President Holland’s painful last months hailed as master class of an apostle of contagious conviction

The final 30 months of the life of one of the great teachers, speakers and disciples of Jesus Christ were wracked with pain, speakers said Wednesday at the funeral of President Jeffrey R. Holland.

He endured nightly dialysis treatments after experiencing kidney failure in April 2023 and also suffered from leg-crippling neuropathy, arthritic shoulders and breathing problems that required additional oxygen.

An apostle of love and learning, as President Dallin H. Oaks called him at the funeral, capped his life with a master class in being a disciple of Jesus Christ, said his son, Elder Matthew S. Holland, a General Authority Seventy.

“I watched President Holland push past all of his own intense, personal, physical challenges to bring love, laughter and the light of Jesus Christ to others in life-altering ways,” Elder Holland said.

Thousands of people lined up outside Temple Square on a chilly, sunny winter morning for seats to the funeral in the historic Salt Lake Tabernacle.

What President Oaks said about President Holland

They heard President Oaks say he grieved the loss of President Holland and said he left a huge mark on the church through “his unforgettable testimony of God.”

“He was my dear friend and an apostle of love and learning,” said President Oaks, who called President Holland a teacher to him for more than 50 years, no matter their jobs and callings in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

President Oaks ordained President Holland as the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in October, 74 days before he died Saturday at age 85 from complications of kidney disease.

President Oaks was president of BYU when he hired President Holland in 1974 to be the dean of Religious Education.

“I was his president; he was my teacher,” President Oaks said.

Together, they implemented major changes to allow women and faculty from other departments to teach Book of Mormon courses.

Their roles flipped in 1976, when President Holland was called as the 11th commissioner of church education. That gave him oversight for BYU and other church schools.

“Then he was the leader,” President Oaks said, “and I was one of his presidents.”

President Holland joined President Oaks in the apostleship in June 1994.

President Oaks also praised President Holland’s teachings, including what he called “a great book” by his friend, “Christ and the New Covenant.”

A powerful ability to connect

The funeral was conducted by one of President Holland’s companions from the mission he served in England as a young man, Elder Quentin L. Cook. They became companions in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Elder Cook said it was an honor to participate in the funeral of a beloved apostle and a dear friend for 65 years. He called him a dedicated advocate for faith and education.

He also was a personable Irishman who regularly shared his big smile as he placed both hands on the shoulders or arms of people he met, or on the faces of those who needed his comfort.

“He had an extraordinary ability to connect with people,” Elder Cook said. “Whenever you were with Jeff Holland, you felt special, loved and valued. We will miss his loving kindness, his infectious smile and his powerful witness of Jesus Christ.”

President Oaks, Elder Cook and others noted that President Holland’s death reunited him with his dear wife, Sister Patricia Holland, in the afterlife he preached was real because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Hollands have three children, 16 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

World-class gifts

President Holland also was known for his soaring oration, including 64 talks at the international general conferences of the church, which often were marked by emotion and fervent declarations about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

“My father could have used his world-class gifts for world-class honors and riches,” said his son, Elder Holland. “Instead across his entire career, he channeled virtually everything he had — those legendary gifts, plus his time, his astounding work ethic and his fierce sense of determination — into bringing people to Jesus Christ and his church."

President Holland’s three children provided unique insights about him.

David Holland said he rarely goes a week without someone telling him how his father’s addresses helped their faith.

“His messages also powerfully rescued my faith,” David Holland said, “and healed my wounds and renewed my hope and gifted me a redemptive vision of Christ’s love.”

The son noticed a regular theme of a father literally running to embrace a child.

“This was so much more than mere literary motif,” David Holland said. “This image contains both the essence of my dad’s approach to parenthood and his irrepressible testimony of the character of the God who is the father of us all.”

An apostle of hope

Mary Alice Holland McCann said her father was her very own “physical, tangible evidence of divine love every day of my 56 years.”

She said his frequent calming message to her was, “Mary, be peaceful.”

“It is a somewhat frightening and a lonely feeling,” she said, “to be on this earth without the man who has made the world safe for me.”

She called him an apostle of hope.

“When he held my face in his hands, locked my gaze with his Irish blue eyes and testified to me of the love of the Savior,” she said. “I simply had no choice but to believe. His conviction was contagious.”

McCann said President Holland loved both the gospel of Jesus Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “with all the blazing fire of his being.”

“If my mother loved a testimony of the gospel into our hearts, he burned it into our souls,” she said. “His passion for the Church of Jesus Christ was deep in the marrow of his bones.”

Elder Holland said his father’s suffering over the past two-and-a-half years was a reminder that all people, even prophets and apostles, are not spared from the difficulties and disappointments of life.

“I never once heard him cry out that he felt unjustly dealt with by God,” he said of watching his father’s dialysis treatments and painful final years. “Instead, I heard him regularly thank God and admonish trusting in God, more frequently and fervently than ever before.”

President Holland became the acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during that time, in November 2023. He relished the opportunity to serve God in that capacity.

Lighting the Y

BYU will light the Y above campus in Provo today to honor President Holland. He mentioned earlier this fall how he was brought to tears when the Y was lit to honor him at his inauguration as president in 1980.

President Holland’s body will be interred on New Year’s Day at the St. George City Cemetery. Elder Holland will dedicate the grave.

With his death, there now are 11 members of the Quorum of the Twelve. President Oaks will call a new apostle.

The prayers for the funeral program were provided by the counselors in the First Presidency, Presidents Henry B. Eyring and D. Todd Christofferson.

Church precedent holds that President Eyring will become the president of the quorum as the second-most-senior apostle but, because he is serving in the First Presidency, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf will become the acting president of the Twelve.

The honor guard for the funeral included the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Presidency of the Seventy and the Presiding Bishopric.

“My father loved this brotherhood,” David Holland told them.

Flowers on the stand in the Tabernacle included arrangements from BYU, the University of Utah and BYU-Idaho, among others.

The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square performed three songs — “Consider the Lilies,” “Come Unto Him” and “More Holiness Give Me.”

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