Joseph Bernardin.

As Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's casket was carried from Holy Name Cathedral the haunting Taiz chant, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom," rose seemingly unprompted from the congregation. Words and melody ascended and fell, died away, and returned in lamentation and hope as he was taken to be buried. Facing the back of the cathedral across the transept, three-and-four deep, the priests of Chicago looked bereft as their shepherd departed. The lamentation came from their lips too - certainly they are more vulnerable than the rest of us to the office of bishop and the character of the man appointed to fill it.

After his arrival as archbishop of Chicago in 1982, "Joseph your brother," as he introduced himself, worked to heal a wounded church. The homilist recalled the first meeting of archbishop and clergy: "To a darkened cathedral and a darkened archdiocese, he brought the light of Christ." Now their good shepherd was gone.

Fleeting and muted references in news coverage to the troubled tenure of his predecessor, Cardinal John Cody, served to underline the blessings of reconciliation that Joseph Bernardin brought to the church of Chicago: to its priests, to its people, and to the city as a whole. The funeral procession, with its splendid and diverse vestments and elaborate head coverings, attested to warm friendship with the Orthodox, with Protestants, Jews, Muslims.

Stories, jokes, encounters, and the acts of a generous spirit were recounted in the homily of Monsignor Kenneth Velo and in the witness of men and women - some 100,000 - waiting to enter the cathedral over the two days and two nights that Cardinal Bernardin's body lay in state. Most notoriously, perhaps, he had met, prayed with, and forgiven Steven Cook, who had falsely accused him of sexual abuse. He had openly shared his fears during a first bout with cancer, and forthrightly acknowledged his coming death when the cancer returned. During chemotherapy treatments at the Loyola Medical Center, he greeted, embraced, counseled, and prayed with all of those who like him struggled to beat their illnesses. Finally he wrestled to accept that "death is my friend, not my enemy."

In his fourteen years as archbishop, Joseph Bernardin worked and planned for the future of the church of Chicago - a pastoral planning process that went on for years, frustrating, for at least some, in its endless consultations and parish meetings followed by yet more consultations and more meetings. But at last, a plan was created: priests and people of Chicago shared a rough consensus about their mission and goals, about their limited resources, and even about the questions that would have to remain unaddressed.

Bernardin worked to reconcile his brother bishops, most publicly in resolving the crisis with the Vatican over its brusque and irregular treatment of Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen. He chaired the committee that wrote the pastoral letter on war and peace, and through consultations, public hearings, revisions, and multiple drafts united the bishops behind a statement on nuclear deterrence. He articulated and defended the "consistent ethic of life," and drew his fellow bishops and the Catholic people into an understanding that embodies the fullness of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of all human life. In the last month of his life, he visited and prayed with a death-row prisoner in Cook County jail, because "neither of us has long to live." And in August, just before the return of his cancer was diagnosed, he called for a Catholic Common Ground Initiative - an effort to examine polarizing divisions among American Catholics. The critical response of some, he concluded, only underlined the importance of such an effort. He called us to see, in the words of his homilist, that "Common Ground was Holy Ground."

A key statement from "Called to Be Catholic," which gave grounding and argument to the initiative - "Jesus Christ, present in Scripture and sacrament, is central to all that we do; he must always be the measure and not what is measured" - could sum up Joseph Bernardin's life. Having been baptized in Christ, he lived in Christ and he died in Christ. And, as Scripture attests, he will rise with Christ in the last days. R.I.P.