Homily for Thursday, 12 February 2015– Simone and Frank Salt Funeral Mass

Readings of the day: Isaiah 43:1-4; Psalm 23 (Music setting); 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; John 21:15-19

This homily, at the funeral Mass for my maternal grandparents, Simone and Frank Salt, was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, Canada. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them.

How deeply are we people of hope? I do not believe we would be here were we not people of hope. Beyond our grieving; our sadness; our loss of our grandmother and grandfather, Simone and Frank, mother and father; wife and husband to each other of sixty-five years; great-grandmother and great-grandfather; friends; beloved of us and of God, we are here because we hope.

And what, or who, is the focus of our hope? We hope in eternal life, for Simone and Frank and for ourselves. St. Paul begins the second reading we have heard today, from his first Letter to the Thessalonians, with these words: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

Today, by our presence here in God’s house, we honour Simone and Frank, Grandma and Grandpa; Mom and Dad; Great-grandma and great-Grandpa, who were people of great Christian hope. We honour God, who gives us hope; who is the focus of our hope. St. Paul’s words to the Thessalonians about hope remind me especially of a humorous quip that Grandpa repeated many times when I was a teenager. When we (my family) would visit their little house in Sechelt, I often slept next to the front door, which opened into their kitchen. Teenagers, of course, often need more sleep than most people, and so I would most often be the last person in the house to wake up in the morning. Grandpa would announce my belated rising enthusiastically: “Well, he is alive”!

With hope, we have gathered here to pray that this will be the same announcement as Grandma and Grandpa are welcomed into heaven: “Well, they are alive”! And this will be no ordinary life but eternal life; not only a magnificent and loving sixty-five years of marriage, but the eternal wedding feast of heaven. They are alive! This is our confident hope and our prayer, not only for Simone and Frank, but for ourselves; each and every one of us.

But what gives us this hope; this confidence that Grandma and Grandpa, that we all, will inherit God’s gift of eternal life? Does it not border on dangerous pride to be so confident that we are destined to be welcomed into heaven; destined to be with our God forever, beginning on a day none of us really knows?

Our Eucharistic Prayer offers an answer to this question. In a few moments, we will pray these words: “In [Christ] the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed, not ended and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.”

Scripture says and our prayers during this Mass say that the great hope we have in eternal life for Simone and Frank and for each of us is not some misplaced pride. We have this hope not because we somehow deserve heaven, but because, by his love for us, God wants us all to inherit eternal life. God’s love is spoken of so beautifully in our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah. God, Isaiah says, has “created” us; has “formed” us. God, who loves us, makes us, human beings, uniquely capable of loving one another and of loving God in return. God has created us for himself, St. Augustine once said, and so our “hearts are restless until they rest in” God. It is our God who says to us; says to Simone and Frank now, in Isaiah’s words, “You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.” 

But the words of our Scripture and our prayers of this Mass do not deny or belittle the process of grieving our loved ones, Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad. The same love, this gift from God that gives us hope in eternal life also enables us to grieve; to feel sadness at the death of our beloved. Simone and Frank: These are God’s beloved as they are our beloved. God grieves as we grieve. But neither God nor we shall lose hope. God offers us consolation. God offers us eternal life.

We know and we hope in eternal life; heaven as the end goal for each of us. And yet does it not seem that, on the way to eternal life, some of us especially experience sadness; suffering; distance from our loved ones and from God more than others? Our Gospel reading from John says that this was to be the experience of St. Peter. Jesus asks Peter three times, to the point where Peter is deeply “hurt” by the question: “Do you love me”? And then Jesus reminds Peter, “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone will… take you where you do not wish to go.” John remarks that Jesus said this to Peter “to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.”

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad lived a life together of continuously answering Jesus’ question: “Do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.” With age and through illnesses, could we not understand if it became more and more difficult for them to answer, “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you”; if they had an increasingly difficult time accepting being led where they “did not wish to go”; even if we understand death to be a necessary transition to eternal life?

Grandma has been led through her final, silent years of struggle with dementia. And yet, through being led to “where” I am sure she did “not wish to go,” she never lost her beauty; her smile, especially when she seemed to sense her family nearby: Her children; her grandchildren; her great-grandchildren Molly and Liam; Braiden and Jessica.

Grandpa, too, was led to a place where he did “not wish to go”; through separation from his beloved wife, Simone; through not being able to communicate in words with her (although, to the end, he communicated his undying love for her and for God in countless other ways); through his own health troubles.

Simone and Frank; Grandma and Grandpa; great-Grandma and great-Grandpa; Mom and Dad never gave up hope. They glorified God by their lives to the end: “Yes, Lord, you know that [we] love you.”

Can we imagine this now, God saying to them at the gates of heaven; God saying this to each of us one day: “I know that you love me; that you have loved me all along; that you have loved the people I love; that you are people of hope? Know this, ‘You are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.’ Welcome into eternal life; into my rest in heaven. You are alive!”

“Follow me.”