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In looking at Michael’s life, we stand before the mystery of a life lived in Christ.
I didn’t know Michael well, but I think if I read every diary and every letter he ever wrote and was very close to him, he would still be a mystery to me. Maybe even spouses say that about each other. It’s part of the beauty and complexity of our human make-up. So in talking about him, I am feeling around the fringes of a mystery.
I saw Michael as a man of praise who deeply loved the Lord. I remember sometimes seeing him walking across the yard doing a little shuffle with his arms out. It took me a while to figure it out.
He was praising God. Praise was breaking forth from him and somehow it was expressed in his body that way. That was a beautiful thing, that his heart could break forth in praise at any given moment.
I saw him as a man profoundly smitten and transformed by the Holy Spirit through the Charismatic Renewal. I never saw quotes from his diary, but I saw that in him.
But maybe his greatest gift in the Spirit went way beyond praise and prophesy and tongues: his love for Christ in the Eucharist.
In Mike I saw a man in love with this Living Bread come down from heaven. I can’t prove that, but I saw it every time I gave him Communion.
What convinces me of it is simple; it was the look in his eyes. Not 90% of the time—every time. Of course, I saw reverence and faith; he must have had deep reverence and faith. But what I saw was something more—something different. I saw desire. I saw intimate love.
Something in me wanted to shield my eyes as if I was seeing something too private. Something else just wanted to take it into myself to bolster my own faith.
I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that I saw that in Michael, that intimate desire in him every time I brought him the Eucharist. I saw that in him as a thing of great beauty.
Mostly my reaction was to want to thank the Lord for this man and his faith. It was something the people around him didn’t see—only the priests.
Excerpted from the homily at Michael’s funeral Mass
