Friday, March 12, 2021

Homily for the Funeral of John DiMille

Homily for the Funeral
of John DiMille

March 11, 2021
Wis 4: 7-15
1 John 3: 14-16
Matt 11:25-30
St. Lazarus, East Boston, Mass.

John graduated from St. Dominic Savio HS in 1977, where he’d been nicknamed “Cecil” (as in Cecil B. DeMille) from his 1st days as a freshman.  He embraced the name and, in fact, turned out to be a showman in his own right, a popular DJ who performed all over the East Boston and Revere area.  He was one of 2 members of the class who were the glue binding them together into a unique brotherhood that remains to this day.  I had the privilege of being their freshman dean and English teacher and am proud to be part of their continuing fraternity.  So I was honored to be asked by his family to preside at his funeral.  At least 17 of his classmates took part in his wake, funeral Mass, or both.

Rumor has it that when John got to the Pearly Gates—well, I think he had a hard time finding them because they’re not in East Boston—but when he got there, St. Peter said, “Cecil, good to meet you!  I hear you’re an expert on Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”

Jon, did you know you were named for the only book your dad read in 9th grade?  At least he insisted for the last 47 years that he read it.

Fortunately for John, our own beloved Cecil DiMille, at the Pearly Gates St. Peter doesn’t ask what we read or even whether we can spell.  The test at those gates is whether we’ve loved our brothers and sisters, as St. John says (3:14), whether we’ve laid down our lives for them (3:16), which means whether we’ve sacrificed ourselves for others.

Some members of the Savio Class of 1977
at their 40th anniversary reunion, 2017.
John DiMille is 4th from the right in the front row.

John did.  He sacrificed himself for 37 years for Dottie—even if he didn’t always listen to her and sometimes drove her crazy.  He sacrificed himself for Jon and Nick; no one raises kids to mature adulthood without a lot of sacrifice of time, attention, and devotion. 

John loved his Savio brothers and their families.  You’ve testified to that over and over.  He never forgot you, and never forgot those who’ve preceded him into eternity, especially Michael G.—including Salesians too.  “The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us,” St. John says of Jesus (3:16).  And he says, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers” (3:14).  We know that John loved us, and we trust that Jesus our Savior, who set the example for us, knows it too.

The Book of Wisdom says, “The just man, tho he die early, shall be at rest” (4:7).  A century ago, 61 was considered a pretty ripe age.  The Social Security Act set 65 as retirement age expecting few workers to live much beyond that.  By that marker, John was of a good age—and all of us!  But today the average white American male has a life expectancy of 78, I believe.  John died far too young.

But honor, says Wisdom, isn’t measured by our years, nor by one’s “hoary crown.”  Vocab lesson, guys?  It means a white head.  John didn’t have that.  Rather, Wisdom says, honor and  distinction come from “an unsullied life,” an unstained life, from pleasing God even in a sinful world (4:9).  Honor before God, the honor of an upright life, of keeping God’s commandments, as we heard in last Sunday’s Scriptures (Ex 20:1-17), that far outweighs the number of our years, the number of hairs on our head and their color—or the size of our homes or our bank accounts or whether the media take note of us.  We can look at our Cecil and see a man who was honorable and rich in our eyes, and we trust that “his soul was pleasing to God, and therefore he sped him out of the midst of wickedness” (4:14).

When Jesus spoke to us in the gospel this morning, he praised God his Father for “hiding these things from the wise and the learned” and for “revealing them to the childlike” (Matt 11:25).  Honor, devotion, and sacrificial love for one’s brothers and sisters:  so many supposedly wise and learned people don’t understand those virtues—the supposedly great people of our world, like professors, politicians, tycoons, movie stars, and opinion makers.

John was one of those whom Jesus calls “childlike.”  A part of him never grew up, never got sophisticated, never got too big for his britches, was ever the same Cecil who went to class down the street and cheered the Spartans there.  He retained the simple, basic virtues he and Dottie learned from their parents, and he and you learned from your teachers at St. Mary or elsewhere and at Savio.  And John, like Jesus, handed on those virtues—to us and his sons—the true wisdom of devotion to God, family, and friends.

So we pray today for our Cecil that his labors and burdens have been laid down, and now he rests with our Lord Jesus (cf. Matt 11:28) until the Last Day, when he’ll be raised up—and we also—for eternal life, by the grace and the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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