God got it wrong.
Adam did it the right way.
Theresa, Larry, Kevin, Darin, & Erin did it the right way.
The Church did it the right way.
God got it all so tragically wrong.

He had a dream.  Adam was working on a dream.
His parents supported and helped him reach for that dream.
His friends cheered and walked with him as he neared the dream.
His Church guided him along the way.
God got it wrong. 
God got it all so, so terribly wrong.

But God first had a dream.
Oneness and total happiness was His plan.
“Walk in my ways” were words of guidance from the Divine Dreamer.
But man balked.  He would not listen.
We got it wrong.
We got it all so tragically wrong.

So God had an idea.
Let them all be one.
Let My Son show them how.
Let me show them how much I love them through Him.
Let man’s dream and my dream merge.
Let them hear my call of love.

To show Adam how much he loved him, God called him.
With a tender heart and firm resolve Adam heard and responded to that call.
Adam followed the voice from Town Line Road to St. Raphael’s to Wadhams.
From St. John’s to St. Charles, Adam followed the voice.
Adam’s dream was to follow that call and
Oh what happiness it would bring him!
While on the journey, Adam began to taste the dream.

On January 27, 2009, Deacon Adam Crowe’s dream has been fully realized, caught up, merging with God’s dream—oneness, complete happiness.  With the sound of the summoning trumpet, Deacon Adam Crowe has realized his dream and God’s dream for him.  “But the people saw and did not understand.”  He has sped out of our midst. Now, robed in glory, that’s our prayer.

God didn’t get it wrong, after all.  Adam lived the dream as it unfolded in his brief life.  He responded to the call.  Good and Faithful servant.  God’s dream and Adam’s dream have become one.

Theresa & Larry, through the grace of God, you have raised four beautiful children.  One of whom received a unique call by our God and he responded so passionately.  I was talking to an elderly family friend a couple of days ago and he provided a beautiful picture for me of your young family.  Theresa, you did, what you did so faithfully, you brought your four children to Mass every weekend.   Your friend said that Kevin always got to sit on the end because he was the best behaved.  Darin and Adam would start off sitting near each other until their wrestling got out of hand.  Then Theresa you sat between them.  And Erin, the reports I got, were that you would just lay right down on the pew and fall asleep.

From that spot in that sacred space of St. Raphael’s Church you helped Adam, once the wrestling died down, to be still and hear God’s call to him.  He wanted to and he lived for the Lord.  That’s what brought him happiness.

We had such great hope and expectations.  We said, and Adam said, he’ll be a priest come May, God willing.  It’s the “God willing” that is so hard to understand.  Once again, the young man’s dream was to do God’s will.  That brought the fulfillment.  That brought the happiness.  That was the dream.  If it meant throwing his pastor in the pool, fully clothed, with his co-conspirators--where Adam got the hang of how to baptize by total immersion, if it meant watching in awe a tree fall on the parish truck, if it meant coming to the rescue during our chapel flood with a rolodex to make the necessary emergency phone calls, or if it meant sleeping through a burglary, Adam Crowe wanted to do God’s will in sometimes trying circumstances, and he did so faithfully.
   
He just plain endeared himself to all whom he would meet, study with, and minister to.  Gentle, beaming, he did what he felt the Lord wanted him to do and found sheer joy and peace in it (even though it meant closing a couple of seminaries on the way).  Adam was our last seminarian at Wadhams Hall.  What a remarkable witness to what that institution has meant to many of us priests through the years.

My sisters and brothers, Adam’s family, you and I, are struggling to sort through the Paschal Mystery so that we might make some sense of what’s happened.  It’s so very difficult.  But, our God has not failed us.  Our God has not failed Adam.  St. Paul’s words to the Romans find a place in our hearts.  “We live for the Lord.  Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”  That’s why the Father sent His Son.

Our God has a unique dream for each and every one of us.  The extent to which we respond to our God’s call to listen and to follow is the extent to which we will find happiness, like Adam did.  God’s dream for us is to experience unending joy in union with Him.  So, although his loss from our presence breaks our hearts, we don’t begrudge the fulfillment of Adam’s dream.   He’s fulfilled the Father’s plan.  He’s done God’s will and was so very joy-filled in doing it.  In his too brief life, he has touched us deeply and we are forever changed for the better.

It is the ultimate sacrifice of the One Who stooped to wash the feet of His friends that has won for all of us who respond to God’s unique call—Oneness with our God and eternal happiness.  Let us now offer ourselves with Christ to the Father at this Funeral Mass.  Let our prayers assist Deacon Adam Crowe to his eternal dwelling place.  Let the nourishment we receive from Word and Sacrament give us the hope we need to sustain us as we, too, long to know God’s will for us and live the dream.

With Fr. Jay and the faith families of St. Raphael and Sts. Philip and James, and the St. Mary’s Cathedral parish family, I wish to extend to you, Larry & Theresa, Kevin, Darin, & Erin, to all of Adam’s family and friends gathered here, my deepest sympathy.   Adam has fulfilled God’s plan in such a short time.  But we are the richer for it.  The Church is holier because of Deacon Adam Crowe.  We thank God for the blessing.  We thank God Adam heard the Lord calling him and he followed the dream.  May eternal happiness be yours, my friend, until we all meet in that place where all our hopes and dreams are realized.  Until then, may we hear the Lord’s voice in each of our lives and respond as generously as you.