November 2nd, 2014. Wisdom 3:1-9; Philippians
3:20-21; John 14:1-6.
AIM: To help the
hearers understand death and prayer for the dead.
When a baby is born, we like to
speculate about its future. Perhaps the little one will be famous one day: a
great scientist, a musician, an artist, an entrepreneur, an adventurer, a
writer. Catholic mothers may pray that the boy they hold in their arms will
grow up to be a holy priest, like Pope John XXIII or Pope John Paul II, both of
them now saints. If the little one is a girl she could be a holy nun like
Mother Teresa. At life=s beginning all possibilities are open.
There is a limit, however, to all our
maybes and perhapses. Of no one, at any age, do we ever say: APerhaps he or she will die.@ For death is the common lot of every
one of us. The eighteenth century Englishman, Dr. Samuel Johnson, famed for his
witty sayings but also a devout Christian, said once: ADepend upon it, Sir: when a man knows
he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.@
In a sense we are all like the man
who knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight. We all know that we must die,
though none of us knows the time or manner of our death. There is no reason why
this knowledge should not concentrate our minds wonderfully. And what better
time to think of death than on All Souls Day, which we celebrate today? It
comes each year on the second of November, the day after yesterday=s feast of All Saints.
The first experience of death comes,
for each of us, differently. For me, the encounter with death came at age
six-and-a-half when, a few days after Christmas, my father came home from the
hospital to which my mother had been taken just a week before, with pneumonia,
and spoke the most terrible words I have ever heard: “Mummy is dead.” A few
days later I stood by an open grave and, to the accompaniment of the solemn
words, AEarth to earth, dust to dust, ashes
to ashes,@ I heard the heavy clods of earth
raining down on my mother=s coffin C the most terrible sound I have ever heard.
That tragedy marked me with a scar
which I shall carry to my own grave.
From this tragedy there came later, however, a great blessing. Not two
years later it came home to me one day with blinding certainty that I would see
my dear mother again, when God called me home. If my mother=s death was the greatest sorrow in my
life, the realization that the parting was for a time only was C and remains C my greatest joy.
From that joyful realization has come
a deep conviction of the reality of the unseen, spiritual world: the world of
God, of the angels, of the saints, of our beloved dead. That world is real
to me, because I know people who are there: my dear mother first of all, and
since her death so many other loved ones who have gone ahead of me to that
eternal dwelling place which, as Jesus promises us in today=s gospel, he has prepared for each of
us in our Father=s house.
The memories we have of our beloved
dead, and the mementoes C the photos, the things they saw and used and wore C are precious. But those things
belong to the past. And the past is receding, ever farther away. We come
closest to our beloved dead not through memories and mementoes, but by coming
close to God; for the dead are now with God. That is why, at life=s end, we come into the Lord=s house to celebrate the church=s central mystery and sacrament: the
sacrifice of the Mass.
The Mass is the pledge of the abiding presence with us until the end of time of
the One who has conquered death, and who is waiting for each of us at the end
of life=s road. His name is Jesus
Christ.
If death were really the end, simply the
snuffing out of a candle, then it would be fearful indeed. Our Christian and
Catholic faith tells us, however, that death is not the end. It is the
gateway to new life. Death is the entry into our true homeland. AWe have our citizenship in heaven,@ Paul tells us in our second reading.
Through death we come home to the family of the Trinity. We shall be able to
share in the joy with which the Father loves the Son. We shall experience the
love which binds Father and Son together C the Holy Spirit.
Though our faith assures us that
death is not the end, few of us can completely banish the fear of death. Yet we
experience death every day, without ever realizing it. Every night we die to
our normal mode of consciousness and fall asleep, so that we can awake again
the next morning refreshed.
This pattern of death and rising
again goes on all through life. If the child in the womb could know what lay
ahead, the prospect of birth would be terrifying: leaving the security and
warmth of the mother to enter an alien world, another mode of existence. No
wonder that the first thing babies do is cry! Later on children must die to
their infantile state of being and consciousness in order to become
adolescents. And adolescents must die if they are to become adults. This dying
and rising goes on through middle age and old age until, finally, every one of
us must make the final passage through death to new life with God in our true,
heavenly homeland.
All these deaths, save the last one,
are in some sense voluntary. The child can refuse to grow up, clinging to
childhood and remaining attached to mother. A
century ago the English writer James Barrie wrote a famous play about a boy
who refused to grow up: Peter Pan. Adolescents too can refuse responsibility,
declining to face the challenges of maturity. The middle-aged man can refuse to
grow old, to surrender his position as head of a family or a business, clinging
to power. When children mature and leave home, parents, mothers especially, can
refuse to let go, to accept them as independent adults. The result is
frustration and unhappiness on all sides.
If we are willing to let go at each stage of
life, however C to die to childhood, to adolescence,
to middle age, not clinging desperately to the old ways of thinking and feeling
but embracing the fresh challenges which life brings at each age C then we shall find that the final
death loses its terrors. Most of us are prepared gradually for death by the
shocks life brings us: our setbacks, the death of loved ones, the gradual loss
of our own energy and faculties. If we accept these things when they come and
don=t resist the changes they bring, we
begin to find new meaning in each event, even in the most tragic. To the extent
that we do this, we catch a glimpse of the resurrection.
Let me conclude with another personal
recollection. A few days after my mother=s funeral my father told me: AWe must still pray for Mummy. She is
with God. God is looking after her and our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was
only six-and-a-half. It makes sense to me today, when I have read many books of
theology and my hair has grown grey. One of the greatest joys of priesthood,
for me, is being able to stand, at the altar, on the threshold of that unseen
eternal world of which we were made citizens in baptism. In that world, the
dwelling place of our beloved dead, there is no more suffering, no more
loneliness, no more grief, no injustice, failure, or misunderstanding. There,
as we read twice over the book of Revelation, God will wipe away all tears from
our eyes. There we shall experience ecstasy, for we shall see God face
to face.
