The direction of our journey

- Thank you all. Thank you all so much for being here for coming to join us in this celebration of the life of Bob Fulmer. My name is Father Adam Zettel. I was neighbor to Bob growing up as a kid. Got to know him and work with him. And I think it's such a blessing to see this church so full of people of faith who want to pray for his soul and want to entrust him to the Lord on this day. I think I speak for the family when I say thank you so much for being here. I want to ask, what is the message that Bob has for us today? What is the message that his life and that this event, that this moment together has for us? It's kind of like a legacy. What does a legacy mean? It's something that the way that someone lives, that is admirable and that has a message for the world or for others that after they pass, after they die, is left behind. The legacy is left for the rest of the world. And it's kind of in the hands of the people of the rest of the world to carry on the legacy. The person who died can't do it anymore, but they left an example and they want, I'm sure, that Bob desires us to carry on his legacy. So what would it be? You all know him, knew him and knew what he was like. I went through the little messages on the funeral home website. I'm sure many of you read through those messages and you just, one after another, you're like, yeah, that describes him perfectly. I wrote some of them down. He was a terrific kind-hearted man. Yeah, that was fun. He was always ready to have a chat whenever we saw him. He had an infectious smile, right? A kind soul, his faith, his love for his family. He had a gift to make people feel welcome. What is Bob's legacy? What is his message to us? What does he hope that you will carry away with you this day? I think he was a man who lived a life full of faith and full of love and full of kindness. When I was living in Rome, I had the blessing of being able to have Bob and Linda visit me while I was in Rome for my ordination to the priesthood. But a few years before that, I was living in Rome and I got asked by my superiors to visit another city, to visit Turin, to visit our benefactors there. And one night we were visiting a family and we had dinner with them and we were on our way home and me and another brother in the seminary. Our car got teaboned by a car at an intersection. We were going pretty fast. We did a 180, the airbags went off, the back windows were smashed. And there was a lot of dust, we're really shaken up. And when all the dust settled, I was sitting there in the car, in shock, and I was still alive. And I was like, wow, thank God, I'm still alive, right? You've probably, many of you have probably had incidents like that. But the incident made me think a lot about my life and about the fact that I don't know when the moment's going to be, when I'm going to pass. And it could be any moment. It could just come out of surprise, like that, like it did for Bob. And it made me reflect so much on what it would have been like if that accident had been different. If when all the dust settled, I woke up and opened my eyes and I was looking at the face of God, as Bob is now. And what would God say to me in that moment? Hopefully God would say, well done, good and faithful servant. None of us knows when our time is up. We had that beautiful first reading that's all about time. There's a time for everything, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to mourn. We don't know how long our time is. We are all pilgrims. We're all people on a journey through life. And the end of that journey, we don't know where it is. We don't know when it's coming. As much as we would like to control it, our life is not in our control. It's actually in the control of someone who's much more powerful than us, someone who loves us infinitely and who wants every good thing for us. And who knows what's going to be best for us. Even when it comes to when our life is going to end, he knows what's going to be best for us. This day reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite musicals, the musical "Hamilton." My mom told me not to tell this story, but I'm going to tell it anyways. I don't know if many of you have seen "Hamilton." It's a great story about one of the founding fathers of the United States. And I'm not endorsing the United States either. But Alexander Hamilton is a main character. He's a great hero. He does a lot of great things. And then he dies. Sorry, everyone is a servant in the show. But he dies at the end. And the last scene is his wife, Eliza, standing there on the stage. And she kind of has this monologue. It's a sung monologue, it's a musical. And it's actually really beautiful. And she says some things that are really, I think, insightful for us today. She says, I ask myself, what would you do if you had more time? The Lord in his kindness, he gives me what you always wanted. He gives me more time. And then she starts listing the different things that she did with her time after her husband passed away. Like she does fundraising for the monuments in Washington, DC. And she fights out against slavery. And she says, speaking to her husband who's passed away, she says, you could have done so much more if you had more time. And when my time is up, have I done enough? And then she says, oh, can I show