Eulogy for Professor Adam Milani - Father Tim Donahue

• Citation: Vol. 56 No. 4
• Publication year: 2005

Eulogy for Professor Adam Milani

Before I went into the priesthood, I was the general manager of a Wendy's restaurant for a number of years. I saw something one day that I will never forget: as we were emptying the trash, I noticed a rather curious phenomena: where the concrete ended behind our store and where the next building began and rose from, a tomato plant with a budding tomato had flowered. This was amazing because it grew with no soil, but I could see that perhaps some tomato seeds had washed their way down there from the dumpster, and gotten embedded in the very tiniest and narrow crack between the collision of concrete and brick. I was spellbound by what I saw . . . and it reminded me that God can do anything that looks impossible to us.

Looking back into the first few weeks after Adam's accident on a hockey rink, into that dark time when it became more and more apparent that he would lose the bulk of his mobility forever, could any one of us have imagined that he would have finished school, gone on to a pretty good college there in South Bend, graduate law school at Duke University, and practice law and teach law, and manage to publish a few books on the side? Adam's life is a reminder that God can do anything that looks impossible to us.

And yet we gather today in sadness and confusion to say "Goodbye" (for now) to our son and brother, our friend and colleague, and for me, a parishioner and personal hero. With what shall we all come before the Lord today? A spirit of gratitude: gratitude for the life and witness of Adam, and for the hope that he inspired in all of us, in spite of all of the foibles and traps that make us human. A spirit of hope: a hope that Adam's life gave to the countless men, women, and children who suffer from a disability; and a spirit of patience, to help us understand that this is God's will at work today.

The Gospel reading from Mark could not be a more perfect analogy. Adam wanted to see the Lord, and Adam needed his friends to help him through some pretty dark moments so that he could see the Lord in hissuffering; the Lord present in the care, concern, and love of his family and friends. Often this required complete humility and submission to the realization that there were limits to his own independence, and to the dawning understanding in Adam that it was an honor and a joy for us to help him. In the Gospel reading today, see how the lame man's friends loved him . . . loved him enough to carry him and lower him...