Mike Bogdan (bottom right corner) is seen laughing with Bishop William F. Medley and other diocesan co-workers at a Catholic Pastoral Center Staff Day Oct. 31, 2011, at Gasper River Camp in Bowling Green. COMMUNICATIONS FILE PHOTO
‘Everything we do is true’ – Mike Bogdan’s liturgy-infused life an example of how to die well
BY MARTHA HAGAN, SPECIAL TO THE WESTERN KENTUCKY CATHOLIC
A former teacher once said: “We must become fully permeated with Liturgy in the very depths of our beings.” No one I know has better exemplified this permeation with Liturgy than Mike Bogdan. Mike brought with him scholarly insight, pastoral sensitivity, a wicked sense of humor, and sheer joy for the liturgy. Mike truly loved the liturgy. He was permeated with its history, its ritual diversity, its theology, its texts and its spirit.
Because he was permeated with Liturgy, Mike had been rehearsing for the moment of his death since the day of his baptism into Christ’s Paschal Mystery many years ago. St. Paul tells us: “We have been buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.”
This Paschal pattern of life, the living out of our plunge into the dying and rising of Christ becomes the daily rhythm of life that Mike knew very well. And because of this, Mike also knew that his death was not the end but a stage in the journey of his life.
Mike taught me so much about how to die well. He lived his life simply with very little attachment to earthly goods. The ultimate letting go of those things was not difficult for him. When an experimental drug actually helped to prolong his life by a bit, Mike used that time to go on what he called his “goodbye tour” to reminisce with old friends and bid them farewell. His family and friends were his true treasures.
Mike loved life and he was so grateful to live beyond the time the doctors predicted. He was so pleased that he had to go back and edit his own obituary to add a year to his age. But he also had a certain sense of excitement at the prospect of going on to what is next. To be permeated with Liturgy as Mike was, is also to be filled with a Eucharistic vision, a vision of heaven where the Good Shepherd prepares the banquet table and the cups of wine are overflowing and abundant, a banquet, a feast “where the Lord God will wipe away every tear,” that feast that we foretaste at every celebration of the Eucharist and which Mike now enjoys at the banquet table in heaven. Mike was looking forward to that.
Through Mike’s love for and understanding of the Liturgy and through the way that he approached his own death, he has reminded me of the importance of learning the pattern of the paschal mystery that we celebrate in the Eucharist. It is a pattern of surrendering our lives to God so that our death is just one more exercise of a pattern learned in life and practiced over and over again – the pattern of dying and rising. Mike enjoyed studying and speaking about the scholarly aspects of Liturgy.
But, he also had a deep understanding that all this stuff we do is also true.
Martha Hagan is the vice-chancellor and administrative assistant to the Office of the Bishop. Previously, she served as the director of worship for the diocese and worked with Mike Bogdan in his role as director of music.
Originally printed in the May 2025 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.
