Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf

Grief, Brotherhood, and the Priest’s Call at the Edge of Life | October 12, 2025

• Archdiocese of Oklahoma City

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In this episode, we mourn two Oklahoma priests and reckon with what brotherhood, death, and the promise of resurrection demand of our vocation. We reflect on last rites, family grief, priestly identity, and the quiet discipline of presence at the edge of life.

• priestly life lived near death and dying
• last rites as reconciliation, anointing, commendation
• stories of peaceful deaths and hard departures
• families navigating acceptance, anger and fear
• presence over performance in pastoral care
• missed anointing and the cost of denial
• shared priesthood as one cloth across parishes
• imago Christi and the weight of the collar
• respect and reverence beyond Catholic spaces
• mourning as a way back to hope and footing
• catholic as universal, many seats, one aisle
• cemetery as memory, legacy and promise

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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01:

This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives, and finding hope in his word. And now, your host, Father Don Wolf.

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Welcome, Oklahoma, as a Living Catholic. I'm from Monsignor Don Wolf, pastor of uh Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. As all of you know, certainly the priests of Oklahoma are in mourning. Over the last couple of weeks, we've buried two of our own, Father Lynn Bui and Father Joe Jacoby. Both passed away in these last days. We're saddened by their passing. Of course, it's a hard time for us in the Archdiocese. We're in mourning. It's a curious thing among us priests, we don't have families like others do. Well, we have brothers and sisters and parents as everyone does, and most of us have aunts and uncles and cousins who populate our lives. In my case, I have family all over central Oklahoma and cousins just about everywhere. But we don't have the intimate bonds of family life that others take for granted. There are no spouses we share our lives with. We don't orient our thoughts and plans around children. The lives of our brothers and sisters don't blend into ours by way of our familial concerns and our common lives together. Because we don't get married and build our lives with a wife, we priests are not woven into the lives of those around us in the same way others are. Which makes our priestly relationships one to another something deeper and more precious than they otherwise might be. We have a bond together that unites us in the work we share as well as in the brotherhood we live. Our lives are part of the fabric of the life of the church in Oklahoma, and so when one of us dies, we all feel it deeply. These losses we experience are much more profound than simply losing our colleagues or being affected by what? Declining manpower. We've lost two men who are part of our lives, and we feel it. Now, we priests are around death all the time. It's part of the work we do, both as administrators of our parishes as well as ministers to our people. Priestly work, including visiting the sick in the hospital, especially when the sick persons are at the end of life, as well as attending the dying wherever they are. One way to define priestly life is to describe the places we're invited into. Priests get to see the inside of jail cells, the tumble-down houses of the poor and the dispossessed, the wretched truths of the dissipated and the addicted, and the complicated topsy turvy of people's souls. And in addition, we're invited into the final moments of the lives of those who call to us. Death is a constant companion in our ministry. The truth is, if we're not prepared to be around the dying and the dead, then we're not quite ready to live the priestly life. We may pride ourselves on the ministry we perform for the living, happy to be present to their needs and respond to the potential they bring, but eventually, if we're serious about bringing the message of Christ to those around us, we're going to be a part of those who are taking the last steps in their lives. After all, no one stops being a person or a parishioner when their lives are just about over. In fact, they're in the ultimate phase of what it means to live. It's a perfect time to be present to them in their needs. Priests are part of the scenery when it comes to those who are dying. From the earliest times in the church, priests have been called on to be a part of the very last phase of life. Priests strive to be present to minister the ultimate opportunity of sacramental reconciliation and healing to those who are in the final moments. Priests are called to the bedsides of the dying in order to minister to them the last rites, which includes the anointing of the sick and the commendation of the dying. Being present to the soul of the one passing from this world to the next, ministering to them the promise of the great final healing gift of forgiveness and oneness with God, the priest is an integral part of the passage of the soul from this life to the next. In virtually every scene of Catholic life and death, whether in a movie, from literature, or in the narratives of life, a priest is present at the bedside of those who breathe their last. We're woven into the sacramental life, which includes the final moments of life. So we're not strangers to the emotions and responses of the experience of those who die. It's part of our lived experience. A newly ordained priest doesn't have to be in his parish for very long before he will be called upon to stand with those who are in the last days, as well as those who are left behind as their loved ones pass away from them. The drama of dying is part of the life each priest is familiar with. In fact, it is a gift given to us. We don't arrive with the answers to everyone's questions, nor