Pontifical High Mass of Requiem
for Fr. Frederic Howard Meisel

Isaiah, 25:6-9
1 Corinthians 11:51-57
John 10:11-16

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Monday morning Father Fred was about his normal routine. By five o'clock, he'd be saying intercessory prayers, probably for just about everyone of us here this morning. By six, before the rest of the world started waking up, he'd want to get down to the condominium office to check his mail, use the copy machine, amuse the staff. He left his apartment, walked down the hall, pushed the button for the elevator, and collapsed.

As I told this story to Fr Conner earlier this week, he said, "The elevator must've been going up." I was literal, dense, oblivious. I missed that it was a theological joke - ‘going up', Resurrection, Ascension. I missed that, and so I explained, "No, it was going down." Fr Conner said, "Well, good thing he didn't get on it."

For some time, while not without moments of dread and fear, but with great and ever growing faith, Fr Fred has been praying for just the kind of death God gave him. Although he was in pain, he had his wits to the end, his mind as sharp, agile, quick, alive, engaged as ever. Death came suddenly, even dramatically – as befits an Anglo-Catholic. Thank God for this blessing.

On November 9, 2002, two days before his 87th birthday, I got a call from Fr. Fred. Hardly an unusual event, and now that they're no more, they are so precious. Without a hello, he began, in a slow, dramatic, emphatic, sonorous voice, "Suffer me not, O Lord, at my last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee." He repeated it, and said: "You know that from the Prayer Book, in the graveside service. Please make that your prayer for me."

That is the very least I owe him. I was ordained a priest in this parish church about ten years ago. After the service, I decided against the Anglo-Catholic practice of having the newly minted priest give individual blessings. I thought it more important to greet people at the back of the church, a more secular blessing. When the crowd thinned out, Fr. Fred presented himself to me, and he said, "Father I need your blessing." I will always be grateful that he was the first person I blessed, but I've learned that I should've been the one asking for his blessing.

Like you, my admiration and my love for him is deeper, more profound, more nuanced than I know how to say. For me, like you, knowing him has been an enormous blessing. If you only knew his surface, much of what you saw were eccentricities, many of them charming, endearing, and others exasperating. We could say that he had some symptoms of OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder], and probably all of us would find the way he organized his life, his day to day habits and manner of living, to be impossible. We will fondly recount these stories for years, but they are not what we will most cherish and remember about him. For at his core, he was one of the sanest people I've ever known.

He had an exceptionally lively, witty, and creative mind and was a font of wisdom and sound counsel. He had no television, not even a radio, and he was as informed and as interested in the world and human beings as any one I've ever known. Religion, politics, culture, history fascinated him, and he engaged in ideas with enormous vigor and freshness and insight and without ideology. He saw through conventional wisdom and challenged us to think bigger, more boldly, more humanely.

The health of his mind was a reflection of the health of his heart, a big mind and a big heart, a heart formed and nourished in prayer. He was interested in people and accepted them as they are and made people feel valued. He helped you know that you are a beloved and pleasing child of God. He could see right through us, and still he made us feel special. I learned that I could trust him absolutely, and I'd confide in him about the challenges of parish ministry. He always appealed to what's best, most noble in me. He'd urge me to care for all people, and especially to love the difficult people. He'd say something like, "The Lord loves each of us, and that's what he wants from us, loving those who speak ill of you and betray you. It's hard. It's the cross, Father." He'd temper that with: "Remember our Lord saying, ‘be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'" Earlier this week, a parishioner told me about her first visit to the parish years ago and hearing Father preach, and while unable to remember much of the specifics of what he said, she said the central message that clearly came through was: "I love you all, I love this church, I love these people."

He was a true father in God not only to members of this parish, but to everyone, in and out of the Church. That's why, outside of his family, I never heard anyone call him anything other than Father. He insisted upon it, because that was what he was, and he took that responsibility with utmost seriousness. That's why he was praying for each of us last Monday morning.

Every funeral I've ever preached, I have stuck closely to the gospel message that Jesus Christ gives us eternal life, that at our death we have the hope of resurrection and joy because of Jesus, that death is dead, that life does not end, but changes. Today I have strayed from this discipline because in Father Fred I saw so clearly and beautifully the living gospel. In so many ways he embodied faith, hope, and charity. I expect that he'd be the first to object and confess his sin. Of course he was a sinner and full of vanities like all of us, like all of the saints, but in him we recognized a good shepherd.

He came to this parish in 1961, and Bishop Dun told him that he'd be closing the parish in a couple of months. The wrecking ball never came because of Fr Fred. Instead, we have a house of God where love and prayer and mercy and beauty are our priorities. We enjoy this gift because he was a man of constant hope, a man of deep faith, a man of fierce perseverance, a man of unbounded generosity, a man of dogged hard work, a man of indomitable spirit. It wasn't all triumphs and successes – hardly! There were failures and disappointments and sorrows, but he met them with grace and elegance and dignity. They never prevailed over him. He gave his life in service to God, for the Church, and especially for this parish. Every day, he laid down his life for the sheep. He blessed and enriched countless lives. He was a good shepherd.

In all of this holiness and piety, let's also remember that he was fun. He was full of play, of impishness, of child-like mischievousness. He was a big ham. He exuded good humor and good cheer. An occasion of great happiness and pride for him was the confirmation of his great nephew, Chuck, even though the confirmation was at the cathedral, instead of here. The Bishop was not visiting the parish that year, and so I had decided to take the confirmation class go up to the cathedral. On that day, Fr. Fred was running late, and literally running with Stephanie to get there. They had found a parking place and then tried to back into it, but another driver sneaked in and stole the space. Father got out of the car and shook his fist: "You know what you've done. You need to go to confession." They got another space and then ran across a grass field and up the long, steep south steps of the cathedral, and at the top of the steps, Father stopped, fell to his knees, clutched his heart, panted heavily. Stephanie spun around in horror and when she got to him, a big smile broke across his face, and he said, "Just kidding." They made it in the nick of time. I visited him the hospital about five years ago, and in the midst of all the indignities and distress of a hospital, he was still not only interested in what was going on with me, but cracking jokes and full of joy and mirth. I am so proud to have known him.

Over the last couple of years, Father Fred knew that it was time to go. And now the trump has sounded; he has been changed; he has received the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. His death makes a Baptist of me: I know he's with God. But we are so diminished. Our hearts have a big hole in them. We love you, Fr. Fred. We miss you. We thank you. We will continue to be inspired by you. We know that you continue to pray for us. And because you asked, our prayer for you is: "Suffer him not, O Lord, at his last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee."

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.