Is Death The End?

 

I found this quote among my computer files which gave rise to a reflection on death and "the end":

　

"In the solemn opening of the second part of the Gospel, (Jn 13:1), we are told that the hour had come for Jesus to return to his Father.

Then John adds the unforgettable line that ‘Jesus having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them eis telos, to the end, a phrase that can be and has been interpreted to mean
to the end of his life,
to the end of our life,
to the end of the world,
to the extreme limit possible,
a love without limit and conditions and boundaries,
a love without end and a love that would achieve its final purpose and goal.

All that Jesus would do and say and suffer from now on in the upper room,
in the garden, during the trials by Jewish and Roman authorities,
the way of the cross and death on the cross are especially signs
of that agape eis telos, love to the end and love without end."

 

(Joseph Kallarangatt, "Johannine Understanding of Mission," [text rearranged]

 http://sedosmission.org/old/eng/Kallarangatt.htm)

 

The Gospel of John captures so much of the meaning of the life of Jesus in that verse: "Jesus having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." (John 13:1)

 

 

 

The phrase "the end" has several meanings, as Kallarangatt notes. This passage is speaking about the death Jesus is about to undergo. As I wrote last week, death can be seen as the enemy, especially when it is thought to be "the end," that life is no more. When a book announces "The End," we know the book is finished. That means there is nothing more to the story to be told.

If a book is very well written and inspires us, we don’t want it to end. We want more. Our lives are the same way; we do not want them to end–we want more. Even if our lives are full of suffering we still hope for a new chapter where all is better. This "wanting more" is our innate desire for eternal life, I believe.

 

An interesting thing about a book that has come to "The End" is that the book itself still exists, only the story of the book ends. Perhaps this is an analogy of our life and death: when we die, the story of our life in this world is ended; but who we are (like the book) still remains. I’ll come back to this shortly.

 

From www.beautifulbookcovers.com/this-is-not-the-end-of-the-book

 

 

Jesus wrestled with the fact that he was going to suffer and die. In the Garden of Gethsemene he prayed that the Cup of Suffering might pass him by; but he added "Not my will, Father, but Thy will be done." Jesus was fully human and he had our normal life instinct for self-preservation. Yet he subjects that self-preservation to the will of God which puts self-donation first. That is because self-giving is integral to love and God is love (See 1 John 4:8 HERE ).

 

The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick mentions: "Moreover he [Jesus] loved us so much that he died for our sake." Pope John Paul II taught that "The meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love...Love also gives meaning to suffering and death." (Encyclical Evangelium Vitae §81)

 

Jesus loved us "to the end." As Kallarangatt noted, the word translated "end" in the original Greek telos, can mean "final purpose" or "final goal" which is related to the meaning of something. So it is like when we speak of the "end-zone" in football. We don’t mean the zone is "no more"; we mean that getting the ball to that zone is the purpose of the game, literally "the goal." (You can see how the word "end" can have two meanings. The end of a football game can mean "it is over" (referring to time) or less common, "to make many goals so as to win" (referring to purpose).

 

In Jesus' case the end of his life in reference to time was when he died on the Cross; but the end of his life–meaning the purpose of his life–was to fully love God and love us with the love of God in his human life. If we are united to him in Baptism, then that is our purpose also, with "the love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us." (Romans 5:5) And when we die, we die in his love. So his love is the goal, the purpose of our life.

 

As we know, however, Jesus’ death on the Cross was not really the end of Jesus himself. It was the end of his earthly life; but we believe he rose again from the dead.

 

Now to use our book analogy, the Resurrection doesn’t mean that the book was buried and then dug up and "The End" was crossed out (could be a pun) and a new chapter is started.

 

 

 

Many think of Resurrection that way: as a return to this life but without end. No; Resurrection means the "transformation" of our human life into a different kind of existence. So the book analogy would be this: after the book ends, it is "recreated" into a new kind of book, made  of this earth, but also now made of heaven. And this "heavenly book" includes a first  chapter about our life on earth. But now, the story of our life never ends. The second chapter continues the  love story between God and ourselves, begun in the first chapter, but that love "never ends."  So death is not the end, love and everlasting life is the end--the goal.

 

 

 

"And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne,

 and  books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life.

And the dead were judged by what was written in the books,

according to what they had done." (Revelation 20:12)

 

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Some Thoughts About Death

November is the Month of Remembering the Dead.