you what I'm proud of stuff? And she talks about this orphanage that she founded. The first private orphanage in New York City. And she gets to see hundreds of children growing up. She's living on a legacy. She's living on the legacies that her husband left. She's trying to do with her time that's left the things that he couldn't do because his time ended sooner than hers. And she realizes that God has given her more time. And she says, what am I going to do with my time, the time that God has given me? I believe that this is the real question that is on the table for us here today. She realizes that her husband would have loved to have more time. And I think we all realize that about Bob today, that he would have loved to have more time. And the things he could have done, he could have continued to serve his community and practice his faith. And he could have continued to love his family with so much generosity. And God hasn't given him more time on earth to do all those things. But he has given you more time. If all of us are here today, it's because God wants us here. He wanted you to live another day so that you could use your time for good. Time has this incredible potential that we can do great things with the time that God has given us. And this is one of the messages of Bob's life. What we do with our time and how we use it. He wanted to die with his work boots on. He wanted to die working. He didn't want to become complacent or passive. He wanted to be doing things with his life. Death came as a surprise to him. And I think that means that his message to us is like, something like, keep your work boots on. Keep working. Keep using your time well. Keep using your time to do good things in the world. Live ready. Live ready. There's great wisdom in the church in this tradition of living like today could be my last day. Today could be my last day, since I don't know when it's going to be. If today was my last day, and before sunset today, I was face to face with God, with that loving father, the way Bob is face to face with him. How would I feel about my life? How would I feel about the presentation I have to give him of my life? What a wholesome question to ask ourselves. God himself has told us that those out there who live only for themselves, that will become known on that day. And those who live for others, that too, will become known on that day. The end of that musical, of the musical Hamilton, she's giving that re-whole reflection. When my time is up, I've done enough. And then the very last line is when she says to her husband-- not there-- she says, oh, I can't wait to see you again. It's only a matter of time. She has this awareness that my life on Earth is actually pretty short when you think about it. Compared to eternity, it's actually pretty short. And it's only a matter of time until we're going to see each other again. And then the-- scene from the play if you want to go look it up on YouTube and watch this scene, it's really beautiful because right after saying that the chorus is repeating the word time over and over again very slowly and then she turns and he walks out onto the stage and and they smile at each other and he takes her hand and and it's almost like as if it's portraying like her having died and and being with him again right and and he walks her up to the front of the stage and then just as she gets to the front of the stage he lets go of her hand and he bows and backs away and leaves her facing facing the the audience looking out into into who knows what and she and she looks up and gasps it's like oh and that I look this up in the in the script that's the last thing of the play the curtains fall and I just to me that means he takes her it's like he's receiving her into heaven and he's saying look I've got something to show you I've got something to show you and it's awesome and when and when you see the beautiful view up here the the only thing you're going to be able to do is is gasp the beauty of God's face and all that he has done and his great love for us and I think we ought to live our lives looking forward to that moment we ought to live our lives knowing that that that's that's what we're destined for if we're living in Christ if we're living in God what we're destined for is an experience of him that's so amazing and so beautiful that the only adequate response to it is it's a gasp because it's so good and I invite you to contemplate Bob they're doing that today you know so my friends I repeat this message that for Bob I think his message for us today is to choose wisely how we live our lives to choose wisely how we're going to use our time our life is a journey and we cannot choose when it's going to end we cannot choose to just stop walking but what we can choose is which direction we're going to point our lives which destination we're going to be headed towards as we walk through this journey I think Bob would say that we he wants us to honor him by choosing to direct our lives towards heaven by choosing the God that he is standing in front of today in love and my prayer is that everyone here in this church will make that decision make that decision to direct my life towards towards that final goal of being with them being together with them to live a life that's that is a life full of faith and love and kindness like his was