can we tidy up the loose ends of every person's life, but we do arrive as the ministers of Jesus' promises of resurrection amid the sadness and bitterness of death. We are those who have been entrusted with the ministry of hope and are stewards of the sacraments of life. Our ministry is to be invited into the fullness of life, including at the end of life. Sometimes we experience it as a great blessing. Every priest I know of has stories of a beautiful death as a faithful servant of God passes from this life to the next as if simply closing a door peacefully, quietly, and hopefully. And we also experience those who've gone from this life fighting and resisting every moment passing, as if their breaths were being wrestled from them, struggling and besieged. As part of these moments, we've also been around the families who have embraced the passage from this world to the next with the resignation and acceptance of deep faith. And at other times we've stood among those who've raged at the cruelty of life and its brevity and pain, who were angry with the one who died and with the God who would allow it. We stand amid the stirring complications of humanity in all of its permutations and allow our gift to be the tincture that promises to touch and to heal all. Priests are part of the configuration of the dying, as well as the structure of hope for the living. We are to bring Christ to every part of humanity, including when our people breathe their last. Because of all we experience, we bring, of course, a certain detachment to the bedside. Sensitive and caring priests are careful to be attentive to the needs of everyone, the dying as well as the living, and are aware of the uniqueness of every situation in every hospital and hospice. All of us strive to make sure we listen to the needs we find among the people who call out to us for what we can offer. Oftentimes, in fact, we help to supply the language others need to make sense out of what they're experiencing and what they can communicate to others. In the best situation, we're able to guide those who are living through this to embrace the truths of dying, as well as the promise of Jesus' presence, even including helping the one who is himself dying. But we do this as someone who has seen and experienced others in their own need and who can bring his understanding and sensitivity to everyone else, which means we're both a participant and a minister, standing with and then standing beside those who suffer this and all at the same time. The worst thing we can do is arrive, minister the sacraments, and then leave with hardly a word. And sometimes I have to admit, this is all we can do given the situation and the circumstances of the person and his family. The best we can do is when we can be fully present to the one who's fall who's failing and to his family, praying and speaking the promise of Christ to everyone, and assuring, by our presence and our sacraments, that there is no place where the love of God is not, especially and including this bedside. It's not easy. Once I was called out at two AM to anoint a young man who had been in a serious car accident. His mother called me and asked me to come as soon as possible because her son was failing. I arrived, bleary eyed, but ready. I spoke with the mother for a minute or two and then went to his wife, who was not a Catholic, but was of course concerned about her husband and the danger to his life. I told her I was there to anoint him and to pray for him and to comfort him, especially since his life was in danger. She didn't say anything about it, and not until I went over and put my hand literally on the door of the intensive care unit. And then she called out to me, You can't go in there looking like that, dressed as a priest. If he sees you come into his room, he'll think he's dying. Don't go in. I responded with the one incisive truth of the moment, which was, I'm here because he's dying. I need to go in. But she wouldn't let me. And he died. He died without the comfort of the sacraments and without the assurances of the promise of Christ of God's healing hands in those final moments of life and breath. She also was devoid of the promise of Christ's healing power at that moment for her own life. So afraid of death that she could not bear to imagine it for her husband, she could not allow the mediating promise of Jesus' resurrection to enter the moment. It was hard for me to stand by and to watch. Alas, she was the arbiter of her husband's situation. I could only wait and pray at a distance. We priests are called to be a part of life and death in all of its forms and in each of its circumstances. But with all of our familiarity with the details and the dynamics of dying, when one of us is dying, it is as painful and difficult as it is with anyone in our own families. The professionalism we carry into our encounter with everyone else slips as we face the truth of death when it touches one of us. This is the first element of our mourning. Like every man, when someone who has touched our lives dies, we hear the sound of the approaching trumpet heralding our own end. And this inevitability is as imposing and challenging for us as men as for anyone. Knowing that Father Bowie's rich life could end in a simple accident, all of us become aware of the intricacy and fragility of our own lives. Hearing of Father Jacobi's diagnosis that struck down the most gifted athlete and the most sturdy body of all of us in the clergy reminded us all of the cruelty of sickness and the unfairness of our natural state. Every man is marked by the limits of life, and those limits are as impermeable for priests as for any person. In fact, we're held in our common bond together, first in our humanity and then in our shared priesthood. We're bound to one another and a part of one another's lives and a web of life much more intricate than simply sharing the same set of responsibilities. We do in fact share our lives together. Bishop Fulton