22 SEPTEMBER 2023
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated for Harold Miller at Saint Joseph's Church. Father Terrance Klein, pastor, presided and Father Pascal Klein, the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Ness City, and a nephew of Harold's concelebrated. Also present were member of the Ellinwood Volunteer Fire Department. Harold was a volunteer for many years.
He Looked Pretty Good Out There |
Harold Miller |
Terrance Klein |
22.IX.2023 St Joseph |
Wisdom 3: 1-6, 9 Romans 6: 3-4, 8-9 John 19: 17-18, 25-30
Ernest Hemingway wrote a small play—it’s only four pages—about three Roman soldiers, drinking around eleven o’clock at night. It’s entitled Today Is Friday. It’s the day of Christ’s death. The three were part of the crew who executed the Nazorean. It’s easy enough to understand why, at the end of such a day, they might seek to set aside their work and unwind with a drink.
Slurping a Jerusalem tavern closed, they talk about what they saw that day, about what they’ve seen time and again: at the beginning of the ordeal, the resolution of the condemned man and how it crumbles under the assault of unendurable pain. The soldiers debate what hurts more, the nail entering the flesh or the hand torn around it as the weight of a man’s body weighs down upon that nail. But one soldier keeps repeating, after reviewing each sorrowful indignity they’ve witnessed that day, “He looked pretty good out there.” For this soldier, Jesus of Nazareth is a stranger, just another man crushed by the might of Rome. Still, the soldier keeps insisting, “He looked pretty good out there.”
It's a recurrent theme in Hemingway’s work: how a man dies says everything about how he’s lived. So, even a hardened Roman soldier, who’s been trained to kill condemned prisoners, finds himself giving testimony to the Christ, to the truth of his life, as he repeatedly insists to his comrades, “He looked pretty good out there.”
Visiting the sick and the elderly is part of my vocation. At times it can be challenging, but whose life isn’t? But I always looked forward to seeing Harold. He poured out friendship and the life it gives with every word he spoke. Today I bury a friend, someone who enriched my life with his warmth, his kindness, his humor, and his stories. There are so many of us who can say that of Harold.
I’m a bit like those Roman soldiers. I’ve buried so many men, but having watched Harold die, I have to say, as they did of the Christ, “He looked pretty good out there.”
I’m not speaking of Harold’s physical endurance. At one point in his life Harold played semi-pro baseball. He was a high school stand-out in several sports, especially basketball. I would expect Harold’s physical prowess to be a factor in his death, and not everyone dies in great pain or unconscious. That’s not what set Harold apart.
This past Sunday I was called to the hospital because Harold was dying. Like the Roman soldiers in Hemingway’s play, I know the drill. The one dying is usually comatose, or barely able to respond. But I found Harold watching the Chiefs play football.
Of course, he immediately set aside the game and focused his attention on me. Again, Harold had stories to share. This time, how it was that he had come to be in that hospital bed. Again, he showed his love and his concern for others. He asked me how Roy and Rosemary Robl were. And had I seen Jim and Marilyn Sauber? He again spoke of his faith. “I think that the Lord is nearly ready for me.” And as I left, he said, with so much more ease than most men can muster, “I love you, Terry.” Like the Roman soldiers who watched so many men die, I have to say, seeing Harold pass, “He looked pretty good out there.”
I was back the next evening. This time I was sure that the Harold I knew would already be gone, having slipped beneath the pain and the morphine. Father Paschal met me in the hospital parking lot. He had just left Harold’s side, having prayed the Church’s ancient prayers of commendation for the dying. “Harold’s awake and still himself,” he said.
Indeed, he was. There were still stories to tell. This time of seeing his beloved Jean and Nathan, right there in the room with him. And there was still humor to be shared. “Terry, let’s go camping tonight, just like the old days.” When I was a boy scout, Harold, who loved fishing and hunting and camping, was one of our troop leaders.
Most of all, there was still a vibrant faith, ready to offer testimony. “I’m going to Jesus. I hope he receives me. I’ve tried to live my life so that he will.” Again, in the words of those Roman soldiers, accustomed to seeing men die, I can’t help but to say of the man I watched die, “Harold looked pretty good out there.”
Hemmingway’s point, which is drawn directly from the gospels, is that you can’t die well if you’ve not lived that way. Conversely, how we live determines how we will die. Why, because how we live forges who we are when death comes for us.
We read in the Book of Wisdom:
Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,
Because God tried them
And found them worthy of himself.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
And as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself (3: 5-6).
Like so many of his generation, Harold grew up only a notch or two above poverty. And like his father before him, he had to pick up and move to find work. The list of jobs Harold held in his life is long and varied. A self-taught engineer, Harold mastered every trade he took up—oil man, salesman, electrician, butcher, custodian—because that’s what a man does to provide for his family. Harold did it because that’s what the Lord had given him to do.
And he did it in a way that gave life. Of course, Harold’s work gave life to the family for whom he had to provide. But it also gave life to those who encountered him, whether at work or volunteering as a scout master or a firefighter. It’s no wonder that, as he lay dying “Harold looked pretty good out there.” As he lived and worked all these years among us, “Harold looked pretty good out there.”
Now we come to Eucharist. As Catholics we celebrate the Mass in the face of death because it is the life and the death of Christ Jesus, recreated for us. We never repeat our baptisms, because in them we were given to Christ and claimed by him, once for all.
Are you not aware
that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? (Rom 6: 3)
But we come to Eucharist repeatedly during our lives until we get it right, until we perfectly imitate the Lord Jesus, “who looked pretty good out there.”
Harold came to Mass faithfully. He received his Eucharistic Lord, at home and in the hospital, faithfully. And so it was that, in the last months of his life, Harold could bury his beloved son and wife and, when the time of his own death finally came, the great trial every man must face, Harold “looked pretty good out there.”
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