I recently was humbled to be able to speak at the funeral of a friend of mine who left this world too soon. A few people have been asking for the text so I thought I’d go ahead and put it here.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Father Michael Rennier, a Catholic priest and vice-rector of the Oratory of Ss. Gregory and Augustine in Richmond Heights. But the reason I’m speaking is that I knew Seth Bauer since childhood. We grew up together at St. Louis Family Church and then were in college together. I’ve know the Bauer family my whole life. I cannot say how humbled I am to be allowed to speak about Seth today and what he has meant to me and to so many others, the kind of man he was and the goodness he brought into the world. Thank you, Natalie, and thank you Bauers and the rest of his family for extending the invitation.
Although life gets busy and our families take priority, whenever I managed to see Seth it was like we’d never been apart, and it’s best to begin simply by saying that I would trade almost anything to see him just one more time. I want to be clear with you all that it is necessary and healthy for us to be sad and to miss him while at the same time maintaining our Christian hope that we will see him again. Grief is a sign of our love, and so we find ourselves caught in the crux of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, that space in which we live as human beings, that place of pilgrimage to our destiny which is already here but not yet, the love that is growing and the victory that is arriving but which is experienced by us in varied ways, including, as Our Lord teaches in the beatitudes, the blessing that is grief. All I can say, all I can be assured of in moments like this, is that the love of Christ is growing and gaining form and taking wing. The redemption of all things is just that, the redemption of all things, the folding of even suffering and death into his divine love.
What was it like to grow up with Seth? We met in youth group and ended up spending a lot of time together, the Bauers and the Renniers. We liked each other, of course, and laughed a lot, hung out as teenagers will doing a whole lot of nothing. We crashed at each other’s houses, acted irresponsibly, and probably cause our parents no end of frustration. Seth came from an exotic place called Troy, which as far as I could tell was in the middle of nowhere and full of heroic farmers and woodsmen. Tall tales arose from that Missouri wilderness of Seth chasing down a deer on foot and other such feats of strength. He was the kind of guy who would field dress a deer and then pick a flower for his wife. He would materialize at church and youth group and hang around. He loved to be around and was always in the mix when it came to projects and charitable work at church. He was always around for our spiritual retreats and I remember spending a long time talking with him while we sat by the lake in the late summer sun, we discussed the hopes and dreams that teenage boys have but are so often hesitant to share with anyone. Seth and I never had that problem.
You see, we worked the fields of Rombachs pumpkin patch all summer. Out there in the swampy stifling heat of the Missouri River valley, working in that mineral-rich dirt, bearing up under the glare of high-noon, attuning ourselves to the slow pace of land and sky, you get to know a man. We talked about everything. We fought. He smeared rotten tomatoes in my brother’s face. We reconciled. We became brothers. Later, we sealed the deal by throwing my younger brother into the pond against his will.
Even when life takes you away for a time, as it did when I ended up in New England for a decade, you never cease to be brothers. And I think it’s important to say that our sense of brotherhood, and more widely speaking the real brotherhood, sonship, fatherhood, and spousal unity he had with you his family and with everyone else here who recognizes the reality I’m trying to express, while certainly this brotherhood is a natural good, it is more than that. It is the bond inherent in the Body of Christ, which goes deeper than perhaps any of us suspect, this kinship we have in the mystical communion of saints. It’s why we are here today, not merely for the purpose of remembering Seth as someone we loved and will miss tremendously, but we are here to share love and remain in solidarity with him, to pray for him so he can pray for us because not even death can separate us. For those who are in Christ, not ever. The mystical Body we sketch out here on earth is a true sign of the transformed and triumphant Body of Christ.
When Seth and I went to college, he was there in the room just down the hall. There were quite a few of us in that dorm who had grown up together and it was a time in our lives. We were making little decisions every day about our future. Back then, I had this idea that in order for God to love me I needed to become this really amazing pastor, do great noteworthy things that would be proof of success, have respect, preach profound sermons, that sort of thing. Because of that misconception, I spiraled through a spiritual crisis. I knew I wasn’t capable of any of those things, those grand large accomplishments. It almost felt unfair. But the whole time, Seth was there: positive, thoughtful, open-hearted. Perhaps most of all he empathized, knowing that even if he couldn’t fix me, he could offer me his consistent steady friendship. He always made me feel heard, and probably suffered through many long melancholic rants that I inflicted upon him. He probably didn’t know how much it meant to me. He probably just thought those were small gifts, if he thought of them as gifts at all. I suspect that for him it was simply what a friend does for another friend. But his friendship was extremely important to me and I think it’s not too much to say that he’s one of the people who shaped me into who I am, for better or worse, but the better part is that God was able to find me in the midst of the mess I was making of my spiritual life, to rescue me and give me my vocation to pray each and every day at the altar of God. This, for me, means everything. It’s what Seth has meant to me. I know that this same patience, generosity, and kindness is recognizable instantly to anyone who knew him. The impact he had on our lives is writ large here today, his beautiful precious family, his friends.
There’s a story that St. Catherine of Sienna once told about how while in prayer she met Christ in a vision. Jesus asks her, “My beloved, do you know why I love you?” St Catherine, I think, has the correct answer, which is that we don’t really understand why God loves us, we certainly haven’t earned it, we just know that he does because it pleases him to love us. So Our Lord continues, “I’ll tell you. If I cease to love you, you will be nothing; you will be incapable of anything good. Now you see why I have to love you.” St. Catherine, in that bold way she has, replies, “I would like to love you like that.” But she realizes that what she has said is impossible, that her love can never match the perfect love of Christ, so she says, “This is not fair. You can love me with great love, and I can only love you with small love.”
We try our hardest. We do our best, but the one big perfect love seems beyond our reach. We live, we work, maybe marry and have children, go to church, we have our hobbies and friendships and quietly live out our days. But these decisions, these small daily decisions for the good, they are the stuff of which love is made. It seems to me that all our loves, large or small, are hints and symbols, a secret language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us, these inscriptions of love are the embodiment of the beautiful, the good, the true, bodies mysteriously connected to another body entirely, the Heavenly body of saints with Christ as our head, and through those small loves we snatch a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us, cast by a light which passes understanding.
Life is not what people suppose it is. It only makes sense if we view it upside down, just as Christ does when he flips the script during his sermon on the mount and at the Cross, wherein he turns death into victory. The great is buried in the small, and lives like the one Seth led, full of grace and virtue and in the light of Our Lord’s redemptive love, it seems to me that lives such as these are full of greatness.
Returning to the story of St. Catherine. Our Lord says to her, “I have made it possible for you to love me with great love. I have placed your neighbor at your side. Whatever you do to him, I will consider it as being done to me.” Catherine, full of joy, went running to care for the sick in the hospital, thinking that even in her small, daily acts of kindness, “Now I can love Jesus with great love.”
This is how we become great, by uniting our efforts to the work of the Cross. We cannot earn Heaven on our own, we cannot be perfect. We are fragile, but when we give Jesus our best, accept his grace, and allow him to love us, our efforts gain eternal value. Rest in that. Rest in the love of Christ, because I know, by faith, that he has drawn our brother close to himself, right up next to his Sacred Heart, our Savior who holds our falling infinitely softly in his hands.
Pondus Meum Amor Meus 