 

I was visiting Boston a few years ago and taking the Freedom Trail I came upon the Granary Burial Ground, that city’s third oldest cemetery. As I looked through an iron rod fence I had a slight shock. I saw this gravestone:

 

 

Of course I’m not the only John Phillips in the world, but it was a bit eerie because this John Phillips, first mayor of Boston, was born on November 26 and I was born on November 25. I quickly did the math to see how old Mayor Phillips was when he died: (born) 1770 minus (died) 1823 equals 53 years old. I felt relief that I had already passed the age of 53 at the time.

 

We all know that we are going to die one day. Our modern society doesn’t usually deal with death very well and doesn’t like to talk about death personally, though it does depict death in great detail in the media and in video games, particularly.

 

Yet someday, someone is going to read our gravestone or our name on a mausoleum or columbarium marker. Does such a thought make me sad? I actually can visit where I am going to be buried one day. The Priests of the Diocese of St. Augustine are usually buried in the San Lorenzo Cemetery in the city St. Augustine. I visited there this past year after Easter and walked among the graves of the deceased priests, noting and praying for those priests who I have known. It actually gives me comfort to know that I will one day be among my brother Priests who are buried there.

 

The Mortuary Chapel called "the Bishops House" where are buried 4 Bishops of St. Augustine
The Priests graves are around this chapel

I was telling a friend recently that the longer I live, the more loved ones I know who have died. My mother and father, an aunt this past year, friends, even some priests I knew in our younger days in the seminary (2 died both at age 50 of heart attacks). It tends to make the after-life more familiar and desirable. I certainly am inspired by the Church’s teaching about Heaven and the Communion of Saints:

 

"This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed - is called ‘heaven.’ Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness." (Catechism#1024)

 

I can barely imagine what a "state of supreme...happiness" will be like. It will be lived, however, in the company and communion of the Virgin Mary, and the angels and saints and all the blessed of heaven–including I am certain those beloved dead of my own family and friends. Our supreme happiness is to be happy with others. "The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the human to be alone.’" (Genesis 2:18)

 

If heaven is so wonderful, why do we want to stay here on earth as long as we can? We seem to have a certain ambivalence about death. I was thinking about this lately and it seems to me that while we remain on earth, death is our enemy; but when we enter the after-life, death is the way to eternal life.

 

Death is an enemy in this life. After all it robs us of the physical presence of our loved ones, and we grieve not having them with us in visible form. We can’t even converse with them as we would by telephone (the sound of their voice is still physically produced). As to our own death, perhaps we fear we will suffer too much; or even if we believe we will live forever, it’s not provable by any scientific method. The unknown can unnerve us.

 

So while we are on earth, death is our enemy, as St. Paul writes: "Then the end will come, when he [Christ] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Corinthians 15:24-26)

 

However, from the side of "the after-life," death is the door into the life of the world to come. If our end (goal or destination) is, we fervently pray, heaven then we enter heaven through death. If we need purification and final conversion, then we go through Purgatory, but it is the "porch" to heaven, after the gates of death have been entered. "The Christian who unites his own death to that of Jesus views it as a step towards him and an entrance into everlasting life..." (Catechism #1020)

 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to live a full life on earth and trying to avoid disease and illness. God, after all, created us with the instinct to preserve our lives. But one day we must let go of this life...and it helps me at least to meditate upon this death and what it will lead to in God’s mercy and salvation: heaven and the joys of heaven.

 

From a vison of St. Faustina:

 

"November 27, 1936. Today I was in heaven, in spirit, and I saw its unconceivable beauties and the happiness that awaits us after death.

 

"I saw how all creatures give ceaseless praise and glory to God. I saw how great is happiness in God, which spreads to all creatures, making them happy; and then all the glory and praise which springs from this happiness returns to its source; and they enter into the depths of God, contemplating the inner life of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, whom they will never comprehend or fathom.

 

"This source of happiness is unchanging in its essence, but it is always new, gushing forth happiness for all creatures. Now I understand Saint Paul, who said, 'Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, not has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.'

 

"And God has given me to understand that there is but one thing that is of infinite value in His eyes, and that is love of God; love, love and once again, love; and nothing can compare with a single act of pure love of God. Oh, with what inconceivable favors God gifts a soul that loves Him sincerely! Oh, how happy is the soul who already here on earth enjoys His special favors!"

 

(Diary 777)

 

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The Triduum: The Three Holy Days and More Sacred Geography (The Upper Room, Calvary, and the Empty Tomb)

Lent has ended with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday Evening. We have now entered the Three Holy Days, also known as the Paschal or Easter Triduum (Latin for "Three Days").

