While I didn’t make the cut to experience the Basilica service in person, the procession to the cemetery around this time of year is etched in my memory. Very moving.
said it was very nice. Good to hear it was such a beautiful chance for all to say good bye.
was your brother ever known as Flounder?
As a high school seminarian at Holy Cross Seminary (which closed in May of 1967), we witnessed the close brotherhood shared by the order at the time of a passing, and we participated fully. We honored the deceased by always posting two seminarians (thirty-minute shifts) on the wooden kneeler before the casket, including throughout the night. Back then, the wakes were in Corby, making the morning transfer to the Basilica an easy process. The funeral masses were beautiful and well-attended. The subsequent march to the cemetery was always somber, even more so in frigid weather. There is a corner of the cemetery with the graves of the priests who died between September of 1964 and May of 1966. Those were my priests, though I never knew any of them in life. Nonetheless, they are the ones in whose presence I whispered prayers on that kneeler and later accompanied them to the funeral masses and their final resting places. I have photos of their grave stones in my phone, and I still remember all of them as though it were yesterday.