Sheen mentioned in his book, The Priest is not his own, that only a priest can understand another priest. And while that's not exactly limited to priesthood, it's also not less true because it might also apply to other ways of life. Our lives are configured in the same way. We know one another by the life we share. When I was the president of the National Federation of Priest Councils, I traveled throughout the United States, meeting and talking to priests in almost every diocese. But no matter where I went, it took less than 30 seconds of conversation with another priest to identify the people that we knew in common. And when I traveled internationally, it took about 45 seconds for us to identify a common thread. Our lives, even on different continents, are intertwined. It is, of course, even more so as we share the same diocese. The longer we're together, the more we're a part of one another's lives. Our sharing is much more intricate than merely having the same job description or succeeding one another as pastors in the same set of parishes. We share the ministry of Christ together and are bound together by his presence that we share with our people. Although we are different priests, we're all part of the same priesthood. And this makes each of us a sharer in the life of the other. We're all part of the same truth, a live living amid and within each of us. On the one hand, this makes us part of a category of men rather than individuals. I often hear this when people describe the parishes they're from. They'll say, the priest at my parish, rather than call their pastor by name or detail anything about it. He's much more a figure than a person, an image rather than an individual. I've noticed we're often thought of just this way, as if we were a trope in a story. In so many movies, when the story calls for a clergyman, a priest is inserted, often dressed inappropriately for the scene or the action, because everyone understands the moment, and one priest is like another, especially when they're in their vestments. We are a type, an anonymous character that blends in one to another until we're all the same, which is one of the reasons that we wear clerical dress. In the words of Richard Rohr, it's a uniform we're given that's larger than we are. Our job, as we put it on, is to grow into it. We can be so successful at growing into all of its expectations and identifications that we could conceivably grow out of it, but our first work is to grow so as to become it. As, quote, men in black, unquote, we are first of all a priest before we become a person in the eyes of another. Alec Guinness, in his autobiography, describes how powerful this sense of identification can be. He writes that as he was filming a movie in France, the logistics of the production required him to walk back and forth from the area where the shooting was taking place to his hotel, a distance of several blocks. In the movie, he played a priest, and in many of the scenes, he appeared on set dressed in the clerical attire of the time. One day, after filming, as he was walking back to his hotel, a young boy came up to him and grasped him by the hand and began to talk to him. He walked several blocks with his child, chatting about his day in a French dialect that Guinness couldn't follow or speak, completely unaware that he was talking to an actor or that this priest was a complete stranger. He had the look of a priest, and that was all that was necessary for this child. After a few blocks, the boy said his goodbyes and skipped down the alley to his house. Guinness opined that he wanted to be a part of a church that had such men in it. Not individuals of compassion and care, but an entire cast of those who had a place in the hearts of children. That's what we share together. Obviously, when any of us fails at becoming what we're given to be, we're all lessened. But when any of us is successful in living a life of generosity and beauty, we're all ennobled. A life of faithful service redounds to all priests, and each of us is blessed by it. Any life less so saddens us together. And not only us. The priest's first role, as is described in the theology of the church, is to be the Imago Christi capitis, the image of Christ, head of the church. And we do this not through the force of personality or the embodiment of willing service, but by the role we assume as we embrace priesthood. As we drape ourselves with vestments for mass, we put on the expectations and the promises of priesthood together. Anyone can expect any priest to step out onto the altar and become the means by which the presence of Christ is celebrated and offered to all. Everyone can look at us, any of us, and experience Christ embodied in us as we stand in the role we're entrusted. We become the image of Christ Himself. We do this together with each other as priests in the diocese, whether we're newly ordained and are still learning the intricacies of our place, or we are standing at the altar leaning into retirement. We priests are with each other and are a part of each other's lives together. Several years ago, the minister of the alliance arranged for a pulpit exchange in the town where I was pastor. I was invited to come to the Methodist church and to preach on Sunday morning. In exchange, a minister came to our parish on Sunday morning and preached a sermon. It was a little unusual, but it was a moment of enrichment for us in the parish and for the minister himself. Now, this particular pulpit exchange also included the minister staying for the Spanish Mass. Before we began, I told him that since he was going to be at the pulpit when we walked out after Mass, there would be people who didn't understand that he wasn't a priest. So they might greet him by kissing his hand, as is the custom of many of the people. Oh, I can't let him do that, he said. I wouldn't be comfortable. But I told him not to worry. After all, I said, they're not kissing your hand. They're kissing the hands