From http://www.pnac.org/2011/11/the-funeral-of-msgr-lyons/ (complete with video):
"Msgr. William J. Lyons, 81, a priest of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, who had served faithfully as a spiritual director for the North American College since 2003, passed away on Monday November 21, 2011. He passed away as a private Mass was concluding in his room, receiving viaticum. As the 81 year old man we loved so much succumbed to death after battling cancer, his priestly heart of 55 years shone brightly, witnessing and revealing the profound love of the heart of Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd."
Below is the transcript of Fr. Gary Braun's memorial Mass for Msgr. Lyons here in St. Louis:
Most of us here tonight are believers I suspect. Some not, perhaps. And we are
especially glad you’re here. But if you are, who helped you to believe? Who is it
who prepared the way of faith for you? Who leveled the mountains and filled in the
valleys between you and the Mystery we call God? Who opened the door for you
between Heaven and Earth? Who over the years of your life made a path for you to
the One-Who-Is-Love?
That’s the Advent question. It’s raised for us in this Gospel tonight. And it is no
small question. For most of us here tonight, I suspect one of the names we just
might whisper would be Fr. Bill Lyons (better known as MSGR, or just plain Bill)
Bill and I lived together at the Catholic Student Center for 10 years and every
summer for the next seven after he moved to Rome. If you knew Bill, you know
that he was kinda cheap. Kinda…
It was not unusual that he would run out of
toothpaste and show up at my door with his empty tube held up in front of him and
ask to borrow mine. Then proceed to squeeze my tube of toothpaste into his right
there in front of me! And yet, who could begrudge the little bit he borrowed
from any of us because of how much he gave to each of us?
Yes, Msgr was somewhat eccentric. A bit like John the Baptist in tonight’s Gospel
eccentric. Doing what John did, Bill came to many of us in the wilderness of
growing up and college life and being seminarians, and he opened a Way for us
to God and God to us, helping us across the chasm of our young emptiness and
loneliness and helping us lower some of those seemingly insurmountable obstacles
that loomed along the way.
Perhaps one of the greatest ways he helped many of us was that he taught us
something of what it means to be a man. At a time when many of us young guys
had no idea how to “talk deep”, to communicate things like “feelings”, to express
ourselves in words and even discover the power—the transforming power—of
being vulnerable to another human being, he was helping us learn trust, the same
trust that is at the heart of faith. This was so new to many of us in those days,
so exciting and scary. Still is. It is an amazing thing to be able to choose to trust
someone. We quickly discovered that relationships are what life is all about. And
what God is all about as well.
And he showed us we could talk to God like that too.
For us who did not know how, or at least did not know where to begin, Bill told us we
could pray. And he made prayer possible, and he made us want to pray. And he told us
we could relate to God as to a dear friend. One of Bill’s Directees told me just yesterday
that “Bill had a way of describing God in the most loving of terms. You were
convinced you were loved beyond all comprehension.”
Many is the night over the last 17 years when I saw Bill sitting in the back of
our Chapel over by the Baptismal font, praying. Hands on lap, a few simple
gestures, and in a conversation with his friend--God. It was just so human. I hope
to God he felt there what he helped so many feel: that he was “loved beyond all
comprehension.”
Bill ended every email with a quote from Cardinal George written back in 06: “In the
end we have only what we surrender--- we have only what we have given to the
Lord. We have only the relationships that are established in that surrender...."
In all humility, Bill did not cling, nor grasp, nor need to control, just a non-judgmental
presence and an encouragement to be our best self and somehow he communicated that
we could do that. That sort of ‘holy detachment’ was all part of what two of his best
friends and travelling buddies, MSGRS NICK SCHNEIDER AND ED GRIESEDICK
would describe when they said to me that he lived simply, travelled light, (and often, I
might add ), and imaged Christ’s openness along the way.
It was obvious to most all of us, that Fr Bill Lyons’ abiding passion was the young
Church! Whether it was in his teaching years or his work right across the street at
UMSL for 27 years or his ongoing work in the seminary here and in Rome, he took
those young lives that are invisible to so many in our Church and he made them
visible. He dismantled the obstacles that made them invisible to us. He made us
look at them, invisible to at who they were and who they were becoming and the
impact they were capable of having and reminded us in no uncertain terms that they
need mentors and coaches they can trust to help them become their own best self.
Bill would not let them stay invisible! He knew they are too important to us being
Church and to our future on this planet.
Is it any wonder that so many followed him into the seminary and so many
seminarians and priests confided in him? Maybe because they wanted to do for
others now something of what he had done for them?
This man, this priest, made a lot of lives a little less lonely. One person at a time, he
made the world a little less lonely. He brought a little light into our Advent night.
And if that is not filling in some valleys and leveling some mountains, I don’t know
what is.
How could we not do the same?! In Bill’s memory, in the name of the Advent
Prophet John, how could we not do the same for each other?!
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