Homily preached at Fr Jimmy Smale CSsR's funeral...

Preacher Fr Timothy Buckley C.Ss.R

Both Fr Andrew and I first met Jimmy Smale here at Bishop Eton during the Easter Week of 1960. The occasion was a Redemptorist vocations meeting for boys from all over the United Kingdom. Two years later we were to be in his company again. The occasion was the same – an Easter Week vocations meeting – but this time it was during our visit to the seminary at Hawkstone Park that we encountered Jimmy, now a professed member of the Redemptorist family and proudly clothed in his habit. Three years later we would be with him at Hawkstone as fellow students and thereafter our lives have been interwoven, until I had the privilege of being with him as he breathed his last in the early hours of the Monday, 20^th of this month, the transferred feast of St Joseph, the patron of a happy death. James deserved a happy death, and after all the struggles with his health in the past few years, those final hours were extraordinarily and unexpectedly peaceful.

You will all have your memories of Jimmy. For a small man, he had a powerful voice and when preaching he was never lost for a word. He had strong opinions on most subjects and was not afraid to defend them, perhaps remembering St Paul’s injunction to Timothy: “Proclaim the message and, welcome or unwelcome, insist on it.” However, at the heart of it all, he had a profound affection for the Church and a deep love of Jesus of Nazareth. During the last few years of his life, when he took delight in telling everyone that he was now officially retired, he would spend hours in the oratory, praying before the Blessed Sacrament, clearly imbued with the spirit of our founder, Saint Alphonsus, who, it seems, simply couldn’t get over the wonder that we have a God, who has literally put himself into our hands.

Isaiah presents us with the image of the Kingdom as our going up the mountain for a great feast, where God will wait on us and all the pain and suffering will be over. It is an image which the Church invites us to see as a prophetic vision of the Eucharist, which is described in the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World as “a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.” A few days ago a parishioner commented to me that she had noticed, even in his dying days, how Jimmy was wholly absorbed as he concelebrated Mass with us from his bench in the tribune. Accordingly, we hope and pray that he is now able to take his seat at the table of the ultimate banquet, to which we all aspire.

Recognising the Lord at the breaking of bread was the moment of grace for the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, and it followed a moment of conversion and transformation after their conversation with Jesus on the road. Their lives had been shattered by the events of Good Friday and now they were walking away from it all, probably looking for consolation. Jimmy was never afraid to admit that he had struggled with his demons – indeed that was something else he seemed to take delight in preaching about – because it gave him an opportunity to proclaim the power of a true encounter with Christ. Like Saint Paul, he knew that the grace of God can overcome everything and that paradoxically, it is when we are weak that we are strong. It is only when we admit our own weakness that we can allow Christ to become our strength. For this reason, he was the most compassionate of confessors and certainly he touched the lives of a great many people in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Indeed, it is no secret that he and Archbishop Patrick Kelly supported one another in this Sacrament and Archbishop Patrick was particularly concerned that Jimmy should know how grateful he was to him before he died. Furthermore, he asked me to assure you all of his prayers and condolences for this occasion, while expressing his sadness that he is not well enough to join us.

We were reminded in our reading from St Paul that the life and death of each has its influence and that we are to both live and die for the Lord. Jimmy’s Redemptorist life was spent largely as a missioner and retreat giver, based at various times in Birmingham, Perth and Liverpool. He also had a short spell as parish priest in our Plymouth House in the 1990s. More recently he went to great trouble to reach and out and support, firstly our Redemptoristine Sisters when they were in Gillmoss and struggling to find priests who could celebrate Mass for them, and more recently for the sisters and residents of Christopher Grange. He also had a great rapport with many other religious communities, most notably the Cenacle Sisters and the Carmelites and used to love to celebrate Mass in their convents. Indeed, I remember it was at Carmel that I concelebrated with him to mark the occasion of his Golden Jubilee of Priesthood. His last major apostolic commitment over the last ten years of his working life was touring the country at weekends appealing for our confrères in Zimbabwe and raising tens of thousands of pounds for them. They remain eternally grateful to him for this. Two of his great benefactors, who supported that work, were Robert and Ann, who live in Guernsey. Indeed, I seem to recall that occasionally Robert would transport Jimmy in his private plane. When they heard of his death, they wrote a beautiful letter saying how much they will miss him and speaking of his “compassion, understanding and most importantly, humility.”

If Jimmy’s life had a great influence, I can also testify that so did his death. The doctor on call, who arrived shortly before Jimmy died, could not have been more understanding and considerate, assuring Fr Maurice and me that he would be happy for us to continue praying with Jimmy. As he was about to leave, I presumed to ask him whether he was a Christian. He said that he wasn’t, but that recently he had been in Bethlehem and visited the Basilica of the Nativity, explaining that it had made a deep impression on him. As we finished the conversation, we looked back and Jim had quietly slipped away. The doctor duly certified the death and assured us that his visit had been very special for him and that he would never forget it.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.

May he rest in peace. Amen.