Homily from Archbishop Martin in St. Mary's Pro Cathedral on
Saturday, November 13th at Mass to remember priests of the Diocese who
have died over the past year
We have come together
in this Mother Church of the Archdiocese of Dublin to pray for those
priests of the Archdiocese, or who ministered in the diocese, and who
died during the past year.
We gather as relatives and friends, as
brother-priests and as men and women who are indebted to them through
their ministry and life witness.
We come full of gratitude
to God for the friendship and for the work of ministry which have bound
us over many years with one or other of these priests. But humanly we
still come with heavy hearts as we reflect on the pain of loss that we
experience and the void that the passing of each of these priests has
left in our hearts and our lives.
They constitute an
extremely diverse group, men of different talents and abilities; men who
worked in a variety of ministries; men who enjoyed good health and long
lives and men whose ministry was limited by ill health and suffering.
They were a diverse group but all were men who were loved and respected
in the communities in which they worked and indeed farther afield.
I never fail to be struck at the level of affection and recognition
that people show at the funerals of priests. At times in which the
Church is often under criticism I can witness to the fact that priests’
funerals bring full Churches. People come from parishes where priests
had served decades beforehand and where their ministry is still
remembered.
I would like to say a particular word of
encouragement to the close relatives of these priests.
Too often we
fail to be fully aware of the sense of loss that you experience. The
loss that you experience is however a witness to and recognition of the
good that they did and the love that the showed to us when they were
among us.
I am especially grateful to the families of these priests for
the support they gave them during their illness, whether it was short
or long, and for the gestures of human solidarity that you showed them
in the final days and moments of their lives. These words of
recognition and appreciation go to also those housekeepers who loyally,
lovingly and quietly supported these priests in the ministry over many
years.
In this month of November we remember those who have
died. How do we approach death? No one has ever experienced death. We
may have witnessed death. We may have accompanied a person on their
final passage from this life. But what death means and how the one who
is dying experiences that moment we can never know
Death is a
subject that we often prefer not to speak too much about or reflect on
too much.
Inevitably we fear death and as the years pass the
inevitability and the proximity of death becomes ever more present in
each of our lives.
Our culture often tries to sanitize death, to keep
it as far as possible from the public view, to ensure that as far as
possible we remove or cover up the sense of bodily decay which is part
of death.
In our Christian reflection there are times when we
have fallen into a similar trap.
Despite our hope of resurrection,
death remains for the Christian painful and mysterious. It involves a
passage to new life, but once again we have no real understanding of
what the real after-life will look like.
The life that opens to us
after this life is new life, it is not in any way a replica of this
life, but something completely transformed. We have nothing in this
life with which we can compare or imagine what after like will be like.
What we can say is that with death life is transformed but it is still my
personal life.
What is transformed remains the person that I am, but
unencumbered by my body-liness as experienced in this life and freed
from the traps of sin which have accompanied and encumbered me along the
path of my life.
Death and resurrection belong to the very
essence of Christian belief. The Christian teaching about new life is
not about the mechanics of what we will be like or what sort of place
heaven might be, but rather of a relationship.
The Christian teaching
about new life is about a relationship of intimacy with Christ in which I
achieve in Christ also the fullness of who I am and of what is truly
good in me.
There is a true discontinuity between this life
and the life after death, but there is also continuity. If eternal life
is a relationship with the Lord who died for us, descended into the
realm of hell and death and then rose for us freeing us from the bonds
of sinfulness, then the way in which we must live in this life - the
true meaning of human life – is also to be found in our ability and our
willingness to answer the call of Jesus to fellowship with him and to
follow him on the path of his self-giving love.
Saint Paul, in our
first reading, reminds us that “life for us is Christ” and that we can
experience his glory within us in life or in death. We prepare out
relationship with Christ for all eternity by the way we live in
relationship with him in this life.
We can be assured of our
salvation and we can in a way anticipate that salvation already in this
life the more we become faithful to Christ and witnessing to him in our
daily lives.
The Gospel reading introduces us to some Greeks who wish “to see Jesus”. Responding to what seems to be a rather simple and practical question Jesus surprises us with a very profound reflection.
The path to seeing Jesus passes also through death and
resurrection. The grain of wheat must die before it can bear fruit.
The glorifying of Jesus will take place by him being lifted up, not
lifted up into human glory, but being lifted up on the cross. Each of
us prepares for death by dying each day to self-centredness and
preoccupation only with our own interests and allowing Christ to enter
into our lives.
The Greeks ask: “We want to see Jesus”.
This reference of some Greeks would have been understood in a very
special way at the time that the Gospel were written and where already
the Christian community had changed and grown well beyond its Jewish
origins, and was composed of people of a different background and
tradition and religious heritage, and who are here generically spoken
about here as “Greeks”.
This is really a reflection on the Church. Our seeking and seeing Jesus takes place in the Church. The desire to
know Christ which will only be really and authentic answered within the
life of the Church. The Church is the place where we come to know
Jesus and where we gain a share in that life of Jesus which will be our
guide and our certainty about eternal life.
The priests who
we commemorate here this morning dedicated their lives in service to and
within the Church. They discussed the Church and perhaps debated about
the Church, but in the depths of their priestly ministry they loved the
Church. Their devotion to the Mass and to the Eucharist became the
daily nourishment of their spiritual growth in this life and the bread
which gave them nourishment and became the promise for the life which
lasts forever.
Our hope lies in the depth of our faith. As
the Church begins the celebration of a Year of Faith we thank God for
the witness of faith of these good priests who witnessed with joy and
dedication to Jesus in this life and who now in the presence of Jesus
are in a position to continue to intercede and inspire and help us on
the difficult path of our life in faith in a changing world.
We give
thanks to God for the ministry of these priests and we commend their
souls into the hand of God who is merciful and forgiving and who is true
life for all eternity.