8 NOVEMBER 2023
Father Terrance Klein celebrated a Mass of Christian Burial for longtime parishioner, Marion Bahr at Immaculate Conception Church.
Marion's Interior Life |
Funeral of Marion Bahr |
Fr Terrance Klein |
8.XI.2023 |
Wisdom 3: 1-6, 9 Revelation 21: 1-5a, 6b-7 John 17: 24-26
This is the altar, where Marion worshipped. It’s not far from the one where he was baptized at Saint Ann’s in Olmitz. Even closer to the one at Holy Family in Odin, where he married Ann on May 18th, 1953. And there was a time, as he served in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict, when Marion would have known many altars, some of them, perhaps makeshift. But for so many decades, this was the altar of God that Marion so faithfully frequented. Most of us can point out the pew where he sat, week after week, and so often, weekdays as well.
In his final years, Marion came to this church every day, when no one else was present save the Lord Jesus and his saints. There’s a passage in that great classic of Catholic spirituality, The Imitation of Christ¸ which speaks so accurately of Marion’s interior life, the life he lived alone with his Lord.
Blessed is he who appreciates what it is to love Jesus and who despises himself for the sake of Jesus. Give up all other love for His, since He wishes to be loved alone above all things.
Affection for creatures is deceitful and inconstant, but the love of Jesus is true and enduring. He who clings to a creature will fall with its frailty, but he who gives himself to Jesus will ever be strengthened.
Love Him, then; keep Him as a friend. He will not leave you as others do, or let you suffer lasting death. Sometime, whether you will or not, you will have to part with everything. Cling, therefore, to Jesus in life and death; trust yourself to the glory of Him who alone can help you when all others fail.
Your Beloved is such that He will not accept what belongs to another—He wants your heart for Himself alone, to be enthroned therein as King in His own right. If you but knew how to free yourself entirely from all creatures, Jesus would gladly dwell within you.
How do I know that this passage accurately describes Marion’s interior life? Even if Marion might not have said so himself? Because he wouldn’t have been alone so often, in the silence of this church, if Marion were not with his Lord. Like all other creatures, we go where we are fed.
Words said at the end of a man’s life cannot do it justice. How can they capture all the love and care that Marion gave to his family? How can words explain his significance to them and to the family he called his parish? Marion himself was a man of few words, especially in his last years. But Marion was always a man who clung to that Living Word, the one whom the Father spoke into our midst, the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's hard to say whom dementia hurts the most, the one diagnosed or those who love him. I know that when I went to Countryside Living to see Marion, if I didn’t find him there, I encountered an entire community of residents worried about him. “Chastised a little,” as Wisdom says, Marion was living out that small paragraph from The Imitation of Christ.
Love Him, then; keep Him as a friend. He will not leave you as others do, or let you suffer lasting death. Sometime, whether you will or not, you will have to part with everything. Cling, therefore, to Jesus in life and death; trust yourself to the glory of Him who alone can help you when all others fail.
God did indeed ask much of Marion. His illness caused him to part with most everything. But Marion was still there, and he was never separated from Jesus.
I must confess a great grace. Every time I visited Marion, the Lord brought him back, for a time, from the silence. Marion defied what I had been told to expect. He recognized me, told me stories about his life and about his children. We were always able to celebrate the sacraments. Marion would insist that he was fine, even blessed by the kindness of others. He always thanked me.
Those graced exits from silence say nothing about me. They say everything about the Lord Jesus whom Marion long ago befriended and took to himself.
Here we are again, at this altar Marion knew so well. May Marion’s family and his friends cherish the years before the illness but let them also take great comfort, knowing that even as Marion slipped into silence, he entered even more deeply into the life of the Lord Jesus.
Now, having passed beyond our sight, Marion enters a life so much richer than we can imagine. He is with Ann, his parents and siblings, those we call the communion of saints. United with his Lord, he sees and understands so much more than we do. The brief days of suffering and silence are past.
I’ll close with one more passage from The Imitation. It describes the life Marion now lives, and it instructs us about how, someday, to share the same.
What you do, do well. Work faithfully in My vineyard. I will be your reward. Write, read, sing, mourn, keep silence, pray, and bear hardships like a man. Eternal life is worth all these and greater battles. Peace will come on a day which is known to the Lord, and then there shall be no day or night as at present but perpetual light, infinite brightness, lasting peace, and safe repose. Then you will not say: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” nor will you cry: “Woe is me, because my sojourn is prolonged.” For then death will be banished, and there will be health unfailing. There will be no anxiety then, but blessed joy and sweet, noble companionship.
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