 

I have been reflecting in this blog upon the "sacred geography" contained within the Gospel Readings of Lent. Now the Three Holy Days of Holy Thursday through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Easter Vigil through Easter Sunday, have been described in one Church document as the "holy Mountain of Easter." As we shall see this "mountain" transcends any actual place or time. Still, in the celebration of the Three Holy Days three major geographical and historical places are mentioned and have the greatest spiritual significance: the Upper Room, Calvary, and the Empty Tomb.

 

This past Sunday–Palm Sunday–Jesus entered triumphantly into the City of Jerusalem. By entering into "the city," spiritually speaking, he is entering into the place or order and disorder, of civilization and crime, the place of much distraction and even greater temptation. Jerusalem is especially fraught with danger; as Jesus lamented, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling." (Matthew 23:37)

 

It will only be at the End of Time, in the Second Coming of Christ, that "the city," i.e., human civilization will be perfectly redeemed; the "old Jerusalem" will be replaced by the "New and Heavenly Jerusalem" which will come down from heaven to earth (Revelation 21:1-2) and there will be "new heavens and a new earth where... the justice of God will reside" (2 Peter 3:13).

 

The First Day Part I: Holy Thursday

 

In Jerusalem, reputedly on Mount Zion, Jesus and his disciples gather in the Upper Room where Jesus gives them and his Church forever the Eucharistic banquet. How I would love to live always in just a corner of that Upper Room. How I would love to see Jesus and his Apostles and to hear his voice. I would gladly serve them at Table and so I do at the Altar. But he calls me (and all disciples) to come closer to him, as did my Patron, St. John the Beloved, and rest upon his chest and listen to his Sacred Heart beat with love for us. This is why I chose the picture of St. John resting upon Jesus’s Heart at the Last Supper for my 25^th Anniversary of Priestly Ordination for my holy card remembrance.

 

As part of climbing the holy Mountain of Easter, one must go up to the Upper Room, the place of the Eucharist, and not just on Holy Thursday. "I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go up to the House of the Lord.’" (Psalm 122) In every Eucharist we ascend spiritually with Christ to worship with him in the Heavenly Liturgy (the eternal worship that fills heaven with joy). We are reminded of this in the Eucharistic Preface where the Priest says "Lift up your hearts!" Every Eucharist, but especially the Sunday Eucharist which is more festive, is meant to elevate our hearts and minds heavenward. This is not by way of escape from the lowly duties of life but rather to inspire us by the love outpoured for us in the Mass, a love we bring into our daily lives.

 

In the Upper Room, on that night that Jesus gathered with his Apostles for a Passover meal, he also took the role of a servant and washed their feet. The Pope, Bishops, and Priests reenact this on Holy Thursday at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In Holy Faith’s Tabernacle oratory there is a pitcher, bowl and towel always on display with other devotional art. The Mass calls us to this love of others that serves, as Jesus served. Is not our new Pope Francis showing this by his example? One Seminary Professor once said that the ideal gift for any newly ordained Priest was a pitcher, bowl, and towel. I keep a small version of these on my office desk to remind me that I must lead by loving service.

The Upper Room now transcends time and place and can be found wherever the Eucharist is celebrated.

 

The First Day Part II: Good Friday

 

On Good Friday we remember the Crucifixion of Jesus and its meaning for our lives. It is also on our climb up the Mountain of Easter. From the standpoint of our sacred geography, the traditional site of the place where Jesus was crucified and then buried close by (See John 19:41-42) is found in Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In the First Century the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial would have been outside the city of Jerusalem. (See Hebrews 12:13-14; also executions and burials had to be outside the city walls in ancient times) The Emperor Constantine (4^th Century) in his embrace of the formerly outlawed Christianity, built a church over the remembered site of Golgotha (in Hebrew), or Calvary (from Latin), where Jesus was crucified. It has been greatly elaborated over the centuries.

Today, when one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, one can go up a stairway where a chapel has been built over the supposed place of crucifixion. From the 6^th century, this place began to be called Mount Calvary, though it was  more a hill.

 

In our own parish church, as in many Catholic churches, one looks up at a Crucifix overlooking the Altar in the Sanctuary. It would seem that the suffering and death of Christ on the Cross would make us feel "down" rather than lift us up in some way (remember we are supposed to be going up the holy mountain of Easter). But Jesus himself says: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. (Now this he said, signifying what death he should die.)" (John 12:32-33) Jesus is of course lifted up on the Cross.
 

