Farwell dear Rev. Fr. Joy Pulikan, SDB: A Tribute by Rev. Fr. Bosco Ponthokkan SDB
The following is the homily preached by Fr. Bosco Ponthokkan SDB at the funeral mass for the repose of the soul of Rev. Fr. Joy Pulikan
In the Salesian tradition, when a confrere dies, we do not simply say that he has died. We say that he has gone to the Father. These simple words capture our entire spirituality. Death is not the end of the journey; it is the homecoming of a son, who rejoins his father.
Today we accompany our dear confrere, Fr. Joy Pulikan, on his final journey of return to the Father.
There is sadness in our hearts. We have lost a brother, a companion in mission, a teacher who formed generations of Salesians, a priest who quietly gave his life to the Congregation. His dear siblings, Sr Udaya, Joshy, Vincent, and Lilly and their families have lost their elder brother. Yet the liturgy does not allow our sorrow to become despair and dejection. It places before us not a bundle of painful memories but the Risen Christ.
St. Paul proclaims with extraordinary confidence: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Notice that Paul does not begin his teaching on the end of life with death. He begins with Christ.
Every Christian funeral—and perhaps even more, every priestly funeral—is fundamentally about Christ. If Christ is risen, then death has been transformed. If Christ is risen, then the priest who spent his life proclaiming that mystery now enters into it. Therefore, we stand before this altar not defeated but hopeful.
Jesus tells us in the Gospel:
“Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life… he has passed from death to life.”
For Fr Joy, these words have a special resonance. Throughout his priestly ministry, Fr. Joy invited countless people to hear the Word of God. As a professor of Catechetics and Youth Ministry, he did much more than teach methods of religious instruction. He helped form priests who would become heralds of the Gospel.
Catechetics, in the Salesian tradition, is not merely about explaining doctrines. It is about leading young people to an encounter with Jesus Christ. Don Bosco never wanted educators who merely informed minds. He wanted fathers who would awaken faith. That was Fr. Joy’s mission.
Many of us remember him in the classroom. We remember his lectures, the articles he wrote, the books he published. His questions, and his insistence were that theology must always become pastoral, that doctrine must become proclamation, and that every lesson should ultimately bring people closer to Christ. The fruits of that ministry are impossible to measure.
Fr Joy is the owner of a great harvest. Every priest he helped to form carries something of his influence. Whenever his students preach a homily, teach a catechism class, accompany a young person, they in some hidden way become part of Fr. Joy’s own harvest. This is how the Kingdom grows.
Our Constitutions remind us that the Salesian vocation is not primarily about individual achievement but about communion and mission. We are sent together. We educate together. We evangelize together. We help one another become saints.
Fr. Joy served for over quarter a century Kristu Jyoti College, our seminary and Visvadeep, the Catechetical and Youth Ministry centre, in different challenging roles. Some of his responsibilities were visible; many were not. Like every faithful Salesian, much of his ministry was woven into the ordinary rhythm of community life—the countless hidden acts of service that only God fully remembers.
Then there opened a different unexpected chapter in his life. His cerebral stroke abruptly changed everything. For someone whose vocation had been expressed through teaching and formation, the silence imposed by illness must have been a profound trial and purification.
But that was God’s final lesson in catechetics. For many years, Fr. Joy had taught with words. After his illness, he began teaching without words in the silence of suffering. He reminded us that the deepest truths of the Gospel are sometimes learned not in the classroom but on your sick bed.
In a culture that measures worth by efficiency, illness can seem like failure. But the Gospel measures our life differently. Jesus saved the world not by doing a lot, but by the total gift of Himself on the Cross. Every priest eventually discovers that his greatest sermon is not necessarily the one he preaches but the way he carries his cross. This is what Fr Joy taught us by his experience.
The time of illness and weakness did not diminish his priesthood, but revealed another dimension. They became the means of his quiet participation in the Paschal Mystery of Christ that he had spent his life teaching.
Don Bosco often repeated to his boys: “It is enough that you are young for me to love you.” The same loving heart marked Fr Joy’s vocation. He loved young people because Christ loved them. He formed future priests because the Church needed shepherds after the heart of Christ.
Don Bosco also left us another conviction: holiness consists in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well, out of love for God. Fr. Joy’s life may not have been spectacular in the eyes of the world. It was eminently beautiful, because it was faithful.
In the Gospel, it is not spectacular success that receives the Master’s praise. It is fidelity.
As Salesians, we cannot stand around the coffin of a confrere without remembering the dream that sustained Don Bosco throughout his life—the dream of meeting all his boys again in heaven. He believed that heaven had a corner for the Salesian family of saints. He educated boys for heaven. He formed them into honest citizens because he first wanted them to become saints.
We entrust Fr. Joy today into that same communion of saints. We can hope joyfully that one day each of us will meet Fr Joy in that Salesian garden in paradise.
Before I conclude I would like to narrate something that took place after the recent canonization of the Salesian Brother, Artimide Zatti. Our Postulator General, Fr Pierre Luigi Cameroni went to the original parish Boretto in Italy where Zatti was baptised, and asked for the baptism register to be brought after the mass in the saint’s honour. Then he wrote in the register below the name of Artimide Zatti “canonized on 9th October 2022.” All the people in the church rose on their feet and clapped hands for 10 minutes without stopping. That is holiness. That is the glory to which we are all called.
Perhaps, today we have lost a confrere. But heaven has gained another Salesian as our intercessor. St. Paul ends today’s reading with a magnificent vision: one day Christ will hand over the Kingdom to the Father, and “God will be all in all.”
That is our future destiny toward which our lives are moving. Today, with gratitude, affection, and hope, we commend our dear brother Fr. Joy Pulikan to the mercy of God.
May he hear: “Come, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord!” We shall pray that we too may be welcomed one day that way in the presence of Don Bosco, our father and Mary our Blessed Mother.
