Matt here.

It's hard to believe it's already been two weeks since we buried Dad. There's no pretending that adjusting to life without Dad isn't difficult. Day by day, we are all getting more acostumbrado to a world where Jay Caponigro lives in memory and spirit but no longer in flesh—much like the light of the sun, which, though it wanes with the sun's setting, nevertheless shines on in the reflection of moon.

Walking together with all of you has made this path passable. Thank you, again, to everyone who was able to attend either the visitation or funeral two weeks ago; your presence in body and/or spirit was such a meaningful gift to us and everyone else mourning this loss together. We have appreciated receiving all the notes of support and prayer as well as the stories and memories of Dad that you have shared.

Thank you in a special way to everyone who provided us meals over the past few weeks, facilitated and donated to the MealTrain (which enabled us to provide refreshments for the funeral reception), and jumped in to help make all of the celebrations and events around Dad's funeral happen (including helping to prepare and serve food, clean our house, mow the yard, and lay a fresh coat of mulch so that house stayed livable/presentable throughout the week).

Finally, many of you have wondered if you might be able to revisit the remarks my siblings and I shared remembering Dad at the beginning of his funeral. We are honored by the request, and happy to share those words of remembrance below.

With peace and gratitude,
Matt

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Words of remembrance shared at Jay Caponigro's funeral May 18, 2023 at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart by Jay's four children:

(Read by Maria)

Understanding power was an essential part of our Dad’s public work. This understanding was informed by his deep faith and the example of Christ. Today, you’ll hear one of Dad’s favorite Gospel readings in which Jesus takes a few loaves and fishes and, instead of eating them himself, shares them & turns them into enough to feed a crowd of 5000 who have come to hear him preach. This, our Dad taught us, is how we are called by God to approach power. By sharing our power and fostering the power of others, it will grow exponentially.  As my Dad liked to explain it, this is why he taught me to ride a bike by giving me a little push, then letting go and running down the hill behind me yelling “Brake!” as I crashed into a car parked at the bottom. But then he helped me pull myself up off the pavement, patch up my scrapes & my pride, and get back on the bike. Dad brought this same principle to his work as a community organizer, the founding director of the Robinson Community Learning Center, a board member for South Bend Community Schools, Oaklawn mental health center and more, and Notre Dame’s senior director of community engagement. The intervention of the Holy Spirit, and one relationship at a time, is how my Dad worked to change 5 loaves and two fishes into God’s kingdom here on earth.

(Read by Matthew)

At the root of Dad’s understanding of power was love. For Dad, love was as deeply theological as it was practical. He found deep resonance with the definition of love as the “drive towards the reunion of the estranged”—that fundamentally relational force at the heart of the trinity. Dad embodied his understanding of love through tenderness—the kind of tenderness defined by Pope Francis in a 2017 TED talk that Dad e-mailed to us as “the love that comes close and becomes real—the movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands.” That is the tenderness with which Dad crafted the cherry-wood coffin that held our stillborn brother Joseph as we buried him in 1999; the tenderness with which Dad held Mom as they danced in the Center for the Homeless’ annual fundraiser “Dancing with our Stars” in 2017; and most recently, the tenderness that overflowed from Dad’s eyes any time he looked upon his new granddaughter, Camila Jayne, with whom he was, as he said, “smitten.”

(Read by Mitchell David)

In tenderness,  Dad noticed every one of God’s gifts and accompanied each one of us with a real sense of gratitude. With his twinkling smile, Dad encountered every person he met as an essential member of the One Body in Christ, each with their own gifts and talents according to the grace given to them. As his reality shifted radically with his diagnosis, he opened up his heart to the care of all those around him. With him, you were special. With him, you were seen. In his last few weeks and days especially, he wanted us to know just how important every single one of us was to him, and just how grateful he was for the richness of life we shared together. Just as Dad said to me last week: “I’m so glad to see you; I am so grateful you are here,” he’d want me to express our gratitude to all of you for being here. Thank you to Father Paul and Father Bill for offering Mass today. Thank you to our dear readers and ministers, friends and family, administrators and staff who have made it possible for us to celebrate Dad and pray with him one last time.

(Read by Monica)

Finally, our Dad’s faith was an invitation to share in his power, tenderness, and gratitude. He invited us into prayer, into relations of love and of learning. An invitation to share a cup of coffee, engage in a conversation about family or Notre Dame hockey or Mario’s Italian Ice. He invited the community to gather at the Robinson Center, around campus, in schools around South Bend, at the ice rink, and around the baseball diamond. If you were a select few invited to partake in a Jay project, you experienced the culmination of his invitations: the invitation to work alongside him, to step for a moment into how he worked, how he saw the world. Whether building a desk or a nursery, Dad projects always involved him showing you how to use the right tools so that you might learn to do it yourself, sharing wise words or stories from his incredible life—and probably a Mountain Dew. His invitations came from a place of teaching, of engaging, and of growing, because he knew that he, too, had much to learn, and through each invitation he extended—and taught us to extend—he sought to listen, to learn, to understand. This is what our father leaves with all of us: an invitation to continue to dance and to grow in God’s love and His light, to cultivate relationship with one another, and to continue gathering in prayer, in community, and in love.