 

The Cross expresses the depths of God’s love for us in the sacrificial love of God’s Son, Jesus, who in becoming human died for us. It is precisely this love that lifts us up from being "down." ("He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm." –Psalm 40:2)

 

An Anglican Clergyman, Dick Tripp, writes:

 

"Love is self-giving for the benefit of others and in God’s case the ‘others’ were those who had rebelled against him. The proof of genuine love is not merely a feeling; it is an action....We tend to think of love in emotional terms, but the New Testament concept of love is more focused on active self-giving. And the greater the cost of that self-giving, the greater the love. It was on the night before his crucifixion that Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). Because there never has been, nor could be, a greater cost than that endured by Father and Son on Calvary, this is what defines for all time the true nature of love—and the true character of God. Pastor and Bible teacher Paul Rees said: ‘The cross does not so much reveal God’s infinite intellect as it reveals his heart.’ Someone else has said, ‘On the Mount of Beatitudes Christ opened his mouth and taught the people: on the mount of Calvary he opened his heart and showed [it to] the people.’"

 

The crucifixion of Jesus happened "once for all." (Hebrews 10:10) It happened at a certain time and at a certain place, the place perhaps enshrined now in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. But the reality of the Cross also has now transcended time and place. That reality is the love of God "in cruciform" which transcends time and place and so is available everywhere.

 

The Second Day: Holy Saturday

 

Yet how do we know that the love of God shown in Christ on the Cross has not come to an end when Christ died on the Cross and was then buried in a tomb? That Christ died and was buried is remembered on the Second Day of the Three Holy Days we are celebrating. This Second Day is often overlooked because there is no liturgical celebration for this day except some of the prayer of the Liturgy of Hours (for example, in our parish there is celebrated Morning Prayer on Holy Saturday).

 

Spiritual author Christine Valters Paintner writes:

 

"Before we rush to resurrection we must dwell fully in the space of unknowing, of holding death and life in tension with each other, to experience that liminal place so that we become familiar with its landscape and one day might accompany others who find themselves there and similarly disoriented. The wisdom of the Triduum is that we must be fully present to both the starkness of Friday and to the Saturday space between, before we can really experience the resurrection. We must know the terrible experience of loss wrought again and again in our world so that when the promise of new life dawns we can let it enter into us fully in the space carved by loss."

 

For me, Holy Saturday represents the aftermath of suffering and death before grief is finished and something new emerges from the ashes or grave of our experience. It is waiting for comfort, healing, new purpose. For we who believe in Christ, it is waiting for his Resurrection. Many people live in this "in between" place at one time or another. It is, then, waiting outside the Tomb.

 

Holy Saturday is waiting to be lifted up again. Without this hope and trust, we would despair.

 

I have faith that this waiting "in between" death and life will lead to the Passover Mystery of Christ who passed from death to life and that it will become a reality in my life and in the lives of those I serve. I have faith because I have experienced it so often in my own life and have seen it in the lives of others where I thought grief and suffering would crush them.

 

The Third Day: The Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday

 

At the summit of the Triduum and the holy Mountain of Easter is the Resurrection represented by the Empty Tomb. ("But at daybreak on the first day of the week [the women] took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus." Luke 24:1-3 proclaimed at the Easter Vigil)

 

The Resurrection tells us that the sacrificial love which Christ showed us on the Cross is not defeated by the violence, seeming failure, and death inflicted by the Cross. If Jesus had not risen from the Tomb, it would have appeared that death was stronger than this love. But Christ is Risen and this is what makes all the difference in the world. So we are not exempt from suffering in this world, just as Jesus was not exempt but shared our sufferings and still does. Like him we have our crucifixions and Holy Saturdays–the Resurrection does not take these away but assures us that love will lift us up and renew us in Christ. There is no Cross without the Resurrection and there is no Resurrection without the Cross.

Like a story that comes to the end and yet returns to the beginning, the Cross and Resurrection, this Passover Mystery of Christ’s Dying and Rising, always brings us back to the Upper Room again. That is to say, we remember and we have made present to us the Crucified yet Risen Christ in the Eucharist he gave to us to celebrate in the Upper Room. May we always return and ascend to that Upper Room, lift up the Cross of Christ and receive the Risen Jesus who will lift us up from the Tomb and fill our emptiness with unending, life changing, and victorious love!
 

