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October 23, 2025Father Thomas Boyer, formerly a pastor in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City now retired in Florida, recalled a conversation from some time ago with Father Joseph Jacobi.
“At the time of my retirement, I asked Joe to preach at my funeral,” Father Boyer told a massive crowd inside the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine. “And in his sometimes clever way, he said, ‘I’ll do that if you do it for me.’ And I said, ‘How’s that going to work?’ He said, ‘Don’t you believe in God?’
“Well, we often joked about who was going to get out of here first. Then came that awful news that came about two years ago that frightened us all. And I cried, thinking that I might actually have to stand here.”
That news, delivering a dire prognosis of brain cancer, led to Father Boyer standing there on Oct. 7, preaching at Father Jacobi’s funeral, capping a difficult 10 days of three funerals, following those of Archbishop Emeritus Eusebius Beltran and Father Linh Bui.
“Friends, I can’t comfort you,” Father Boyer said. “We just have to comfort one another.”
For the homily Father Boyer never imagined he’d preach, he left the inspiration to Father Jacobi himself.
“I think the homily of this Mass has already been preached through the life of this man over the last 34 years,” he said. “It was preached by presence – at an altar, in an ambo, at weddings, at anniversaries, at baptisms, at funerals, at Cursillos and in the confessional.
“And it was preached in English and in Spanish and in that common language we all long to speak better – the language of love.”
John Helsley is editor of the Sooner Catholic.
Photos: The Mass of Christian Burial for Fr. Joseph Jacobi was Oct. 7 at the Bl. Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City. Photos Chris Porter/Sooner Catholic.
