“Be kind” was Jenny Mulhare’s motto, said Father Carter Griffin, remembering how she had those words on a little sign near her desk, and had that phrase tattooed on her wrist to resemble her maternal grandmother’s handwriting.
“That gentleness that everyone who encountered her felt, (the feeling from her that) ‘I’m glad you are alive, I’m glad that God made you’ was a result of her living by that motto,” the priest said.
Father Griffin spoke those words while celebrating the June 24 Funeral Mass for Jenny Mulhare at Sacred Heart Church in Bowie, Maryland. Mulhare, 54, died on June 15, just over two weeks after discovering she had stage 4 metastasized cancer. She died peacefully at home, surrounded by her family members and friends in her final hours.
Mulhare had worked for the past 34 years for the Archdiocese of Washington, first as a secretary in the office serving priests and priestly vocations, then since the Saint John Paul II Seminary opened in 2011, as the receptionist and secretary there.
About 60 priests concelebrated her Funeral Mass, and the hundreds of people crowding the church included many of her archdiocesan colleagues from over the years, and dozens of seminarians.
Father Carter Griffin, the rector of Saint John Paul II Seminary, noted how Mulhare’s life was marked by an enduring faith and by the simple virtue of kindness.
“Jenny fed that kindness day in and day out, with person after person. She showed her happiness in seeing you, whether you were a seminarian coming to her desk for help, or a UPS man bringing packages, or the pope himself, and you left feeling just a little bit better about yourself,” he said in his homily, alluding to Pope Francis stopping by the seminary during the pontiff’s 2015 pastoral visit to Washington.
Mulhare showed that kindness with a smile or a word or two, the priest said, saying such kindness is the simplest expression of love. “It’s a quiet virtue, but it’s a powerful virtue,” he said, later adding, “Her quiet virtue has affected many lives, as you can see.”
Opening his homily, Father Griffin said, “We come together to mourn the loss of a wonderful wife, mother, daughter and friend.”
Jeannine Marie Mulhare is survived by her husband Richard Mulhare Jr.; by their three children, Richard Mulhare III, Megan Paquin and her husband J.C., and Sean Mulhare; by her parents Larry and Betsy Frank; by her siblings Amy DeVincentz, Kristina Frank and her partner Blaine Crussell, and Timothy Frank and his wife Clarissa; and by her nephews and nieces Matthew DeVincentz, Rachel DeVincentz, Daniel Frank, Joseph Frank, Katherine Frank and Luke Frank.
Jenny Mulhare was born in Bethesda. She graduated from the now-closed St. Mark the Evangelist School in Hyattsville and Regina High School in Adelphi.
In his homily, Father Griffin joked about how Mulhare hated being the center of attention, and would raise her eyebrow slightly and say “Really?” in such situations. But he added that she was “a shy person who drove a Camaro – that’s awesome!”
He remembered how he first met her about 24 years ago, when he was still in the U.S. Navy, and was a new Catholic who felt called to the priesthood and had an appointment with then-Father Mark Brennan, the director of the priest vocations office at that time who is now the bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia.
“I had to go to the Pastoral Center, the headquarters of the archdiocese. It sounded like the kind of place you didn’t want to go to if you didn’t have to,” Father Griffin said, as many in the congregation laughed. He then jokingly added, “Even though it was a long time ago, I’ve learned a lot since then. I’m now convinced it’s the kind of place you want to stay out of!”
But he noted, “Then I met Jenny. She had to come and get me at the front door. I remember her smile and her greeting and her kindness. I said, ‘A place that hires someone like this, a place where someone like this wants to work, can’t be that bad!’”
That kindness from Mulhare was experienced by many others, he said, adding, “For countless people over the years, Jenny was the voice and the face of the priest formation program, of the seminary, of the archdiocese, of the Church. What a voice that was, what a face that was.”
Father Griffin said Mulhare had a special love for priests and seminarians and considered them as her spiritual brothers and fathers, and had a special joy when the seminarians she knew were ordained to the priesthood, and kept their cards and pictures on the wall of her office.
Noting the tradition of how a newly ordained priest gives a cloth to his mother that he used to wipe his hands after being anointed with chrism and being consecrated as a priest, Father Griffin said the archdiocese’s newest priest Father Nicholas Morrison, who was ordained four days after her death, “had one of those cloths to give to Jenny, and that’s in the coffin.” The cloths symbolize how mothers bring priests into the world through love, and Mulhare did that, he said.
The priest pointed out that the Funeral Mass was taking place on the Solemnity of the birth of St. John the Baptist, whose voice prepared the way for Jesus.
“It’s not a bad description of our commission as Christians, to be the voice and the face of Christ to the next person, to say it is good that you exist, as Jenny did,” he said.
Expressing his condolences to Mulhare’s family and friends gathered in the church, Father Griffin said, “Having faith doesn’t mean that we don’t mourn… But because of Jesus’s death, death no longer has the last word. We are made for heaven, that is our home, we belong in the Father’s house.”
The priest said the mourners had come together to pray for her and comfort each other. “In our grief, we draw closer together, which is exactly what Jenny would want,” he said.
Funeral Masses offer a time for people to examine their lives, Father Griffin said, adding, “Jenny would want her funeral to serve that purpose. Every one of us is called to sanctity, every one of us is called to become a great saint, to live a life that is preparing us for the joys of heaven, to enter into the Father’s house where Jesus has prepared a room for us… Only in Jesus, through Jesus, can we make our way home.”
Joining Father Griffin as the main concelebrants at the Mass were Father Ron Potts, the pastor of Sacred Heart Parish; Msgr. Robert Panke, the former rector of the Saint John Paul II Seminary who is now the pastor of St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg; Father James Stack, the pastor of St. Anthony in North Beach; and Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy Campbell Jr., representing Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
As the 60 priests processed to the altar at the beginning of the Mass, many touched Mulhare’s casket as they walked past it. Her obituary in the Funeral Mass program said, “She is beloved by the seminarians and priests she served so well.”
That obituary also noted how “Be Kind” was her mantra – “She asked for nothing but kindness, and only wanted those around her to be loved and cared for.”
That quality was emphasized in heartfelt tributes offered by her children after Communion. Richard Mulhare III, standing beside his sister Megan Paquin and his brother Sean Mulhare, first read from a letter written by Sean that noted, “She always made you happy. She always put everyone before herself.”
Richard Mulhare III, who serves in the Navy, said for all those present in the church, “She’s the reason we’re all here today. It’s Mrs. Mulhare, it’s Jenny, it’s Miss Jenny, it’s Aunt Jenny, it’s Mom. No matter what you called her, she gave you the same beautiful smile, the one that told you that you are loved, and that you deserve it.”
Her eldest son added, “We got to know Jenny as the best mom ever. But we weren’t her only children. She collected children. She loved so many as her own. For so many seminarians and priests, she was a home away from home.”
No matter what she was going through, “she made sure you were cared for first,” he said.
Noting the heartbreak that her family and friends are feeling after her sudden death, Richard Mulhare III said, “I feel united with you, because we loved this woman, and she loved us.”
Pointing to the Japanese art form kintsukuroi, where a broken ceramic bowl is repaired in a way that highlights the cracks and breaks, making it more beautiful, he said, “Her love will hold our broken pieces together. Her memory will keep us connected forever.”