The Third Day
 

The immovable stone tossed aside,

The collapsed linens,

The blinding angel and the chalky guards:

All today like an old wood-cut.
 

The earthquake on the third day,

The awakened sleeper,

The ubiquitous stranger, gardener, fisherman:

Faded frescoes from a buried world.
 

Retell, renew the event

In these planetary years,

For we were there and he is here:

It is always the third day.
 

Our world-prison is split;

An elder charity

Breaks through these modern fates.

Publish it by Telstar,

Diffuse it by mundo vision.
 

He passes through the shattered concrete slabs,

The vaporized vanadium vaults,

The twisted barbed-wire trestles.
 

A charity coeval with the suns

Dispels the deep obsessions of the age

And opens heart-room in our sterile dream:
 

A new space within space to celebrate

With mobiles and new choreographies,

A new time within time to set to music.
 

— Amos Niven Wilder

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Fifth Sunday of Lent: The Sacred geography of Lent Part V (At the Tomb)

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are once again outside the city (see "Outside the City"). Jesus is called to Bethany, to the tomb of his friend Lazarus who has died. He comes to bring him back to life. So in our sacred geography of Lent we come this Sunday to the place of the dead, the Tomb.

 

Our spiritual desert journey with Jesus continues. When Jesus receives word that Lazarus is sick, Jesus and his disciples are in the desert where John the Baptist had ministered: "beyond the Jordan [River]." (See John 10:40) Why is Jesus there? Is he revisiting the place of his Baptism?

 

At Easter we will renew our Baptism Promises in a solemn way. There is also a Prayer Station at our parish’s Baptism Font where this may be done.

 

When Jesus does return to Bethany he does not enter the town. He encounters Martha, Lazarus’ sister, and then goes to the tomb. He is in grief; the city and its attractions and distractions hold no comfort for him. Instead, sharing fully in our humanity, he confronts the emptying of emotions in grieving a loved one. He is truly in one of the involuntary deserts almost all of us must travel at some point: the desert of grief.

 

 

In the Funeral Intercessions used at Holy Faith, one petition asks: "For the family and friends of N., that they be comforted in their grief by the Lord, who wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. Let us pray to the Lord. R."

 

The description of John that "Jesus wept" (John 11:35) is perhaps one of the more moving verses of all Scripture. In this act of weeping for his friend, Jesus is in solidarity with each of us when we weep at the death of someone we love; when we weep at the grave of a loved one. I would say that those tears of Jesus are almost as precious as his blood shed for us. He was human like us, with flesh and blood like us, in all things but sin; and he also shares our weeping. His blood pleads for forgiveness of our sins; his tears assure us of his compassion.

 

The place of the tomb as part of the sacred geography of Lent is a concrete reminder of the reality of death. In life we are often separated from the ones we love because of work or distance. When someone we love dies, we could try to pretend that they are just away on a trip or some other denial of death. But we cannot deny the loved one’s death when we stand at their grave.

 

Recently I was at the interment of my Aunt’s cremated remains at the Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola (my Uncle was in the Air Force and will also be buried with her one day) At that same Columbarium are the cremated remains of my Father and Mother. As I also visited their place of burial, read their names and the dates of their birth and death, I felt the sadness of their not being here with me in this life. Yes, they are dead and here are their remains, there is no denying it.

 

But death is not the final word of our lives; it’s not the final chapter. Jesus has the final word and that word is "life." The Gospel reading for March 13 was from John 5 and included these words:

 

"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word
        and believes in the one who sent me
has eternal life and will not come to condemnation,
but has passed from death to life.

Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here
when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,
and those who hear will live....

Do not be amazed at this, because the hour is coming
in which all who are in the tombs
will hear his voices and will come out,
those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life,
but those who have done wicked deeds
to the resurrection of condemnation." (vv.24-25, 28-29)

Jesus speaks of passing from death to life. We usually think of our lives as passing from life to death: we are born, we live for a time for however long, and we die. But with Jesus, as is often the case, this is turned upside down: we are dead but he brings us to life! This is called his Paschal (or Passover) Mystery. It is the passing from death to life. We who follow Christ believe we will take this passage (passing) along with him to eternal life and in a resurrection of the body like his.

