Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Mary’s Church, Plymouth, MA
Funeral of Father Paul Francis Bailey
February 11, 2019
Is 25:6-9, Ps 23, 1 John 3:1-2, John 11:17-27
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
This is the text that guided today’s homily.
Your Eminence, Cardinal Sean,
Your Excellency, Bishop Dooher,
Father Graham and brother priests,
Beloved Cousins and Friends of Father Bailey,
Parishioners of St. Peter’s and St. Mary’s,
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
There are no coincidences in God. When the eternal entered time, dates, in fact every day, took on far greater significance. God could have fittingly come to call Fr. Bailey to himself on January 17, which was his 87th birthday, or the anniversary of his baptism a few days later. He could have appropriately summoned him home on February 3rd, which was the 61stanniversary of his priestly ordination. But he came on February 6th, the exact fortieth anniversary of the day in His providence Father Paul Bailey was appointed a pastor.
Paul Francis Bailey was so many things: a good son, a loyal friend, a prodigious reader, a proud BC alum, a faithful disciple, a diligent priest, but all of the gifts God gave him flourished as a pastor. When Jesus after the Resurrection asked St. Peter three times if he loved him, and three times Simon Peter replied that he did, Jesus told him, “Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep” (Jn 21:15-17). Peter’s love for Jesus would be shown in how Peter cared for the sheep and lambs that the Lord was entrusting to him. Fr. Bailey’s love for Jesus similarly radiated in the way that he lived out his vocation as a pastor of souls, as a shepherd of the men and women, boys and girls, Jesus commended to him so that, as we prayed in today’s Psalm, he might for Jesus lead them in right paths, refresh their souls, accompany them through dark valleys, spread the Eucharistic table before them, and help them to dwell in the house of the Lord all their days into the verdant pastures of eternity.
His life as a pastor was a preparation of so many for this life with Jesus that is meant to last forever — and in his caring for others Christ was likewise preparing him. In today’s Gospel, Jesus told St. Martha that resurrection and life are not just things, or events, but are a relationship: “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus asked St. Martha, “Do you believe this?,” and so Christ asks that same question of each of us. Father Bailey was one who responded, and helped us to reply, with faith, “Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” “Yes, Lord,” he confessed, “because I believe in you, I believe in what you say, and that you will raise those who live in believe in you up on the last day.” With faith in the Lord, we have have firm trust in Jesus’ words, “Your brother will rise,” to share the life to which all of his work as a pastor pointed.
Over the course of his 22,284 days as a priest, he baptized thousands of children, instructing them to see in their white garment the outward sign of their Christian dignity and with family and friends to help them by word and example to take that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven; and to keep the flame of faith symbolized by their baptismal candle alive in their heart so that when the Lord comes, they might go out to meet him with all of the saints in the heavenly kingdom. He gently heard hundreds of thousands of confessions, returning people’s souls to their baptismal beauty and helping God bring them through his mercy to the forgiveness of their sins, an increase in grace and holiness and the reward of eternal life. He fed easily over a million people with Christ, the food of everlasting life, in the Holy Eucharist. He prepared tends of thousands of young people to receive faithfully and fruitfully the Sacrament of Confirmation, helping them to enter into the ongoing Pentecost of Church history and to set their minds on the things of the Spirit as the Spirit lifts their minds to contemplate Christ seated at the right hand of the Father. He celebrated hundreds of marriages, helping people to see in the analogy of human love, God’s spousal love for his people, and assisting them to take up the place as the beloved of the Bridegroom at the eternal nuptial banquet. He was present at the bedside of thousands anointing them and praying that the Lord would save and raise them up, and helping them to go forth from this world in the name of God the almighty Father who created them, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God who suffered for them, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out for them. And he prayed and worked to nourish dozens of vocations to the priesthood, mentoring various seminarians on summer assignments, assisting native sons of the parishes where he was assigned as ordination approached, helping parochial vicars to get ready to assume the pastoral mantle, and encouraging scores of altar boys by his cheerful example of priestly life to consider following him as he followed Christ the eternal high priest.
