“In his funeral Mass plan, David made this remark. It was written out: ‘I think of my priesthood ordination, how simple it was at Bremen St. Mary Church on May 27, 1974. I would like my funeral to be simple as well. The homily should be brief. All my hope is in God’s mercy and that He will judge me worthy of His eternal life.’
‘“All my hope is in God’s mercy and that He will judge me worthy of His eternal life.’ These last words should be echoing from each of us in our lives of faith.
“I always did what David wanted, unless of course I didn’t want to. When he was assigned to Corpus Christi Church in Columbus, it was not uncommon for Msgr. Bill Johnson, the pastor there, to leave a note on his door saying, ‘Say, Dave. Can you take the early Mass in the morning?’ Often in our conversation, I would say to David, ‘Say, Dave’ and he would say ‘Yes, Mark?’ and I would go on. So, David, I don’t know if this homily will be all that brief. If not, you need to just get over it.
“Our first reading comes from the Book of Wisdom. ‘The souls of the just are in the hands of God. … They seemed in the view of the foolish (that is, in the view of those who cannot see beyond the present moment) to be dead, and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us utter destruction.’
“Well, we all know that death is an affliction. It certainly is a destruction. But is not an utter affliction or an utter destruction. The author goes on to say ‘But they are in peace. Their hope is full of immortality.’ “You see, for God to create the beauty of a human life, for this human life to come to know he or she was created in love, made for love – for this person created by God to learn to love others and be loved by others – well, that love, my friends, runs deep, too deep to just be over with when death occurs.
“We are made by God to be immortal, to have a relationship with God that begins really with our conception, continues with our baptism and never ends.
“David believed this. Every Sunday, he led the assembly gathered at Mass in the Creed, where we all profess ‘I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’ He did look forward to the life of the world to come.
“David got the message that he was made for love. He decided to live that love out as a priest serving God’s people. He used his own gifts to connect with people. David was a rather quiet and gentle man, but still waters often run deep. When he did get upset, it didn’t seem to last long.
“One of his greatest gifts in ministry was his ability to connect with people one on one. He would accompany them, as Pope Francis has said: ‘We are to accompany people where they are.’ David was good at that.
“Whether it be in pastoral counseling or in the Sacrament of Penance, in the kitchen preparing a meal for friends – he loved to cook – his welcoming and hospitable nature always came out. He was very good with people one on one and in small gatherings.
“David loved Christmas. He would always put up several trees and decorations which would be up way past the Christmas season. I’m the opposite, I put up very little. But he lived for Christmas.
“Last week, I came across a reflection on the Epiphany by St. Leo the Great from the Fifth Century. He wrote: ‘In the Magi, we see all the peoples of the world begin to come to their God and Savior. We are among the instruments by which the God of the universe becomes the God of all peoples of the earth. …
‘“We are invited to celebrate this day as the day of our first fruits. It is the day that brings to mind our initial call. We are to do this with spiritual joy. What I call to your attention is that this very joy is the primary instrument by which you are to accomplish this great mission. If you but live this joy, you will draw more and more people to the Lord. All want to share joy.’
“Father David Funk was a man of joy. He brought it to others and received it from others. He indeed drew many of us closer to the Lord.
“I met Father Funk when he was associate pastor of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal parish over on Refugee Road. I was assigned there as a deacon for six months. That’s what we did back then. I was a few days late for health reasons. I started early to fall apart, when I was a deacon.
“Father John Ryan was pastor. On my first night there after dinner, Dave had me come out to the back patio. It was the Third of July. I went in the house and Father Ryan said, ‘Do you have one of those sparkler things?’ Dave had two bags of fireworks. I told him it was illegal to set them off in the city and he said, ‘You need to lighten up.’
“I thought, ‘This is my first night. What have I gotten into?’ I think he and Father Ryan had gotten the memo that I was wound rather tight. They did their best in those six months to unwind me and they succeeded, at least to some degree.
“The day I was ordained – June 11, 1983 – I spent the night in the rectory there. That morning, I said to Dave, ‘What am I getting into?’ He said, ‘This is why you became a priest. Relax.’
“Dave and I became great friends through the years. We often took days off together, as well as some vacations. He had a love for antique stores and art. I did not. I’d go through an antique store in 10 minutes. Dave took an hour and a half. But he would drag me along and over the years, I actually started to develop similar interests. One day I said I was going to go trapshooting and he said, ‘Why would you do a thing like that?’ I told him, ‘Well, I like it. I like trapshooting.’ I never converted Dave to it.