 

But even now we are passing from death to life and this was begun in our Baptism. The full form of Baptism in the ancient church was at first full body immersion into the waters of a river, lake, or later a Baptism Font–large enough to accomplish this. Adults were at first the majority of those baptized. When they went down into the waters fully immersed, it was like going down into a grave. Coming up from the waters was like coming up out of the grave. Thus St. Paul writes to the Romans:

 

"Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
we too might live in newness of life.
For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his,
we shall also be united with him in the resurrection." (Romans 5:3-5)



Lazarus rises from the Tomb
(It almost looks like he was baptized)

Our Baptism initiates us into a lifetime of passing from death to newness of life. It immerses us in the Passover Mystery of Christ. He died and was buried and then was raised to new life. The "spiritual dying" we must do is to die to sin and selfishness so that we can pass into his new life of love. Love demands a dying to selfishness so as to love another.

 

This twin theme of death and life in Baptism led to the early Church to call the Baptism Font both tomb and womb! Some of those adult Baptism Fonts were even shaped like a tomb or perhaps a Cross as is the Adult Font at Holy Faith.

 

In this sacred geography of Lent we come to the Tomb of Lazarus and behold it is empty! We will hear that the Tomb of Jesus will be empty on Easter Sunday. Tombs bring us face to face with the reality of death. The empty Tomb reminds us that in Christ death will not hold us, but we will obey the word of Christ and come out of our places of death whatever they may be.

 

                                                                                 +   +   +
　

                           Just Call Me Lazarus

                        by Sarah Fletcher, © 2013

A people born wearing their funeral clothes,
we don't even know there's a stone. We sit in our grave,
dirty feet, dirty cave, and trace patterns into
the ground. The sweat of our brow drips in rivulets;
a salt-imbued lie of release. A taste of the sea,
of a river, a spring, of a well we're too haughty to drink.
We think we're so rich in our tatters. We think
we're so bright in the dark. We think we are kings
in our coffins and schemes like this is the best that
we are. Like there isn't a voice small inside us.
Like there isn't a breath in our lungs. Like there
isn't a world waiting just out that door if we'd
only stand up and explore. Like there isn't a man
calling out to us. Like we don't hear our name in a
prayer. Like we don't see the stone for the lid
it's become on the room we see fit to call home.

I no longer choose to abide this. I no longer want to
subside. I want to be strong and impassioned and
torn by the wind and His name and the horn. I
want to be fashioned for battle. I want to wear
armor and light. I want to sing hours and hours on
end with no ceasing in day or in night. I want to
feel roads underneath me. I want to drip words
from my tongue. I am done with the silence, the darkness,
the violence, that my evil days often had sung.
I no longer revel in drunkenness. In sculpting my
face to a norm. In starving and fighting, in lying
and hiding, in valuing how I perform. We need to
rely on the 'other'. That power found outside our own.
I need to escape, to find spirit, take shape- this
tomb is no longer my home. I will resurrect.


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Faith and Funerals

Over the 10 years that I have been Pastor of Holy Faith, I have presided over at least 300 funerals. One might think that conducting so many funerals would be depressing. I certainly share the sorrow of families who have a loved one who has died. The funeral we had this past week was particularly sad; it was the funeral of a 19 year old young man who died in an accident. As I spent time with his grieving parents and grandmother, I deeply felt their sorrow, and carried it with me to prayer, especially as I had first met this boy when he was 9 years old and watched him grow to a fine young man.

I do not find doing these funerals depressing, however, for just as I try to help strengthen the faith of the grieving, I find that my faith also gets strengthened as I recall the hope of Resurrection and everlasting life.

We, of course, grieve when one we love dies and will not be with us anymore in this life; but for those who "die in Christ," our faith assures us that after any needed purification, those believers will enter into heaven. For them this is joy. The Catechism says that "Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness." (#1024) We can only imagine what "supreme happiness" is like and what it means to have all human longings fulfilled!

I preached at the funeral for that young man on Thursday about Jesus who speaks a word of peace in our storms. This Gospel passage is so meaningful:

                                                                                    "On that day, when evening had come, Jesus said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"" (Mark 4: 35-41)

Jesus is going to make sure we get "to the other side," and he will speak a word of peace into our storms. I have found this true over and over again for myself and for others. Sometimes it takes awhile for us to hear that word of peace, but Jesus promises: "Peace is my farewell to you, my peace is my gift to you." (John 15.27)

There is a song which is sometimes used at funerals; I want it sung at my funeral one day:

Listen on Youtube

Be Still My Soul (Lyrics)

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as He has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know

His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on

When we shall be forever with the Lord,

When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.