lets us choose, we choose Heaven by how we live our lives on Earth.  With Gloria, I have no doubt she chose God here, and that makes today a celebration for us. 

It makes preaching and celebrating her funeral Mass so much easier for me when we can all truly see how she lived her faith... she truly “walked the walk.” 

Ecclesiastes goes on from that saying, “I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life. Moreover, that all can eat and drink and enjoy the good of all their toil - this is a gift of God.”

Do we recognize all these good things we have as gifts of God?  I believe Gloria did, that she was very thankful for what God was doing and how God had provided for her.  

I understand that especially at the beginning of their marriage there were some pretty rough years, but through it all they trusted that God would provide, and He did.  God took care of them.  They prayed, they trusted, and God provided.

And this goes into my second thought.  After sitting down with the family on Saturday night, I had three Masses on Sunday morning. While praying through Mass on Sunday morning, this thought hit me, maybe God speaking to me:

If you are a child in this society, and you set your sights on what your parents love and revere the most, who or what will you look up to?  And all these faces started coming to my mind: Catilin Clark. George Kittle. Brock Purdy. Patrick Mahomes. Taylor Swift.

These are the heroes of our day.  And don’t get me wrong, don’t hear what I am not saying, I love sports and music as much as the next guy, but these are society’s heroes, our cultural heroes.  And at some level, there is nothing wrong with that.  But in a real way, there is everything wrong with it.

We put these guys and gals, men and women, up on pedestals.  We revere them in our actions by how we plan our week around their games, watch them perform, listen to what they say, and we talk about them all the time at home and with our friends. 

And the natural result of that is our children, your kids, my nieces and nephews, they all see this. They aren’t stupid. Kids see everything.  They see us essentially worshiping Caitlin, George, Brock, Patrick and Taylor, all the household names…  

So naturally the next question for me was: “who can I hold up in society that makes us all think of and worship God? Pope Francis? Bishop Barron? Fr. Mike Schmitz? Maybe the Saints like Padre Pio or Carlo Acutis?”  Sure, I love these Catholic superstars, they are great examples, but often unrelatable in our daily lives, not in the news or the culture like these superstar Athletes or Musicians.  So who?  And that is where I got stuck while praying the early Mass.

Then I came to the late Mass here at St. Joseph at 10:45.  We had a lot going on.  The Class of 1964 was sitting in these pews.  A family was there for a baptism right behind them.  And then Larry and Joyce Michels were sitting right here in front with their family to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary.  

In the midst of all these extra celebrations I was trying to do a short homily and introduce a survey for the parish.  So after I do that, I cut my mic, and take the opportunity to talk to Larry and Joyce and I say, “Hey, I’ll come back in right after Mass and give you a blessing.” And they say, “Oh, no, well, we want it during Mass, like at the end of Mass before the final blessing.”

And at this point, I am shocked, I’ve been a priest for six years and I’ve always done it after Mass, and so I say, “Really? I’ve never done that before.” And they say, “Oh yeah, that is what we did for our 60th!”  And I was like, well, I’m not getting out of this, it’s my turn to change, so I say, “Okay, I’ll go figure this out.”

Then, as I am praying through the rest of that Mass, the thought hits me, “Andy, here are your heroes, Larry and Joyce married 65 years. You must honor them. These are the ones to hold up to society. Bring them up, give them a blessing, and pray that the parents present go home and talk about how great they are in front of their kids.”  That thought was the answer to my prayer. But then of course I thought of Gloria and Rich, right? Maybe it was Gloria herself that prompted this.

This long story has a point, you see, Gloria and Rich were married 68 years, they went through a lot together, and make no doubt about it, it was their faith that sustained them.  It was their faith and trust in God that got them through the tough times, through losing babies, losing a son and other relatives, through fighting cancer three times, through all of the struggles of getting older.

My encouragement is don’t wait for struggles to trust in God.  Seek out how God is working in your lives right now.  In a society that has a 60% divorce rate and ever declining religious practice, hold Gloria and Rich up as heroes in your family.  Prioritize your prayer life and your time with God more so than the next big game or concert, and God will bless your family in ways you can’t imagine.

We’ve been taught our whole lives that death is not the end, that God will come again from Heaven. Our 2nd reading reminded us of this truth. 

Let that be our source of hope! In a world where there is so much unknown, we need to live more in this hope & knowledge of our Heavenly home, the place that we are made for, where we will see God face to face when we die. This is what Gloria did, a great role model, and we would do well to follow in her footsteps.

V. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord. R. And let perpetual light shine upon her.

V. May she rest in peace. R. Amen. 

V. And may her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. R. Amen.