by Carol Powell
So many former friends and colleagues have died, it seems like I am always writing tributes to those who have preceded the rest of us to Heaven. I have been blessed to have known many wonderful people who were marvelous examples for the People of God. One of those was Larry Mule who lived in St. Matthias parish, Ridgewood, and served as a deacon there. I was privileged to work with Larry as director of religious education in the RCIA program for eight of my 16 years there.
It was a pleasure to work with Larry. He was very competent, kind, generous with his time, faithful to the job at hand, quiet, reserved but warm, a calm influence amidst some frenzy of ministry. If I were to describe him in a few words, I think of the words from Scripture that describe St. Joseph, “a just man.”
He was a good listener and was loved by the RCIA candidates and parishioners. He was exactly what a deacon and every minister of the Church should be, a servant of the people of God, following the example of Jesus.
For some time during his ministry, Larry was also the administrator of a psychiatric ward in Queens. I remember getting a phone call from him one afternoon of the one of the evenings we were having RCIA. He very calmly said to me, “Carol, could you take the class yourself tonight? One of the patients threw a chair through a glass window and I have to take care of it.”
This was not the only time something like this happened and he would come from that job, without having dinner, totally peaceful and composed ready to work with RCIA candidates.
He was always open to trying new approaches and enthusiastically welcomed my input. We worked together with ease and flexibility and I could tell by his attitude that he was like that with everyone else. In all the years that I worked at St. Matthias, I heard nothing but positive things about Deacon Larry. No one ever uttered a word of complaint against him, which, trust me, in church work, is truly a miracle.
Once we were doing some workshops on the saints, Larry asked me to do the “down-to-earth saints,” as he called them. He wanted to concentrate on such as Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Mother Seton, because he felt that they were more relevant to the modern age than others. He also preferred the Gospel of St. Mark, because it was shorter and got right to the point. It was also the first and the basic Gospel and it moved fast. No frills for Larry.
Unfortunately, I was visiting a relative in another state when I heard Larry died so I was not able to attend the funeral but I am sure that Msgr. Anthony Sherman, former pastor of St. Matthias, who celebrated the Mass, Deacon John Sands, who preached the homily, and parishioners gave Larry a fine send-off.
We pray for his wife, his children and the rest of the family that God will give them peace and consolation in their mourning. We also pray that God will grant eternal life to his faithful servant, Larry.
