Funeral Homily #1

    On behalf of the Pastor, the staff and all of us here at St. Catherine's, please accept our deepest condolences on the loss of your wife, your mother, your friend.  It is always a sad time to say goodbye and this goodbye is bittersweet. 

    I lost my own mother to Alzheimer's and I can appreciate the slow sense of loss of Marjorie that you must have experienced over the last six years.  As the Alzheimer's progressed, I'm sure that you saw less and less of the woman you loved and more and more of a stranger.  Those lucid moments followed by times of confusion are painful to watch.  The woman that you saw most recently in the nursing home has little resemblance to the woman of your cherished memories.  If we looked only at those facts, we would be living in a depressing world indeed, however we look at life with the eyes of faith.

    Behind me today is the Paschal candle, burning bright with the light of Christ.  It is a reminder to us of the suffering, death and most importantly, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We have in Christ a God who suffered.  We have in Christ, the light of the world, an image for us of the first fruits from death.  We believe that Christ rose from the dead and He promised us everlasting life with Him.  This is our hope.  This is our strength to go on.  There is more to our existence than these few years here on this world.

    St. Paul asks us in the second reading. “What will separate us from the love of God”. He answers the question immediately, “neither death, nor life will be able to separate us from the love of God”.  God's love for us is beyond our ability to comprehend.  It is a perfect, complete love for all of His people.  Through her Baptism, Marjorie joined God's family.  She became God's daughter.  The white pall on the casket reminds us of her spotless baptismal robe and those baptismal promises that brought her into God's chosen people.

    Through our faith, we have confidence in life after death.  Through God's mercy, we believe that Marjorie is even now on her way to her eternal reward, completely sound of mind and body.  As we heard in the gospel today, “everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day”.  We know that Marjorie believed, so we know that she will have eternal life.  She may have died to this existence, but she lives on in the life of Christ.

    Our belief in this continued life can comfort us, perhaps not fully today, but in time.  Today's first reading reminds us that “The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces.”  Nobody expects today to be a time without tears, but the time will come when the tears will subside.  Not because we love Marjorie less, but because we have come to accept our loss and realize that she is likely waiting for us to be reunited with her in the place God has prepared for  us all.  I am sure that with some time, today's loss and pain will be replaced with your best memories of the woman you all loved.

    If we remember Marjorie's life long love of music, we can just picture her playing and singing with the heavenly choirs, keeping them in tempo and helping them to sound their best.