I have already posted my mother's obituary and some thoughts I shared at her funeral Mass. In this final post, I am pleased to share the homily given at the funeral by Archbishop J. Michael Miller, whom Mom very proudly called “my Archbishop.”
Dear Bishop Monroe, Monsignor Smith, brother priests and deacons, family of Jane Smith and dear friends in Christ:
At the outset of this Funeral Mass allow me to
express my heartfelt condolences to the family of Jane Smith: her children,
Gregory, Sheila, Nancy, Stephen and Kevin; and to their spouses, ten
grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Non-family members too mourn the
loss of a beloved friend, and I humbly but readily include myself in that
number. We have all come here to pray with the Church, that our merciful God
will lead Jane to her true homeland where she will delight in its everlasting
joys.
Even though the event of death is a disquieting
enigma, for us believers it is illumined by the “hope of immortality” (Wis
3:4). Death is not merely a biological occurrence but a new birth and a renewed
existence offered by the Risen One. Our earthly experience concludes with
death, but through death full and definitive life beyond time unfolds for each
one of us.
Dying, then, is not just a falling asleep, a
descent into the abyss of a silent void, but an intensely human act in which
the soul, though separated from the body, remains fully aware, indeed more
intensely so than ever before. For the one dying, the true moment of death is
not biologically indicated but the blazing encounter with the Lord of merciful
judgment. At that moment we become fully alive in him.
While at the end of this life, death certainly
deprives us of all that is of the earth, it does not deprive us—and it did not
deprive Jane—of that Baptismal grace by which we are forever plunged into the
Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even as Jane slipped silently from this
world, she remained clothed in Christ, prepared to meet him. Her death opened the
gates to the fullness of life (cf. Jn 10:10), to what the Apostle Paul
described so beautifully in our Second Reading as “the eternal weight of glory
beyond all measure” (2 Cor 4:17).
Hidden from our gaze, but experiencing an
intensity of life hitherto unknown, she
would surely have been rejoicing and whispered to the Angels who were ushering
her to the Lord’s presence, what we all sang as the response to the
Responsorial Psalm, “Let us go to the house of the Lord” (Ps 122). Jane would
no doubt have been saying: “I can hear him calling to me, ‘Come to me, you who
are weary and I will give you rest’ (Mt 11:28).”
As
people of faith, we share the sure conviction that death does not destroy the
bonds of love forged in this life. It only places a temporary, if painful,
barrier between us. It will be lifted when we are reunited in the heavenly
Jerusalem, where the sound of weeping is heard no more (cf. Is 65:19) and the
light of the first day of creation is forever undimmed (cf. Gen 1:3‒5).
God blessed Jane with a good and happy and life:
a loving husband and family that surrounded her with attention and affection,
and many friends who sought her advice and the pleasure of her hearty laugh.
She had a keen sense of independence, and an unpretentious and practical piety
no doubt forged in the years before her entry into the Church.
In the last few months of Jane’s slow and sometimes
difficult journey to the “Father’s house” (Jn 14:2), she remained serene,
smiling and, of course, spirited. What St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians became
very true for her, as in those last weeks she experienced that her “outer self”
was gradually “wasting away” (cf. 2 Cor 4:16).
There comes a time in the life of many people—and
it seems that this was the case for Jane—when a person in a situation of
compromised health comes to understand, “walking by faith” (cf. 2 Cor 5:7),
that they can simply and honestly say to the Lord: “I’m worn out and am waiting
for that promised dwelling from God which is in heaven” (cf. 2 Cor 5:1). To
paraphrase the words of St. John Henry Newman, such a person might well say:
“God has created me to do him some definite service. He committed a work to me
which he did not commit to another. I have completed my mission.”[1]
My earthly body has done what the Lord intended.
Such a trusting attitude reminds me of the
words of the Apostle Paul who wrote, reflecting on his imminent death, as we
heard in the Second Reaading this past Sunday, “I have fought the good fight, I
have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). But they are also like the words of the dying
Jesus on the Cross: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). He accepted his death as the
completion of the mission given to him by the Father.
It is a great grace when we can likewise say:
“mission accomplished”; “I have finished the race.”
What is particularly striking and, I believe,
truly beautiful is the way in which Jane left this world. She had the grace of
a happy death, on the dawn of her 87th birthday. She celebrated Thanksgiving
with a festive brunch at Amica Lions Gate with her family. On that same evening
she was fortified by the Sacraments of the Church: receiving the Body and Blood
of her Lord in Holy Communion and the Anointing of the Sick from the hands of
her son and pastor, Gregory. On Tuesday afternoon the family again gathered,
this time to recite the Church’s Prayers for the Dying, which includes the
Commendation with its moving words (to which I inevitably hear the magnificent
rendition of Sir Edgar Elgar in his oratorio of Newman’s “Dream of Gerontius”):
Go forth, Christian soul, from this world
in the name of God the almighty Father,
who created you
in the name of Jesus Christ,
Son of the living
God,
who suffered for you,
in the name of the Holy Spirit
who was poured out upon you.
Go forth, faithful Christian.
What was not visible to the naked eye was the presence of Christ by the bedside. He himself was taking Jane home, because he knew the way (cf. Jn 14:6).
Our faith fills us with comfort at the thought
that, as it was for the Lord Jesus, and always thanks to him, death no longer
has dominion over us (cf. Rom 6:9). For us, “life is changed, not ended.” Its
power has been swallowed up in the victory of the Risen One who says to all of
us, just as he did to Jane before they met in judgment face to face: “Come to
me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Mt 11:28‒29).
[1] Cf. St. John Henry
Newman, “Meditations on Christian Doctrine,” “Hope in God – Creator” (7
March 1848) in Meditations and Devotions.
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