Funeral Mass
When we gather for the funeral of a friend or a neighbour, we are attending to at least five issues. The first issue is the context of our gathering: we gather as an assembly of Christian believers. We gather around the body of a friend who shared our assumption, about God, about life, and about death. In other words, we gather around the body of a man who shared our faith. That then is the context of our gathering. And, whatever we say or do here this morning will only make sense in that context.
Our first duty as a Christian community is to pray for the soul of Richie. We are all flawed and fallible. We are all called by God to form community. That community will take different shapes and forms for different people. Our family, our place of work, the circles within which we socialise - all of these intersect and overlap. We connect with a variety of people at a variety of levels. Inevitably then, unless we are pure angelic figures, we will bump into one another and hurt one another, mostly unintentionally, as we make our way through life. This is what the Church calls the sinful side of human nature. This is why we pray at the funeral Mass that our departed friend may be forgiven the sins he committed. We forgive Richie any hurt he may have caused us; and we ask Riche to forgive us any hurt we may have unwittingly caused him. And we beg God to forgive us both. Jesus encourages us because he recognised that this was the reality and the experience of every human being: 'The just man falls seven times daily.' 'I have come, not to call the just, but sinners.' Every one of us qualifies under that heading.
The second issue we must attend to at funeral Masses is to renew our own faith in the resurrection. Our recent Catholic tradition has reduced our understanding of faith to an act of consent. We are, so to speak, handed a list of Articles of Belief and we are asked to sign along the dotted line. If you can sign up to that list, you are considered to be an orthodox believer. This impoverishes the type of faith that Jesus inspired. The word trust is interchangeable with 'faith' or 'believe'. In our everyday secular lives, we used the word in the very same way: 'Do you believe me?' and 'Do you trust me?' are one and the same. Our faith is primarily in a person, we trust what he said. We take him at his word. The Jesus presented to us in the gospels was a transparently honest and good man. His actions were entirely in harmony with his words. 'Do not let your hearts be troubled' he tells us in today's gospel. 'Trust in God still and trust in me. There are many rooms in my father's house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you.' In John's Gospel he tells us more explicitly still: "If anyone believes in me, even though he dies, he will live, and whoever believes in me will never die." We take Jesus at his word. We trust him. It is because of this word that we believe Richie is now alive and happy with God. The Catholic tradition has always carried a very strong faith in the resurrection, a very strong allegiance to the memory of our dead. The little white crosses, bearing the names of those associated with this church and who died in the last 12 months bears witness to the fact that our allegiance to the dead is a living tradition. On this Sunday every year we remember in a special way three people who went to God early too: Rory Kavanagh, Colm Ferguson and Maureen Loughnane. We believe now that they are all at rest in God.
The third issue we address during our funeral Mass is to thank God for his blessings and his gifts. We thank God for the precious gift that life is. The awfulness of death reveals the sweetness and beauty of life. But so often we take this gift for granted. God blesses the world in a unique way through each person. Richie was born in Dublin 53 years ago. The food trade was his profession. It is no accident that we picked our first reading from the prophet Isaiah: "On this mountain, the Lord of Hosts will prepare for all peoples banquet of rich foods, a banquet of fine wines." Richie will be quite at home with that scene! He came West as all sensible Dubs do, and he married Dolores McDonagh. They were blessed with two children, Ross and Margaret. Dolores died at a very young age twelve years ago. In truth I suppose, we have no idea of how much Richie has struggled since. He was plagued for most of his life with very serious form of diabetes. Diabetes is a disease that requires very careful and close management. Unfortunately, we don't immediately associate management skills with Richie. He was easy-going, he was pleasant, and a gentle presence on this earth. He was an inoffensive man who kept his own counsel and didn't intrude. We in the Augustinian here found him to be a most generous and obliging man, a true neighbour who always came to our assistance when the chips were down, and that was literally so sometimes! If we were ever stuck for anything connected with cooking or barbecuing for any parish occasion, a phone call to Richie and the problem was solved. Not only would he give us what we need; he always had it delivered!
The fourth issue Christians address when they gather for a funeral Mass is the matter of the bereaved. Our presence here is our way of supporting Ross and Margaret at this very difficult time for them. They were only kids when they lost Dolores their mother twelve years ago. They have now barely entered adulthood and they have lost their father as a young man. We are at a loss when confronted with circumstances such as this. All we can offer is our presence, and our prayers. The contemporary Liverpool poet Brian Patten has written beautifully on the role of memory in community. I may draw some consolation from his words:
So Many Different Lengths of Time
How long does a man live after all?
A thousand days or only one?
One week or a few centuries?
How long does a man spend living or dying
and what do we mean when we say gone forever?
Adrift in such preoccupations, we seek clarification.
We can go to the philosophers
but they will weary of our questions.
We can go to the priests and rabbis
but they might be busy with administrations.
So, how long does a man live, finally?
And how much does he live while he lives?
We fret, and ask so many questions -
then when it comes to us
the answer is so simple.
A man lives for as long as we carry him inside us,
for as long as we carry the harvest of his dreams,
for as long as we ourselves live,
holding memories in common, a man lives.
His lover will carry his man's scent, his touch:
his children will carry the weight of his love.
One friend will carry his arguments,
another will hum his favourite tunes,
another will still share his terrors.
And the days will pass with baffled faces,
then the weeks, then the months,
then there will be a day when no question is asked
and the knots of grief will loosen in the stomach,
and the puffed faces will calm.
And on that day he will not have ceased,
but will have ceased to be separated by death.
How long does a man live, finally?
A man lives so many different lengths of time.
Brian Patten