In Memoriam: Father Michael Kelly

This morning, our parish buried our priest, Father Michael Kelly, saying goodbye at a funeral mass attended by dozens of fellow priests, our bishop, and a crowd of worshippers that extended out the doors of the church and down the street. Father Kelly (shown here at a Civil War reenactment), was a good priest, a man who enjoyed life, and a kind person, a virtue that ranks very high on my personal list. In October, he concelebrated the marriage of our daughter, having completed her marriage preparation with her fiance. He shared many other personal moments with the family. He will be missed.

O time despised during life, you will be ardently desired by worldlings at the hour of death. The thought that they must very soon appear before Almighty God, to give an account of their lives, fills them with untold confusion and anguish. They will ask for another year, another month or another day to settle the accounts of their conscience, but they will ask in vain. To obtain a single hour they would give all their wealth and worldly possessions, but this hour shall not be given.
Let us therefore exert ourselves to the utmost to accomplish the work of our salvation while there is still time. Do now, what, on the day of judgment, you would then wish you would have done. For at the moment of death, the time of grace will have passed, the time of justice will have come.
--Saint Alphonsus De Liguroi