I am honored to be one of his priestly spiritual sons. He arrived at St. Michael’s Parish in Lowell when I was an eight year-old newly minted altar boy. Serving his Masses, working for six years at the rectory from seventh to twelfth grade, was a seminary-like experience for me with Father Bailey as rector and so many fine priests as faculty. I became familiar not only with priests in the public roles in the celebration of the Sacraments and leading the Church in prayer, but also behind the scenes, as they received so many to the rectory, on good days and tragic ones, with charity, compassion and patience. As I observed him up close, he quickly became one of my heroes. I’ll never forget his joy when he asked me one day in the kitchen of St. Michael’s rectory what I was thinking of doing when I got older. “I am thinking of becoming one of you,” I said. He turned around from the stove where he was cooking some spaghetti sauce, and said, “Really now!,” with a big smile. Later I had the honor of his vesting me at my diaconal ordination at St. Peter’s in Rome and his celebrating the Mass where the next day I preached for the first time and received his feedback: “Well done, but a little long…” He had such a contagious love for the priesthood and for the life of a pastor that it was easy for a boy to ask whether God was calling him to follow in Father Bailey’s footsteps.
There were several things that distinguished his life as a pastor.
A pastor is meant to feed Christ’s sheep and lambs and Father Bailey was a teacher filled with divine and human wisdom. He was wise because he never ceased seeking after wisdom as a zealous learner. He repeated to me several times when I was in high school Socrates’ famous quip in Plato’s Apology that a man is wise when he does not think he knows what he doesn’t know. Father Bailey was aware of what he didn’t know and in a life of continuous learning tried to close the gap. Walking into his study was like walking into a seminary’s or Catholic college’s library: thousands of books stacked from floor to ceiling, with magazines and journals everywhere. And none merely collected dust. He devoured them. A couple of times a year he would have me help him find room for books on the shelves and collate all of his editions of Origins, where he stayed up to date on everything that was coming from Rome and from the bishops’ conference, as well as so many other periodicals and Catholic newspapers. His life was an uninterrupted input of theology, history, and current events looked at from the perspective of the Gospel, which he digested and synthesized and sought to pass on to others in his short, pithy and powerful homilies. Through this learning, he sought to root people more deeply in the faith. Jesus said in the Gospel that whoever obeys and teaches his commandments will be called the greatest in his kingdom (Mt 5:19), and Father Bailey was a lifelong standout student of the Master who became great as a teaching assistant of that Master. And we’re all the richer for it.
A good pastor is also meant to be an intimate faithful friend of Jesus who helps others to recognize that Jesus calls each of us to be his friends as he has revealed to us everything he has heard from the Father (Jn 15:15). Father Bailey learned the art of friendship from his faithful communion with Jesus and emulated Jesus’ virtues of friendship with so many, both priests and lay. To be around Father Bailey was to be introduced to an extraordinary world of friends, including so many here today and so many that he helped prepare for eternal communion. He was constantly inviting people over to the rectory, regularly traveling to visit others, and normally bringing friends along with him everywhere he went. He had a great sense of humor that made spending time with him so enjoyable. He loved his lay friends, many of whom were Catholic writers, journalists, and scholars, with whom he would relax discussing the issues of the day, listening more than speaking, but intervening with a priestly perspective and often with great wit. He was a priests’ priest who wasn’t just amiable, but formed deep bonds with his brothers, those who were in seminary with him, or assigned with him, and so many others. At St. Michael’s, he would often host all of the priests of the vicariate one Saturday a month for fraternity. Whenever he would travel, he would often do so surrounded by priest friends he had invited. When he came to Rome on sabbatical during my time as a seminarian at the North American College, when I would go to visit him in his room, there were almost always 2-3 priests there, smoking cigars with him and conversing. He showed, and lived, an authentic Christian and priestly fraternity, something that nourished not only him but others as human beings, disciples and apostles.
