Religion

THOMAS LYNCH

f wrath and tears . Jace o d 00

d th15 P J-{orror of the sha e, eeY 5 but the e of the years ,oorfl h rnenac f 'd " d yet t e II find rne una ra1 . t,.n nd sha 1 ' finds, a

h w strait the gate, atters not ?h punishments the scroll,

It rf1 r ed wit uoW cha g r of rny fate: ri he maste I laf11 1 ·nofrnysou. he capta1 pfllt

"Passed On"

THOMAS LYNCH

"Passed On"

Thomas Lynch grew up in Michigan, where his father ran a funeral home. He also became an undertaker, work he has found both significant and meaningful. In addition to this work, he writes poems and essays filled with wisdom about the human condition gleaned from his years of dealing with the dead and those who mourn for them . His books include The Un- dertaking; Still Life in Milford; and Bodies in Motion and at Rest. He now spends part of each year in Ireland in a cottage once inhabited by his grandparents.

The reading below could have been included in several different parts of this book. It uses the vocabulary of vocation. It gives us a glimpse into a family that balances life with work. It shows how one boy, and then many of his descendants, chose the work they would do. It is included here be- cause Lynch brings the vocational choice about which he is writing around to a conclusion that gives one important answer to the question of whether we can control what we shall do and become. As his mother puts it, "God works in strange ways." To what extent does Lynch attribute the

Frorn Chri · sllan Century, July 13, 2004, p. 29.

435

6 Can / Control What I Shall Do and Bee QUESTIONS • . ome?

G d ) What other factors beyond his own control shap d .

outcome to O • e h,s father's choice, and his own?

=====

h f the new priest among his people is an old one. "First S 1 The p oto o h d . . th . h o e111 . • 't reads in white an pnnt m e top ng t corner .. f n

Htgh Mass, t 1· "S J h , Ch h ' o R.ev P

L ch • and on the next me, t. o n s urc , Jacks . . Thomas · yn · . ,, , bl k d h' on, ~heh • It is a panoramic, 17 x 7 ac -an -w 1te glossy ·, June 10, 1934. . k d h . ·

U the St eps in the middle bac groun at t e archmg doorw poo ~~ili

church stands the celebrant, flanked by deacon a~d sub deacon, vested t lb d ch

asubles with two cassocked and surphced men off 10 th . n a s an , d e nght who must have been the altar servers on the ay. They are surrounded b crescent of family and well-wishers, five dozen or more, the front / a seated on folding chairs in the foreground, all posed, looking at the ph ow rap her with that same grin folks get on their faces when they say, "Chee;~~g-

Thomas P. Lynch is two months shy of his 30th birthday. Thou h. h survived the Spanish flu !n 1918, ~e's been sickly and susceptible ever !ince~ He has been to seminary m Detrmt, but because he was croupy and tubercu- lar, his archbishop sent him to Denver and then Santa Fe to finish his train- ing in those high, dry western climates. He has come home at long last, full fledged, anointed and ordained, to say a solemn high mass for his people!_ the family and neighbors of his childhood. He will die in two years of influ- enza and pneumonia, ten days short of his 32nd birthday.

In front of him, smack in the middle of this assemblage, seated at the right hand of my grandfather, is my father, the priest's only nephew. It is the second Sunday in June, the middle of the Great Depression and my father is ten years old, the only young boy in the frame, dressed in saddle shoes, knee britches, white shirt and tie, looking for all the world like his grandson, my eldest boy, when he was ten.

Father Lynch will be stationed in Taos, New Mexico, at Neutral Senora de Guadalupe. He will marry and bury and baptize and teach young Apache and Hispanic children how to play baseball and avoid the deadly sins. After two years his health will turn and he'll be taken to Santa Fe where, after three days in St. Vincent's Sanatorium, he will die on July 31, 1936. His body will be sent home in a box by train to Jackson, Michigan, where the people in this photo will follow him back into this church for the funeral mass and out to St. John's Cemetery where he'll be buried next to his father and mother.

When his brother, my grandfather, E. J. Lynch, goes to the funeral home to organize the local obsequies, he takes my father, now 12 years old, along

436

THOMAS LYNCH • "P assed On•

·de While the men talk, the boy wa d the fl · n ers thro h for kes it to the basement where he see h' ug the old h •1 he 111a . 1· • 1 s 1s uncl h ouse u u ed in his 1turg1ca vestments by I e, t e dead p . n-. dress . d . h . wo men i h· nest, be. ,ng and gray-stnpe ties. T ey hft the priest's bod . n s lrtsleeves, blac siackS ·n the corner of the casket lid and turn I fl Y tnto a casket, pla / biretta th doorway, watching. o tnd the young boy cte ts . int e . , sand- ing . to this moment m the first week of A It 1s ugust 19 6 nt of Desnoyer Funeral Home in Jacks M' . 3 , standing in th baserne h' d . . b on, tch1gan h e . I tways trace 1s ec1s1on to ecome a funeral d· • t at my father WI! a . h .. h ld trector "I knew ng t away, e wou always recount it " h .

meant to do." , t at was the thing I was Why rve often wondered, did he not decide to b . ' d · e a pnestl B . i r my brothers an my sisters, we're pleased he h h · ut speak-ing O c ose t e course in life he did. . In the next ten years my father will play right tackle 1 h

h l l d · ort eSt Franci

d S les High Sc oo , earn to nve a car, fall in love w'th h · s e a 1· . h . I t e red-headed rnary O'Hara, en 1st m t e Manne Corps and spenH . Rose . 1. h hi our years m the

S Ut h Pacific shootmg a 1g t mac ne gun at Japanese foot sold' H . o . h ters. ewdl

turn a skinny and malarial ero, to Detroit wed Rosemary 11 . re , ' , enro m mor~ tuary school at :"'ayne State University and go to work for a local funeral home. He promises his n~w bnde that someday, just wait and see, they'll have a funeral home of their own, a house in the suburbs, "and maybe a cou- ple of junior partners!" Within two months she is pregnant with the first of nine children.

Two generations later, their grandsons and granddaughters are graduat- ing from mortuary school and joining the family ftrm of funeral directors that operates five mortuaries in the suburbs of Detroit, serving more than a thousand families a year. They trace their calling to their parents. Their par- ents trace their calling to their father, who traced his calling to the priest in this photo, who died young and was sent home to Michigan and prepared for burial. Such are the oddities of chance and happenstance. Or such are the workings of the will of God. ·

Lately I've been thinking about vocations - the calling we were always told to listen for - that would tell us what God had in mind for us. I wonder if the young priest heard it, or my father, or if, out of the ordinary sile~ce, they discerned by faith just what it was God wanted them to do. In this, 1

think we are fellow pilgrims, we sometimes doubting Thomas's who won- der still, but live our lives by faith .

"All things work together toward some good" is what St. Paul has to say about such things. "God works in strange ways; my mother said.

437