“For many years, we would go on retreat at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsameni near Bardstown, Kentucky; in fact, we were to go again in just a couple of weeks. We thoroughly enjoyed our time praying with the monks and going out occasionally to a decent restaurant – you don’t go to a Trappist abbey for the food. Once in a while we would even find ourselves touring a distillery or two.
“Dave was a good priest to talk to about situations you were not sure how to handle pastorally. He read a lot of books on church history and on Vatican Council II. In fact, recently he told me he had purchased a book for me – ‘While I Breathe, I Hope: A Mystagogy of Dying’ by Richard Gaillardetz, a theologian at Boston College. I had purchased the same book for him, so we gave the books to others. Richard was 90 and was dying of pancreatic cancer and this was his last book. Richard had written a lot about Vatican Council II. Little did either of us know how timely this book was.
“In all of this, David was joyful and insightful. His brother Jim said to me that Dave was as good a brother as he was a priest, that he was a model for us all. His brother Tom said he was a true disciple of Christ. He knew joy and brought the joy of Christ to so many. For that we are grateful. I have received calls from several priests this week. The message was always the same: ‘Dave was always kind to me.’
“The Gospel passage today comes from the Bread of Life discourse in John’s Gospel. Jesus came to do the Father’s will. And what is that will? That He should not lose anything of what the Father gave Him, but that He should raise it on the last day, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life and be raised on the last day.
“Right before this passage, Jesus says ‘I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst.’ Our faith in Jesus is a coming to Him, an active movement for Him. The Jewish people believed that God’s greatest gift was His law, His word of wisdom, and now Jesus identifies Himself with this revealed wisdom of God. His word is the Bread of Life; His person is the Bread of Life; His body broken in the Eucharist is the Bread of Life.
“The center of our lives as Catholics is the Eucharist. It is the center of every priest’s life. David was never more happy than when he was presiding at the Eucharist, breaking open this Bread of Life in his preaching and his prayerful style, partaking of the Lord’s body and blood with those gathered.
“David did his part as priest for almost 51 years to see that what the Father had given the Son would not be lost. He couldn’t just sit at Gethsameni. He had to concelebrate from where he was seated, like many other priests.
“In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul talks about his experience of mystery. A summary of this passage appears on David’s various anniversary cards and on the holy card you received today: ‘As God’s ministers we must be patient in times of affliction, be pure-minded, enlightened, forgiving, relying on the Holy Spirit and sincere love, They call us deceivers and we tell the truth – sad men and we rejoice continually; disinherited and the world is ours.’
“Paul could not have experienced real life in ministry any better. This passage spoke to David of his own experience of priestly ministry. He, like all of us, was called to grow in patience many times. He, like all of us, worked at keeping his mind fixed on Christ Jesus. He, like all of us, had to depend on the Holy Spirit’s power to grow in forgiveness and love.
“When we live this way, people can call us what they want, but we know we are telling the truth. People can say we are sad, but we see ourselves as rejoicing continually. People can call us disinherited, as having nothing, and yet in our minds, the world is ours, we possess all things. In other words, people can say what they want, but we know to whom we belong and who we serve. David truly knew to whom he belonged and who he served and he taught many of us that same truth.
“David, you said, ‘All my hope is in God’s mercy and that He will judge me worthy of His eternal life.’ That is our hope for you as well. Thank you for your gift of priesthood. Thank you for the many men you helped along the way to their priesthood. Thank you for your gift of friendship. Thank you to Dave’s family for giving such a good man to the Church of Columbus.
“Thank you to Father Dave Young, Father Patrick (Watikha) and the other priests he has lived with here at St. Pius and others who have helped David in recent months with his declining health – his friend Mark Rowlands, brother priests and friends of David. A special thanks to David’s good friend Father Edmund Hussey, with whom he often went to Gethsameni and art shows and who assisted David at St. Agatha Parish for many years.
‘“Eternal life does not merely mean a life that lasts forever, but rather a new quality of existence fully immersed in God’s love, which frees us from evil and death and places us in never-ending communion with all of our brothers and sisters who share in the same love’ – a quote from Benedict XVI.
“David, we pray you are truly immersed in God’s love. We pray for you and we count on you to continue praying for us, and in that prayer going back and forth, there is much healing and there is the presence of God. Rest in peace, my brother.”