Funeral Homily for Mary Jane Dailey, August 17, 2026

Mom died July 30, 2026. She will be buried at Square Lake Cemetery in Lake Orion on October 17, 2026, on what would have been her 100th birthday.

https://www.kroegerfuneralhome.com/obituary/MaryJane-Dailey

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.

Jesus said to his disciples, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God. Have faith also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way."

Thomas said to him, "Master, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The Gospel of the Lord

Just over a month ago, Jane's entire family gathered at her apartment at Blair Ridge to celebrate the sacramental anointing of the sick. She sang all the songs, but afterward she was spent for the day. That was the day we learned that Jane's doctor was recommending hospice. The next day, my brother Pat helped her call me on the phone. "I'm calling to say goodbye," she said. "I started hospice yesterday."

Jesus, too, is saying goodbye to his disciples the night before the passion begins. The disciples had been at home with Jesus. They'd shared his company. They ate and drank with him. he had been their companion, the center of the community. But Jesus must disappear if they are not to be just with him, but at home in him. With his death and resurrection, Jesus is transformed from being someone with whom the disciples are at home. Instead, he becomes their home. "I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be." They used to be with his body. Now they are becoming his body as we are the "Body of Christ."

They have to lose him, paradoxically, if they are to discover this new intimacy. It's the opposite of our own birth. When we are born, we lose the warm, cozy home of the womb so as to be at home with our mother. We lose the intimacy of being in our mother's body so as to be able to see her face to face. With our Christian rebirth, it's the other way around. The disciples lose Jesus as the one whose face they can see, so as to find him as the one in whom they can be at home.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my parents' marriage was made in heaven, but they did meet at church. The Wargo family had moved to Toledo, and Jane was home from college after her sophomore year. Her mother, in her words, "insisted" that she go to the young adult social at St. Charles Catholic Church. Orv Dailey was there and he had a car. He offered to drive Jane and three other women home. She was the last one dropped off. 

My mother and father were both very involved in our parish. I remember in the 6th or 7th grade when a family in the parish lost their home in a fire. Mom knew them. She brought their clothes to our house and laundered them. That simple act of charity left a lasting impression on me. Like the woman of valor in the book of Proverbs, who reaches out her hands to the needy, Mom also made clothes for herself and her whole household. I have the baptismal gown that all four of us wore. She didn't have a sewing machine. It was stitched completely by hand.

Jane and Orve both welcomed the changes of the Second Vatican Council. I remember they went to hear Jamie Cavanaugh, a priest from Kalamazoo, who had written a book, "A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church."

I had wanted to enter high school seminary after grade school, but my mother opposed the idea and my father supported her. I was pretty involved in our parish, and one of the parish priests was not happy about their decision. Not long afterwards, he gave a sermon about parents who stood in the way of their son's vocation. The way my mother told it," he was looking right at me, and I stared him right back." 

In our day, we were ordained in our parishes rather than at the cathedral. During the ordination ceremony, the priests in attendance came up for the laying on of hands. They each needed a clerical stole to wear. My mother made 35 stoles for my ordination. I'm wearing one of those stoles this morning.

As a footnote, the priests were invited to take the stoles home. When I started helping out at St. Isidore four and a half years ago, I found one of my ordination stoles in the vestry. I have no idea how it came to be there.

When my sister Kathleen suffered a cerebral aneurysm at the age of 25, Mom became her champion. She worked tirelessly to help Kathleen become independent.

Orv took early retirement from Chrysler in 1980 and took a job in Logansport, Indiana. They built a new home, but it burned three years later. Orr was going to quit his job and manage the rebuilding of their house, but Jane said he should keep working, and she would manage the rebuilding project.

When we anointed mom last month, I sang the 23rd Psalm. Verse 4 is my favorite. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." In Hebrew, this psalm is 55 words long. There are 26 words before the line, "for you are with me," and 26 words after. Mom thought about that for a moment. "I didn't know that," she said. But I think she did know that. Mom lived her entire life trusting that God was with her, no matter what.

Orv died on December the 10th, the same day that Thomas Merton died. We used Thomas Merton's prayer for Dad's memorial card.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."