5 APRIL 2025
A well-attended funeral Mass was celebrated for Linda Kasselman by her pastor, Father Terrance Klein. A vigil in the church preceded it the night before.
From the obituary:
Linda Pauline Kasselman, 71, went to her eternal home April 1, 2025. She was born to Warren and Nadine Schartz on January 11, 1954, in Great Bend, Kansas. Linda was raised the daughter of a farmer. She was a genuine farm girl, strong and smart. She treasured simple things like a beautiful sunrise, sunset, or a blooming flower brought her joy.
Linda’s childhood was filled with driving tractors, swathers, or wheat trucks. She had a gift for nurturing and training animals. Linda understood and loved nature. She was skilled at bringing the sick or hurt animals back to health; she would be up at all hours taking extraordinary measures to care for them.
On July 20, 1973, she married Rick Kasselman. They loved and were devoted to each other for over 51 years. Together, they remodeled and improved Linda’s childhood home and built a successful business. Linda always had a beautiful garden and took great pride in her yard and pond, which is still enjoyed by all who visit their home. She was a hard worker, an avid gardener and a skilled cook. While Linda had the opportunity to travel, she always preferred to be home.
Together, Rick and Linda raised two children (Amy and Bryan) and delighted in two grandchildren (Hayden and Rylen). Linda devoted her life to her family and was known to drop everything for her kids and grandkids. She loved taking her kids swimming, bike riding and horseback riding after the chores for the day were done. She spoiled her grandkids and loved them deeply, she loved taking them on adventures, no chores required.
She taught her family how to care for others, to love, and to forgive. She demonstrated a life of service to others, consideration of other’s feelings, and careful words. In death, she taught them how to let go and to love each other forever. She was always there when she was needed and will always be a part of their best memories.
Her most esteemed titles and accomplishments, the noteworthy ones: Child of God, wife, mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, and friend. We are so blessed to have been loved by her.
Linda was preceded in death by her brother, Duane, her mother Nadine, and her father Warren. She is missed and loved eternally by those she was taken from, her husband Rick; son Bryan, and daughter- in-law Kristin; daughter Amy Brown, son-in-law Ted Brown, and her grandchildren Hayden & Rylen Brown. Her brother Curtis Schartz (Lila), sister Debra Stickney (LeRoy), sister Brenda Birzer (Steve), and their respective families.
Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10:00 a.m., Saturday April 5, 2025, at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Ellinwood, with Father Terrance Klein presiding. Interment will follow at Lakin Comanche Cemetery in Ellinwood. Visitation will take place Friday, April 4, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Bryant Funeral Home then from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at St. Joseph Catholic Church with a Rosary and Vigil at 7:00 p.m. Memorials have been designated to Kans for Kids or St. Joseph Catholic Church, in care of Bryant Funeral Home, 1425 Patton Rd., Great Bend, KS 67530.
| Giving Thanks | Linda Kasselman |
| Fr Terrance Klein | St Joseph Church 5.IV.2025 |
Wisdom 3:1-6,9 1st Peter 4:7-11 John 17:24-26
We’re in pain, and we’re afraid. How can Rick, Bryan, Amy—all of Linda’s family—not feel a terrible loss when their loved one has been taken from them, not at the end of a long life but in a time when she was still so alive, so productive, so loving?
Linda was so considerate of others, always responding in a way that built them up rather than tore them down. She was a woman who taught her family the importance of hard work but also how to find joy in that work. Someone said last night that Linda was the hardest working woman she knew. Linda loved caring for and showing animals. She grew tomatoes, snap peas, okra, asparagus, and enough green beans to last Bryan a lifetime. Linda loved her irises, eventually sending off for new varieties, something she did again this winter, knowing she would never see their blossoms. Of course, most of all, Linda dearly loved her family.
That’s the pain. And the fear? Let’s be honest. Linda was hardworking, loving, and brave. How are the rest of us supposed to match that? We’re rightly afraid because we can’t imagine life without her. Rick, Linda worried for when this day would come. She knew what she meant to you, how much you treasured her. How do the rest of us strengthen you?
We’re coming upon Holy Week, when the Church revisits the events that led to our salvation in Christ. As we gather for Linda’s funeral, there’s an incongruity in Holy Thursday worth our pondering.
Jesus gathered his disciples, probably to celebrate Passover, on the night before he died. That doesn’t strike us as odd, because we’ve always heard as much. But it should.
The gospels make it clear that Jesus knew his arrest and execution were imminent. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see him rightly fearing for the morrow. How then does Christ gather his disciples to celebrate Israel’s great act of thanksgiving for her deliverance from slavery? On a human level, wouldn’t the disciples have understood, and, given the dangers they were in as well, have accepted Christ saying, “It’s just not safe. I’m so afraid. How has it come to this? What is there to celebrate?”
