LOUIS PAUZANO   JULY 7, 2026

Readings:   Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

                   Romans 14: 7=9, 10-12

                   John 14: 1-6

 

We pray now for consolations for Lou’s wonderful family, RoseAnne, Lauren. Lou, Jr. and Christopher and the grandchildren.   The family took a look at the scripture readings for funerals suggested by the Church and they have chosen two illuminating readings for dad’s funeral liturgy and I have added the gospel.   In the light of these readings we all mourn with them and put our arms around them in sharing their sorrow.  

First the words of Ecclesiastes.   The ancient wisdom reading from Ecclesiastes proclaims that God makes every moment beautiful within God’s own time. 

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

 

Yesterday I opened my copy of the St. Joseph’s Prep yearbook of 67 years ago and there is a picture of Lou’s smiling open face.   And I notice that his parents are listed as patrons of that Yearbook.  So there was a time for Lou to be a son of his parents.  And we give thanks for that.    A time for him to further his education at St. Joseph’s University with both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degrees preparing him for service in the banking community of Philadelphia retiring finally as a Vice President.   There were times for him to constantly support both alma maters even with gifts sent in the last years of his life.  He never forgot his education.  And especially at the Prep he led the alumni association for some years.   His phone calls and signature reminders helped support scholarships at the Prep now lasting into the future.   And he always kept his ’59 classmates at the center of these relationships.

 

But more personally: a time to marry, a time to give of himself as husband to RoseAnne, a time of fatherhood and grandfatherhood.   A time to laugh and to dance.  All the while a time as banker and planner to support and encourage others, even to support the successful, shall we say family enterprise, important to so many families, First Impressions Daycare.   Later Lou had a time to seek life-saving medical care.   A time to depend on the love of Roseanne and that of the three stars in their lives, his children who helped him keep up with activities of all kinds.  So it was a time to engage with his Prep classmates especially at class reunions. 

 

And for many decades it was always a time to welcome family and friends to that sanctuary of welcome on Cleveland St.   I myself was a half-dozen times welcome there in recent years.   Lou, not so mobile, but always with time to engage and encourage and RoseAnne always feeding me as she did anyone who came into their sacred place.

 

But now, now, a time of sorrow for Lou’s family and all of us here.    But also now: all in God’s time we can put the pieces of Lou’s life together into a beautiful mosaic of commitment and love.

 

The Letter to Romans which we also read this morning affirms the faith that sustained Lou and Roseanne and their family for all these years.

 

“For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Paul in Romans states this belief: living and dying we belong to Jesus Christ.   This might not be so easy to see in the lives of some people.   But for Lou it is self-evident.  Lou’s life is proof of a personal source of Creation who orients our hearts and souls to love and to service.   And in that Spirit Lou lives now with Jesus the Lord of the risen life.   Lou and his family in both life and death belong to the Lord.

Let me take one moment to remember Lou’s Prep class of 1959.    In the last four or five years at least twenty of Lou’s Prep classmates have taken up residence with the risen Lord and I see them welcoming Lou and preparing a place for all of us.   This welcoming event is for us an image of joy.

And in that spirt some brief words about the gospel: the words from the gospel of John remind me of how Lou lived his own life in the same way that Jesus lived his life.   Jesus taught us about the love of God whom he called Father.   And Lou, as well, in his lived experience taught us about the love of God.

In this gospel Jesus is saying goodbye to the men and women who had been following him; he tells them that in the kingdom of God there are many dwelling places and, when he goes there, he will prepare a place for them.   I think that Lou is now at work with Jesus doing just that.  That is, he is doing what he did so ably while among us.  He now is preparing places for us, heavenly places like those that cared here for his children and so many other children, heavenly places for the young to learn what they might have missed on earth, heavenly places to gather families just like the sacred place on Cleveland Street and places, too, for the different communities of heaven.   For Lou heaven is a joyful time for him with Jesus to prepare our future homes.  I see him there and I thank God for sending him among us here.