Each of us will have suffered the loss of Father Lawrence Boadt in our own individual way. For some, the loss will have been personal, for some communal. My loss was both, and I shall try to explain why.

I had actually been asked the night before Father's funeral mass to say a few words at it. I regretfully declined, and it is important here to explain why (although Father would surely have understood without an explanation). Specifically, the name cohen (or plural, cohanim) in Hebrew means "priest." We cohanim are the traditional descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses. We will be tasked, in Jewish tradition, when the Temple is finally rebuilt in Jerusalem upon the arrival of the Messiah, to perform the Temple sacrifices as in ancient times when the Temple stood. Accordingly, to maintain our "purity," the tradition goes, we cannot be in the presence of death. We are limited to attending only the funerals of immediate family members. So, although too many friends, colleagues, and loved ones have died over the years, I have only attended the funeral services of my late parents. I had been strict with myself on this tradition. And so, as Father Boadt would have easily understood, I needed to say no.

Typically, as in the instance of Father's wake, which was celebrated the evening before his funeral mass, I would discreetly position myself outside the relevant synagogue, church, funeral parlor, or even cemetery and ask my wife or a friend to beckon the deceased's immediate family members, if I knew them, or close friends in attendance, to step outside for a moment so I might properly pay my respects. Other cohanim do the same.

But this one time it was different. When Father's close friend and colleague, Father Michael Kerrigan, came outside to greet meet, he told me he hoped that I might speak at the funeral, given my unique relationship with Father. I respectfully declined, and Father Mike graciously understood. Still, I struggled deeply about my decision well into that night, and finally concluded that I needed to make an exception here (although it turned out to be a moot issue given a later decision that there would be no speeches or eulogies at the mass). The reason, of course, for my change of heart was the centrality of an overarching ecumenical spirit to Father's ministry. Still, more than that, I felt compelled to speak, I wanted to.

In background, I had met Father Boadt nine years earlier when seeking a publisher for my biblical fiction account of the life of Moses (Moses: A Memoir, Paulist Press, 2003). Father showed immediate interest, but he was so busy, so deeply involved in the many callings of his ministry, that sitting down with or even talking with him became frustratingly impossible. So when I learned that he was participating in a book event at New York University, I made a beeline for the campus. Still, there was no quality time for us to talk—which was frustrating, indeed, for an already aging writer. So I took it up a notch and boldly invited Father, basically a stranger, to our Passover seder. The seder would normally take place at our home, but that year it was to be held at the home of a friend a mile away, across Central Park, because the friend's then-recent surgery impaired his ability to traverse the park to our seder table.

I decided this was the evening that I would convince Father Boadt to publish my book, but as fate would have it, I was seated next to our host at the other end of a long table with twenty or so guests in between—and once again there was no quality time for us to talk. At around midnight, as the festivities were breaking up and guests were leaving, and because Father would have to cross the park to take the uptown train to Good Shepherd parish, where he then lived, my wife, Eileen, and I planned to walk with him across the park, a perfect opportunity to "seal the deal." (Riding, for us, on the holiday is forbidden.) However, a younger Catholic school trained friend of ours, although no longer a churchgoer, insisted on driving Father to the rectory, aghast that I would even think to have a priest trudge through the city jungle at midnight ("What would the nuns think of me?"). Father, unaware of my plan to hound him about the book on the cross-town walk, blessed her and graciously accepted her generous offer of a ride. I, on the other hand, totally obsessed, would be set back another year!

But it is what occurred earlier that evening that mattered so much. Most of the guests were the host's, not Eileen's or mine. Father was the exception. Still, as is traditional in our home, I would lead the seder service. Toward the end of a seder, we Jews "welcome" to our home the Prophet Elijah who, in our tradition, will come again later and herald the coming of the Messiah. A wine-filled goblet is set for him at the table, and the attendees toast his arrival with an open door to "receive" him. (As an aside, Father truly enjoyed the wine and became, over the years with us, a bit of a connoisseur of fine kosher wine.) The "welcoming" is a sweet custom indeed, and a teachable moment about the future hopes and aspirations of the House of Israel—but strangely, the traditional prayer we make when Elijah arrives asks God to "pour out your wrath on the heathens who don't even know your name."

I never paid much attention before that evening to this prayer that, if one was confronted with it then for the first time, seemed almost byzantine. And lo, a guest at the far end of the table seated next to Father was (I shall call him) the provocateur. It was obvious from his various comments that he was an atheist. I'm not altogether clear about why he was there; the host, not we, had invited him. But he was outraged at the prayer, and it descended quickly into an "atheist's rant" about the disturbing nature of such a prayer recited in the twenty-first century, particularly in the wake of 9/11. The provocateur looked squarely at me as the prayer's proponent. And in turn the forty collective eyes of this eclectic group of guests looked directly at me, hoping for an answer that might make some sense of it all.