But that isn’t what Christ did. He celebrated Passover in a manner that, had his enemies known, would rightly have been used against him in the charge of blasphemy. Why? Because instead of giving thanks for the covenant, the law, and the land Christ gives thanks to his Father for what he is about to accomplish in the death of the Son. He takes a piece of bread and says, in the literal Aramaic, “This is me, for you.” He speaks of the chalice after the meal, the cup of thanksgiving, as his blood.
Put bluntly, Jesus calls the God of Israel his Father, and he gives thanks to God for himself, for his being handing over to death and through death to us. This anomaly is a great testament to the truth of the Gospel, for who would or could make up such a thing? In the face of his own death, Jesus thanks his Father not for the ancient covenant but for the new one, which can only come through the shedding of his blood.
That same incongruity is repeated in every funeral Mass, because the Mass is the Church’s great act of thanksgiving. The very word “Eucharist” means “to give thanks.” So, to be plainspoken, in the face of death the Church enjoins us to gather and to give thanks. Is that heartless? Is it indifference in the face of our suffering?
No. Christ never forgot why he came into the world. So, even when death was imminent, he gave thanks to his Father for what would soon be accomplished. We give thanks in every Eucharist because the Father gave us Jesus and his sacrificial death. And we give thanks at this Eucharist because the Father gave us Linda.
She didn’t have to be. Indeed, Linda exists—for she continues to live before the Lord—because the Father dreamt of her before the mountains were set in place or the stars hung in the sky. God created her, redeemed her, and God calls her to himself. We must give thanks not only for Linda’s origin in God but also for her destiny in him.
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said:
“Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me
before the foundation of the world (Jn 17: 24).
And we must give thanks as well for the way in which Linda died. Saint John of the Cross, and many another saint, have said that a grateful heart is the great proof of holiness. They only echo what we’ve already seen in the night before he died. Yes, Christ was afraid, but he embraced what would come with gratitude. And we’re grateful that among the many graces God granted Linda, a beautiful death was one of them. Linda died, like her Lord, loving and thanking God.
I suppose that all of us have given some thought, however unrealistic, to our own deaths. Would we have it be quick, without time for our loved one to prepare, or would we rather that it be a long and therefore demanding process. It makes no difference which we choose because it isn’t given for us to choose.
But in his goodness and mercy, God gave Linda what she considered just the right amount of time. The stunning diagnosis came out of nowhere, but Linda quickly decided that what mattered most would be the way she died. Yes, she would cling to life, but she immediately entrusted that struggle to the Lord.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
Those who trust in him shall understand truth,
and the faithful shall abide with him in love:
because grace and mercy are with his holy ones,
and his care is with the elect (Wis 3: 6,9).
Like her Lord before her, Linda began to tutor Rick and her family in what was to come. Like our Lord at the Last Supper she convinced them that they must trust in the Lord and in his goodness. Linda began to clutch and to pray her rosary, as though it were the torch that would lead her through the coming gloom.
I can only explain my own experience of Linda, my private conversations with her these past few months, with a passage from that Christian classic, The Confessions. Saint Augustine record a conversation with his mother Monica shortly before her death. It took place at Ostia, the port of Rome. Augustine wrote:
We were alone, conferring very intimately. Forgetting what lay in the past, and stretching out to what was ahead, we inquired between ourselves in the light of present truth, the Truth, which is yourself, what the eternal life of the saints would be like. Eye has not seen nor ear head nor human heart conceived it, yet with the mouth of our hearts wide open we panted thirstily for the celestial streams of your fountain, the fount of life which is with you, that bedewed from it according to our present capacity we might in our little measure think upon a thing so great (IX.10).
Yes, our hearts are broken. Yes, we’re afraid of what comes next, but still we give thanks for who Linda was to us and the great grace that God gave her when he brought her life to a close. He did it so tenderly, without great pain, and without enough time for Linda to become our tutor in the ways of God.
Linda went to the Father of Mercies, as her Lord did before her, giving thanks. How can we not strive to do the same? In his resurrection Christ revealed that death is not the end. When he rises from the dead Christ doesn’t seek to confound his skeptic or scourge his foes. No, renews his relationship with those whom he love.
The great truth the Church celebrates in what we call the communion of saints is that death removes our loved one from our eyes, but not us from theirs. Rick, Bryan, Amy, all you who loved her. She is with you. She loves you. She intercedes at the throne of the Lamb for you. So even though we hurt and fear, let us give thanks.
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