25 SEPTEMBER 2023
A funeral Mass was celebrated for James (Jimmy) Holopirek at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Timken by his pastor, Father Stephen Dabanka. Also present were Fathers Paschal Klein, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Ness City and Father Terrance Klein, pastor of Saint Joseph Joseph in Ellinwood. Father Terrance, Jim's first cousin, preached the funeral homily.
Also in attendance were many members of the local Timken Volunteer Fire Department, which Jim served for many years as a volunteer and as fire chief.
Go Rest High On That Mountain |
Jim Holopirek |
Terrance Klein |
25.IX.2023 Holy Trinity |
Isaiah 25: 6a, 7-9 Romans 8: 31b-35, 37-39 Matthew 11 25-30
Life finds its meaning in death. Until death closes our lives, they’re open-ended, stories still being written. It’s only when a man’s life is closed that we can see it for what it was, can make some sort of final assessment of what it meant.
Whether a man die young or old, whether we would call his life happy or sad—and aren’t they all some mixture of the two?—in death all lives are revealed as essentially incomplete. The happy man, the accomplished man, the rich man vanishes from our eyes. The poor man, the man found wanting, the wounded man does as well.
It's death that ultimately reveals our need for a savior. Sparkling and sad songs both fall silent. Blessed and burdened men both go down into the earth. If death is the end, if death is all that awaits us, then joyful and jilted lives both appear quite senseless. What’s the sound of satisfaction or sorrow compared to an eternity of silence?
Yet when a young man dies, we’re stung by the seeming injustice. The song hasn’t been fully sung. The story still had twists and turns. There was still so much yet to do, perhaps so much that still needed to be said. When your heart is broken, as ours are today, you naturally see the world itself as a sad, soulless, and solitary place.
We look at Jim’s life, and we see the loss, the pain, the constant struggle. Jim never married. He might have if Sharon hadn’t been killed in a car crash. The first loves of Jim’s life remained his most important, but Jim had to bury his father and mother, go on in life without their daily love, and without the consolation that a spouse and children offer most of us when we lose a parent.
Addictions are illnesses, but like so many diseases, they find their entrance into the body and the psyche by way of daily habits and concrete experiences. Seeing the sorrow and sickness that enveloped his life, the words Vince Gill penned seem to speak so poignantly of Jim.
I know your life
On earth was troubled
And only you could know the pain
You weren't afraid to face the devil
You were no stranger to the rain.
So how can we not, even in this moment of great loss, not feel a sense of relief that one man’s Calvary has finally closed, that the Lord has come to carry home a soul that suffered so?
Go rest high on that mountain
Son your work on earth is done
Go to heaven a-shoutin'
Love for the Father and the Son.
As Catholics, we come to Eucharist in the face of death to remember who we are. We are the beloved of the Father, those whom he loves too much to abandon to sin and death. For love of us, the Son embraced death itself and carried us back into life, back to the bosom of the Father. The Eucharist is our well spring of life, of joy, of meaning itself. So of course, in the face of death, we come to the altar of the Lamb to verse ourselves again in resurrected life.
Here we remember that Jim’s life was not wasted, nor can it be defined by sorrow and loss. This is a man who loved deeply. Sadly, in this world, under the reign of sin, they are often the ones who suffer most. We remember Jim’s smile, his willingness to serve and to volunteer. We can’t help but imagine that heaven rejoices to see our Jim, that those who dwell in the New Jerusalem find delight in his presence.
Oh, how we cried the day you left us
We gathered 'round your grave to grieve
Wish I could see the angels faces
When they hear your sweet voice sing.
Each life finds its meaning in death when the story’s been fully told. And we believe that every life ultimately finds its deepest meaning in the death and the resurrection of one man, Jesus the Christ. His story explains ours, especially those that challenge easy explanations.
What do we learn in the story of our Christ? That the Father is pure love, nothing but love. He pours out himself so completely into the Son, so that the Son himself is nothing but the love of the Father. They are so one in love, so much in love, that they breathe forth the Spirit who is himself love.
It is the love of the Father that enters our world, under the reign of sin, to die upon the cross in the person of the Son. Both hearts break at Calvary, that of the Father and Son. Both are held together only by the silent bond of the Spirit, who carries the Son back into life.
In the end, our lives, however limited they are, mirror this canticle of the universe, this song of love come looking for the lost, the ballad of the rejected one who becomes the redeemer of all. That’s the song into which Jim was baptized. That’s the song he takes up now. The life he lived, the love he shared with us, give witness to it.
Go rest high on that mountain
Son your work on earth is done
Go to heaven a-shoutin’
Love for the Father and the Son.
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