Tragic deaths not meaningless, priest says at firefighters' funeral

Published: 2008-04-15

CINCINNATI (CNS) -- Finding the right words to console the thousands of firefighters gathered at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral in Cincinnati for the funeral Mass of two of their own April 9 was the daunting task that Father James Bramlage faced. So he turned to the lives and example of the two firefighters, Capt. Robin Broxterman and Brian Schira. "The greatest tragedy of all would be not having anything to look forward to, for ourselves or for those we love, beyond the life we know here and now," said Father Bramlage, pastor of the cathedral. "That would leave us in the darkest, deepest throes of grief and meaninglessness in the face of tragic deaths like Robin's and Brian's." Although Broxterman and Schira "left behind the limited existence of earthly life, the way we knew them, ... they exchanged that limited existence for an eternal one," the priest said. "They left behind a house that was being destroyed by flames to enter a house that is eternal, a house that can never be destroyed." The two firefighters died together in the basement of a burning home April 4 when flooring gave way on the first floor and plunged them into the basement inferno.

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