Homily #31
FUNERAL MASS HOMILY
5th Friday of Easter
May 8, 2015
At the end of the movie A Man For All Seasons, the main character Sir Thomas More is
sitting in an prison cell awaiting his execution. His crime was defending marriage. His beloved wife frantically attempts to talk
him out of jail in order to avoid execution.
She asks Sir Thomas, “Why?” “Why
go through all this suffering?” “Why do
you make your family suffer like this?”
“I need you at home.” “Why go
through all this trouble? What you are
doing is unreasonable.”
Sir Thomas thinks about it for a moment and eventually
replies, “Then, dear wife, it isn’t because of reason. It is because of love.”
“Why bother?”
“Why bother?”
This was the question posed to Stacey and Ward over
the past 5 months. As you know, Stacey
is a trained medical professional. And among
her circle of contacts, this question, the question of “Why bother?” was asked
of her many times. “Why go through all this
suffering?” “Why carry to term?” “Why put others through this (especially your
husband)?” “What’s the point?” “Why not abort your child and save yourself
the trouble?”
I was deeply moved when Stacey shared this with me one
day. The questions asked are the very hard
questions asked by our society today. And through her tears, Stacey with all her motherly instinct said (speak slowly and clearly), “Because….. she is my daughter.”
“She’s my daughter.”
[Like] in today’s Gospel, Stacey like Mary, watches
her child slowly pass LITERALLY in front of her. The only exception [from the Gospel], as Ward
mentioned last night at the Vigil, was that they would not see or even know the
exact minute of Pia Merced’s passing.
After all, it only hit Ward as he shared the news with his sister, “Pia
is gone.” My daughter is gone.
But the good
news today is found in Stacey’s answer, “Because she is my daughter.” Blessed Pope Paul VI said that people in the modern world listen more to
witnesses than they do to teachers….and when they listen to teachers, it is
because they are first witnesses.”
(Repeat:)
People in the modern world listen to witnesses before they listen to
teachers….and when they do listen to teachers, it is because they are
witnesses.
The dying words of Our Lord show us that death is not
the final answer. Of all the words Jesus
spoke as His Sacred Heart slowly gave out, He chose the words, “It is
finished.” “It is accomplished.” Consummatum
est. Mission accomplished.
Yes, we saw at the Vigil how Pia Merced accomplished
the mission entrusted to her by God. And
this morning, before we say the Final Commendation Prayers at the end of this
Funeral Mass, we turn to Ward, Stacey and her Kuya Linus, to your extended
family, and echo the Good News – the Gospel words of Jesus with how you handled
this difficult chapter (in your marriage). “Mission Accomplished!” “Consummatum est!” You
witnessed the Gospel of Life, the Gospel of Love, the Good News of marriage and
family.
Well done, faithful stewards of love and life! You
are living the Gospel of Life in a very real way….the Good News of the Family in the midst of a Culture of Death that says, “Why
bother?” You have built
up brick by brick the Civilization of Love so that, like St. Paul in his First
Letter to the Corinthians, we say with
joy “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?.....
…Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ. In other words, this wasn’t just
theory for you, Stacey and Ward. This
was very real and incarnational.
You have loved your daughter from natural beginning to
natural end with integrity. And in a particular way, Ward, to you as the
father of your little daughter, as one father to another, as one man to
another, in our society which has a crisis of manhood, of men who abandon their
children and their wives, you and through you other fathers and husbands – to encourage
us – [we] can see the example of one like the words of the Psalmist say from
Psalm 25, “Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, because I wait for you, O
Lord.”
The good news is that when you asked us to wear spring
clothes at the Vigil, Ward, we join you in being an Easter People of the
Resurrection! As St. John Paul the Great
proclaimed, “We are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song!” Alleluia!
The Cross you carried doesn’t end with the Cross, but with the
Resurrection. In the First Reading, it
is written in the Word of God through the Book of Revelation, “I saw a new
heaven and a new earth. I also saw the
holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband….” where
God will wipe every tear from their eyes….
And where one day, you will be reunited at the Resurrection.
Yes, this difficult and is easier said than done for a
parent that has lost a child. And it
will be perhaps especially difficult this Mother’s Day this Sunday…and Father’s
Day next month. Yet even now, we get a
glimpse, a foretaste, a foreshadow of the answer that you gave to that question
you were asked over and over and over, “Why bother?”
We
bother for love! At
the Vigil last night, little brother Linus kept walking around saying, “Hi
Baby, I’m Linus! Hi Baby, I’m Linus!” And we joyfully await that glorious day when
his little sister will say back to him in the New Jerusalem, “Hi Kuya Linus, I’m
Pia! Hi Kuya, I’m Pia!”
And to her parents, “Hi mommy, hi daddy, I’m your daughter.”
(Amen.)
_____
In prepared text, but I did not say:
Our Lady of Mercy, pray for us.
Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.
St. Pio, pray for us.
Rite of Committal (Part 1)
Rite of Committal (Part 2)
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