As a pastor he was charitable and merciful, literally with a heart for the poor. He took the corporal and spiritual works of mercy seriously. The Parable of the Good Samaritan for him was not just a story but a summons. He was a quarterback at B.C. High and brought a quarterback’s skill of team leadership to his approach to charity. His first two decades as a priest were spent helping to lead the Church’s organized charity as director of Catholic Charities in Cambridge, in Lawrence and Haverhill and throughout the Merrimack Valley, assisting the poor, feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers from foreign lands, arranging adoptions, and counseling individuals, couples and families. As a pastor, at St. Michael’s in Lowell, at St. Peter’s in Plymouth, and even as a senior priest here at St. Mary’s, he reinvigorated St. Vincent de Paul Councils so that they could be more effective in caring for the many needs of those who turn to God through the Church for help. As a boy, I was always moved by how he would promptly and kindly respond to those who came to the Rectory asking for help. He would treat with compassion even those whom he knew were giving him tall tales in order to feed an addiction. The amount of homeless people he arranged for temporary accommodations I’ll never forget, nor the times when we would go to the basement of the rectory together to prepare bags of food for those who were in need. Yesterday at the wake, I asked many of those I met what they remember most about him, and many recounted his charity, how he would personally help bring those who were disabled up into the back of St. Peter’s Church, how when he received notice that someone was in the hospital, he would come immediately and wait with them as their loved one was in surgery or preparing for a Medivac to Boston. Simply put, he was a man who cared for people and, in doing so, as Christ promised, he was caring for the Lord in disguise (Mt 25:40).
As a pastor he was also generous even to those not in need. I’ll never forget Tuesdays at St. Michael’s, which was Bingo night, how he would host all of the workers for dinner at the Rectory before Bingo began. It would have been easy just to allow them to get a bite of food from the Bingo kitchen. But every week he brought them to the rectory for a fine meal prepared by — who else? — Fr. John Mendicoa, who was at his side for decades, faithfully until the very end. On behalf of all of us who loved him, thank you, Father John, for reciprocating his friendship and nourishing his life. It’s because of your care and accompaniment that he lived much longer. These seven years you lived together with him in Harwichport were truly seven years of plenty (Gen 41:47). On those Tuesday nights in the 80s, Fr. Bailey didn’t have to be this generous, but he wanted lavishly to express his gratitude for the Bingo workers’ loyal work, which helped St. Michael’s school survive and thrive. That was a characteristic of his priestly life. He was never stingy. What he had generously received he sought generously to give (Mt 10:8). And we pray today that the measure with which he measured will be measured back to him, packed together, shaken down and overflowing (Lk 6:38).
Finally, as a pastor he was a mentor and a spiritual father. A priest is ordained in the person of Christ and Christ is the incarnate image, the icon, of the Father. So many of the early saints and theologians in the Church focused on the spiritual paternity of Jesus, who gives us life through the sacraments. Every priest is meant to be an image of the love of God the Father, which is one of the reasons why the faithful across the centuries grew to refer to priests as “Father.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who six years ago today renounced the papacy as Pope Benedict, said in 2000, “The crisis of fatherhood we are experiencing today is an element, perhaps the most important element, threatening man in his humanity,” because it’s through the human analogy of fatherhood that we learn about God the Father. If that analogy isn’t there, it’s so much harder to appreciate the depth of the love of God. So many children grow up today without a dad in the home, committed to the mother and with her to the welfare of the children. This has serious consequences in the life of faith. But there is similarly a crisis of spiritual fatherhood, in which so many children grow up without a man of God to protect and provide for their spiritual growth, to give them wise spiritual counsel, to love them with the fatherly love of God and who, like the Good Shepherd, would give his life for them to come to eternal life. Father Bailey was a good spiritual dad, who cared for the spiritual sons and daughters entrusted to him. He was like a second dad to me and my twin brother, Scot. He cared very much for our growth as persons and as Christians. He taught us how to set a table. He would invite us in to share the conversations with his great friends. He would take us to Boston, and with the skill of a Boston cab driver, show us for the first time so many historical and ecclesiastical landmarks. He would bring us to the Cape to get to know his lay friends and spend some time at the Ocean. He basically sought, as a dad does, to show us the world and make us confident to engage that world. In today’s epistle, which was what Fr. Bailey often used both at baptisms and funerals, St. John tells us, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so indeed we are.” He rejoiced in his own divine filiation, and in the person of Christ the Son of the Father, sought to help us all to remember our profound Christian dignity as beloved sons and daughters of the Eternal Father. Father Bailey strove to be an image of that paternal love. And we pray that what St. John reveals he may now experience: “What we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” We pray that Father Bailey who bore so many of the traits of the fatherhood of God on earth may indeed, upon seeing the Lord now, become fully like him forever.