of all the priests who have served them throughout their whole lives. It's not your hand, it just happens to be the one closest. He did allow it, although I don't know what he actually thought about it. But it's true. We're the same. We priests in the lives we share together, share the same life together. The whole world knows we're individuals and are as different from one another as any group of men can be. Our tastes and experiences mark us out and enrich us, and our people with all of the differences that life can share. But our priesthood weaves us into the same cloth. Pull on one side and the whole thing moves, pull on one corner and the whole thing becomes crooked. Straighten one edge and the entire thing lies square. So when we lose one among us, we are all at a loss. The poet John Dunn may have provided the image we're most familiar with, reminding us that we are not continents apart, but instead are melded together as one. But as priest, it is as if we are part of the same family, founded and sustained by the same Father and inheriting the same promises and resources. So when a brother dies, it's not simply that there is one less of us. It means part of our base has been undermined, where we stand has weakened, and we're left unbalanced. Mourning for us means we come together to find ourselves again, to shore up our place and to find our footing. This isn't easy for us, just as it's not easy for anyone. We do believe in resurrection. The Lord has called us into his work of his kingdom among us. In fact, we've given our lives to it. As we're kneeling in front of our bishop at our ordination, we promise to him our pledge of celibacy for the kingdom, not simply as a discipline of the church or as an obvious means by which we can be available, but as a sign of the reign of God come among us. This is what our promises are for. What other reason would there be to forego a life of a spouse and children? What would justify the surrender of the primary energies of our humanity that they might be redirected toward our service to God if we're not committed to the coming of the kingdom of God among us? So when we gather at the funeral of our brothers, we're bowed down by the truth of their death and saddened by their passing away from us. The truths we affirm throughout our lives, and in all the funerals we celebrate in our ministry, sound in our lives at those moments as we bid goodbye to our brothers. But our lives are oriented to these truths from the beginning. They are what we have given ourselves to. Resurrection, the promise we receive from the life of Christ, it is the fullness of this kingdom in our lives. As in the prayers we pray at the end of the funeral rite, we look forward to greeting our brothers again when the power of God has overcome even death itself. Our brotherhood then will be intact. We will enjoy one another's company, and the priesthood we share will be complete. The purpose of our ministry will be evident as Jesus is among us. The intervening time is when we mourn their passing and trust in God's love to sustain us and to sustain the ministry that we all share with one another. And finally, it's the time this time is the reminder of what it means to be Catholic. And remember, Catholic simply means universal. It was first used as a descriptor of geography, but it's also a description of the truth that we encounter at funerals, which is something larger than geography. Because where we are, wherever it is, we're part of the same reality. Sometimes at funerals we sit in the back because there's work to be done to be sure everything goes well. Sometimes we sit in the front to preside and pray. At other times we sit in the first pews because we are of the family and friends of the ones who have died. And still other times we sit in the body of the church because we come to pray with all those others who are there. Eventually, though, we will be the one who lies in the center aisle as the whole church gathers to pray for us. We each have our own place as part of the same truth, the great and final truth of the resurrection. It's just that wherever we are, wherever the geography calls us to, that's where we are at that moment. It's something that we all share together. And so we pray that our brothers, Father Lin Bui and Father Joe Jacoby, that they might rest in peace. Back in just a moment. The cemetery was on the slight ridge overlooking the fields below, just a small elevation in the landscape from which the rainfall flows. A beautiful spot where for the last many succeeding generations, the blessings of life and death have been the heart of their celebrations. And there we laid our brother to rest, next to his parents and their parents too, completing the family tree of his many ancestors, even those he never knew. Full circle the cycle of life comes round when we gather to bow and pray, from the earliest times where kids even there run and play, to the serious faces of parents, each lined, etched, worried, and sober, who practice all the promises beyond life when lives are over. All end there in that place, given by those who settled there before, so that all can lie there together as they come to heaven's door, and be the promise, one generation following the other, that at the final moment when they all meet, they shall all be brothers. That's at the cemetery. One measure of the beauty of the priesthood that we share together is, in fact, the brotherhood that we share together. One of those things that we try to we try to share with those who are preparing for the priesthood as seminarians. But I think it's something that we can experience only by being a part of the brotherhood that we share together. I hope that the brotherhood that we share has touched everyone, and I hope that all of us can uh enjoy this together as we share again what it means to be living Catholic.

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Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okr.org.