6 MAY 2023
Father Terrance Klein, pastor of Saint Joseph, celebrated a Mass of Christian Burial for Don Schloctermeier at Saints Peter and Paul. Concelebrating was Father Michael Brungardt, the pastor of Holy Name Parish in Bushton. Burial was at Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery, followed by a luncheon at Saint Joseph Parish Hall.
Link to the obituary
Don Needed So Little |
Don Schloctermeier |
Father Terrance Klein |
6 May 2023 |
Job 19:1, 23-27a 1 Corinthians 15: 20-23 John 14: 1-6
The world is such a big place, yet Don needed so little of it to get where he was going. Kansas is one of fifty states; Barton, only one of its 105 counties. And Don’s life was passed in just the north-east part of Barton County. It’s only a few miles from the farmstead where he was born to the one where he died. Both have been in his family for generations. His primary school was just across the road. Even his high school, maybe five miles south of here.
Don didn’t need to go any farther than that to find the love of his life, which he did before he graduated as he and Jeanne were high school sweethearts. Yes, the world is a big place, yet Don needed so little of it to get where he was going.
Don lived and died a farmer. When one hears that, there’s typically no need to ask about travel, vacations, hobbies. It was always farming with Don from the day the eight year-old first drove the tractor. Indeed, it was farming even before Don had good sense. His father once found three-year-old Don in the grain tank of the combine.
Yes, Don’s world was small if you count it out in miles, but it was large in his love of family and community. When other kids enjoyed snow days because the buses weren’t running rural routes, Don drove his kids to school lest they miss any part of their education. Many a Christmas, his girth having been fortified with his own homemade sausage, Don played Santa Claus for other families in the area.
But a world need only be large enough to get us where we are going, which isn’t in Barton County, nor in any of the fifty states, nor in any of the countries that circle the globe. From the day of his baptism, here in Saints Peter and Paul, Don was pledged to Christ and to his kingdom.
The spot on the earth where Don labored is small, but the fields were large and demanded everything from him. Can you imagine all the hours, all the sweat, all the sore muscles? Most of us also can’t imagine the care and the concern. Working so hard yet being unable to guarantee one’s success. Small wonder that a University of Iowa study found that farmers are three and a half times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Never forget that Don and Jeanne had to bury one of their children, their son David. That’s not the natural order of life. It’s a wound that never heals, unless and until one is reunited in heaven with the child one has lost.
But Don knew where he came from, the family that first claimed and settled this land. He knew whom he labored for, his own wife and children. And he knew, along with Job, who was his Lord, who held him in the grasp of his good hands.
Job said:
But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives,
and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust;
Whom I myself shall see:
my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him;
And from my flesh I shall see God;
my inmost being is consumed with longing.
Today we gather for Eucharist, the Church’s great act of thanksgiving and supplication. We give thanks to the Lord for creating Don, for redeeming him through the blood of the lamb, and for giving him to us for all these years. We give thanks to the Lord for the example of virtuous manhood Don gave us.
We pray that the Good Lord forgive whatever sins Don committed in human weakness. We ask that in his mercy the Lord gather Don to himself and to that glad company of saints. Christ is the firstfruits. We pray that Don joins him now, part of that bountiful harvest the Lord calls forth.
Jesus said:
I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
Don knew that so well. That’s why, even though this world is such a big place, Don needed so little of it to get where he was going.
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