When he was ordained a priest in 1958, Cardinal Cushing prayed, according to the Tridentine Rite, that he and his classmates would become “prudent fellow workers” in the priestly ministry, that “by their noble and exemplary lives [they would] prove that they are really elders of the people” who would meditate on his law, “believe what they have read, teach what they have believed and practice what they have taught,” that they would inspire others by their example and hearten them by their admonition,” that “through persevering charity [they might] mature ‘unto the perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph 4:13) and “shine in all the virtues, so that they will be able to give a good account of the stewardship entrusted to them and finally attain the reward of everlasting blessedness.”
61 years and eight days later, we turn to God anew, thanking him for the graces he gave to this good and faithful pastor and through him to us, and asking him to take him to that everlasting blessedness to which he never ceased to set the eyes of our hearts. We make this prayer in the context of the celebration that was the source and summit of Father Bailey’s and every priest’s life, the place where he daily experienced spiritual rejuvenation going up to God’s altar (Ps 42). This is the fulfillment of that banquet Isaiah prophesied in the first reading, with the richest food and choicest drink, where God gives us a foretaste of his destroying death forever, where he wipes away the tears of all who weep, as we behold our God to whom we looked to save us, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, and who sits on the throne, where the angels sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.” We pray that Father Paul now beholds that Lamb and Savior he loved and served so well and that, by putting into practice what he preached by word and example, we might come to see him again and enjoy the richness of his and the Lord’s friendship forever.
The readings of today’s Mass were:
First Reading — Isaiah 25:6-9
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples A feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, The web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken. On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”
Responsorial Psalm — Psalm 23
The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. In green pastures you let me graze; to safe waters you lead me; you restore my strength. You guide me along the right path for the sake of your name. Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage. You set a table before me as my enemies watch; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.
Second Reading — 1 John 3:1-2
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
Gospel — John 11:17-27
When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. [But] even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”
The obituary of Father Bailey was:
BAILEY, Reverend Paul F. Died in Harwichport on Wednesday, February 6, 2019. He was born in Boston, the son of the late Thomas A. and Gertrude T. (O’Brien) Bailey. He grew up in Allston, attended Boston College High School and St. John’s Seminary. Archbishop Richard Cushing ordained him into the priesthood on February 3, 1958. His first assignment was at Blessed Sacrament Church in Jamaica Plain, followed by St. George’s Church in Framingham.
In 1962 he received a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Boston College Graduate School. He worked as a Psychotherapist at the Family Counseling and Guidance Centers in Framingham. He was appointment Executive Director of Catholic Charities in Cambridge, Haverhill, Lawrence and Lowell.
He was pastor of St. Michael’s Church, Lowell and St Peter’s Church in Plymouth. He was a Senior Priest at St. Mary’s Church in Plymouth, from November 2002 until 2017.
