EARTHQUAKE: THE LONG ROAD BACK :...

And Jesus wept.

As Cardinal Roger M. Mahony spoke these words, mourners bid farewell to earthquake victims Pil and Howard Lee and tried to fathom why a family so close and so faithful would be pulled apart by the God in whom they believed. Why a boy considering the priesthood would be struck down at 14.

“It is not the length of years that proves how much God loves us,” Mahony said Saturday at a funeral Mass for the Lees. “Rather it is the grace, how we let that love in.”

By now, most of the country has seen the images of the Northridge Meadows Apartments, where early Monday morning, Pil Soon Lee, known to most as James, and his son, Howard, 14, died in Apartment 101 as the building crumpled around them.

But the image that should endure, that the television didn’t capture, Mahony said, is of a family huddled together in prayer the night before they would part. An image of the two who died and the two who remain--mother Hyun Lee and 12-year-old Jason--kneeling together as they did every night.

“The Lee family’s journey has not been an easy one,” Mahony said. “But at the root of their lives was a deep faith, an enduring and abiding faith that God walked with them.”

Last year, a failed business forced them out of their home and into a small two-bedroom apartment. Pil Lee, trained as a metallurgical engineer, took a job as a mechanic. The family, led by Hyun, who clung to her faith, attending the Eucharist every day, held together.

Saturday, as they said goodby to father and son, family and friends held even more strongly to that faith.

Minutes before the 11 a.m. Mass began at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood, the frantic pulse of sirens drowned out the organ chimes of “Ave Maria” and rows of shoulders shuddered.

Then, they turned to watch Jason Lee, his crushed feet bandaged in thick white gauze, being wheeled up the aisle before his brother’s casket. His head bowed, Jason held in his lap a gold-framed portrait of Howard--smiling, spectacled, hopeful in a shiny red robe.

“Since that very terrible Monday, the news media, television and newspapers, have tried to pinpoint where the center of this earthquake was as well as they can on maps,” Mahony said.

“The real center is not a geographic location. But it is in the hearts and lives of so many people. It was indeed in the hearts and lives of the Lee family.”

Before celebrating the Eucharist, Mahony asked the congregation to comfort each other. They turned--sniffling children, women with heads draped in lace, men old enough to have weathered tragedy of their own--and grasped hands, embraced or just bowed, chanting, “Peace be with you. Peace be with you.”

Then, mourners filled the aisles, shuffling past caskets draped in white and gold cloth, past a gold-framed portrait of Pil, past the smiling Howard, who had been a freshman at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary in Mission Hills.

They walked back to their seats, still chewing on the taste of wine and bread and nodding at others. “Peace be with you.”