Father Boadt, who at the time had only met me briefly once before, perceived my immediate discomfort. He, with his wine-filled goblet still in hand and planning to happily imbibe it as is intended following the blessing over the wine, put his other hand on the arm of my béte noire and simply said this: "Don't take that prayer literally. It's a way of expressing a religion's (sort of) nationalistic, maybe jingoistic, duty to protect the holy name of the one God. Religions, all religions—Judaism, Catholicism, and the others as well—do that. It's simply a metaphorical way of expressing the importance of God's name. You shouldn't be concerned. No one here, no one in the House of Israel, is really asking God to pour out his wrath." With this Father calmed the waters, allaying the concerns of the provocateur, everyone at the table, and especially me.

But beyond that, he did something far more important: he defended the Jewish tradition that inheres in that prayer in a way that no Jew, especially myself, could have done that night. In some way, in microcosm, he reached across the great divide—over the turbulent waters that have sometimes raged between our religions for two thousand years since the time of Jesus—to underscore our common bond and mutual zealotry to protect the name of the one God and, indeed, the very holiness of his name. And right then and there, I knew what Father Boadt truly meant, and what he was about. It was not that he tirelessly taught (or published about) the importance of ecumenism, which he was the leader in doing, but that he used his life—shortened, sadly, as it was—to bring disparate peoples together, to be that same bridge over proverbially troubled, maybe sometimes angry, waters that he was that night. And that is why it was so important for me to have been willing to make an exception and, with Eileen's encouragement, to speak at his funeral, which in some odd and unforeseen way I'm doing here.

Our relationship continued to grow from that night forward, although I never shared with him what that night, or indeed what he, meant to me. Although he published my books and attended our seders almost yearly after that night (and would bring or send in his stead Fathers Kevin Lynch, John Collins, and Mike), it was that night, that moment, that incident, that was everything.

This past March, after his first surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, I visited him on Sundays at the hospital. The first Sunday I visited him—stridently going past the stop sign of his "protector," Father Mike, who lovingly cared for Father and kept at bay the many well-wishers who, like myself, might unintentionally disturb him—I went, without notice, to the hospital and was alone with Father. Father was asleep, so I sat down and read a book, hoping he would awaken before I left. Just as I was about to leave, after finishing a note to say I had been there, he awoke. He was weak and wondered how I had gotten past security: "They probably thought you were a priest." Because I was wearing a white collarless shirt under a sweater, without his glasses perhaps it looked to him that I was wearing a priest's collar. But I told him, as he well knew: "I am a priest." We both shared a good laugh at it, though his laughter was somewhat muted because of the many tubes still invading his body. Yes, he was weak and was, albeit in his always dignified manner, clearly worried about his mortality. And he surely detected that I was worried for him. After ten or fifteen minutes he pleasantly made it clear that it was time for me to leave.

I put on my jacket, put my hand on his face, and offered some words of consolation: "God will be with you" or words to that effect, which sounded, to me at least when they left my mouth, like a platitude. He, always quick on the trigger, replied: "No, Joel, I would like a priestly blessing from you." He referred, of course, to a blessing said by the cohanim in the Diaspora on Jewish holidays that blesses the House of Israel and the good and decent people of the world. Father surely knew the blessing as it is contained in the Hebrew Bible itself, on which he was an unquestioned authority. So I uttered it in Hebrew, my fingers configured as in the practice of the cohanim to replicate the outpouring of the Spirit of God in the days of the Temple. But since no one ever asked me to give them that benediction, and probably never again will, it was a moment I will not forget.

The importance of the story, however, is that once again, Father Boadt perceived my feeling of inadequacy—this time not being able to help him in his personal travail. I understood so clearly what he was doing: by asking me for the blessing that I was uniquely positioned to bestow, he was according me an opportunity to be of help to me and to him (in a way I would never have thought to do on my own).

We cannot allow Father Boadt's life's work in this world to end quietly with his ascension and return to the heavenly Father, on what will surely be the express line through St. Peter's gate. We, each of us, must continue to do what he did, to be what he meant for us to be. And when we do that, every act of brotherhood and brotherly love that we perform will be a blessing to Father Boadt's memory.

As we say in my tradition at the time of one's death: "Baruch Dayan Emes" — Blessed, the God of Truth!

Joel Cohen is an attorney in New York. Father Boadt published two books by Mr. Cohen: Moses: A Memoir (Paulist Press, 2003) and David and Bathsheba: Through Nathan's Eyes (HiddenSpring, 2007). He also contributes essays to The Catholic World.

Father Larry Boadt Memorial Fund

Funeral Homily for Father Larry