I’m just coming down from the emotional intensity surrounding the Mass of Christian Burial for my friend and colleague, Father Mark Schmieder. It was held at St. Francis Seraph church in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. It will not soon be forgotten.

Neither will Fr. Mark. As Father Bob, officiating the service, expressed in his remembrance, ”Mark wanted to have a funeral among the poor.”

This mostly says it all about Fr. Mark Schmieder and his M.O.  My colleague on our county’s jail chaplaincy team put Fr. Mark into an even greater perspective. Bob said to me on New Year’s Eve: “Mark was a trench worker. Sometimes it took you awhile to remember that he was a priest.”

He was on this earth for 69 years, and so many of those years were spent in vigorous service to helping the disenfranchised, the “marginal” as another acquaintance of mine put it. Fr. Mark considered impoverished people - homeless, addicts, broken emotionally and spiritually - marginal. He never judged them.

The year 2009 was nightmarish for Fr. Mark, especially when he learned he had pancreatic cancer, and yet the year was a blessing to him in a myriad of ways that perhaps only Fr. Mark could recognize.

Quan Truong, a wonderfully insightful reporter, wrote an outstanding profile of Fr. Mark in The Cincinnati Enquirer in which he illuminates some of those blessings. Quan hit so many things right about Fr. Mark. When reading it, pay special attention to Kairos.

Fr. Mark Schmieder was the innovator - the mind and heart - behind the launching of Kairos in Ohio’s prison system. This was no small task. It took years of planning and implementing. I attended a Kairos graduation last year at Warren Correctional Institution, and to this day I cannot forget the immense feeling of joy I received being among those inmate-believers whose remarks about their transformation and new positive thinking remain fixed in my mind.

To think that the joy I received in just being at Warren for Kairos had an indisputable direct tie to my colleague, Fr. Mark.

Fr. Mark was a do-er. I cannot fathom the number of people whose lives Fr. Mark influenced, although I have a clue: St. Francis Seraph church was so crowded January 2 that guests stood rows-deep all the way back to the door of the church. Standing Room Only: an understatement.

Fr. Mark was also instrumental in originating and expanding The St. Francis-St. Joseph Catholic Worker House (Hamilton County). The House’s website has a tribute to Fr. Mark. Please visit it. The House derives from the tireless Catholic Worker Movement spearheaded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Fr. Mark: a true spiritual descendant of Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and St. Francis of Assisi.

Fr. Bob eloquently spoke of Fr. Mark’s passion for the marginal, his extraordinary genius for leadership and servitude, his robust humor, his wisdom and savvy, and his humility. Fr. Mark got things done. He may have been late for meetings or events, but things got done. 

Much got accomplished, and people that Fr. Mark ministered to often embraced new life changes because he overstepped fear and derision. He claimed once that “people live in a culture of fear, and that’s why things don’t change.” 

What mattered to Fr. Mark Schmieder came down to this remark: “Nobody is a nobody in God’s eyes.”