We were blessed, last week, to have the privilege of hearing a homily from a dear priest we’ve known for years.  Seems as though he also knew Dh’s uncle quite well also and therefore, his aunt.  This priest was the celebrant at her funeral Mass. 

Men like him don’t come along very often, and it’s such a blessing to us when they do.  His homilies have never been anything but beautiful and have always both blessed and challenged us to be better, and do better, to always live the life God calls you to live fully and completely and joyfully. 

His homily at dh’s aunt’s funeral was no different.  I was doing quite well, working very very hard at holding back tears throughout the rosary, interactions with family etc.  Then his homily started and, well, so did the waterworks!  One particular anecdote so moved even my children that I was having to rip the single kleenex I was able to fish from my purse into quarters to give us all something to wipe away the tears (yes, I should have been better prepared, and normally I am!  I don’t know where my kleenex have gone!)  He was speaking about two ministers, a Catholic and a Baptist, who were great friends.  They had many theological discussions and took great delight in learning more about the faith of the other. (I am relatively certain that he knew both parties quite well)   They happened, one day, to be discussing death and the afterlife and the Communion of Saints.  The Baptist minister was trying to understand the Catholic teaching and was reiterating what he thought was correct back to the priest.  He said “When someone we love is dying we are there, and we are praying and we are loving and we know that there is hope because heaven is there and God is waiting and all will be good.  We know this, beyond a doubt.  However, what we also know is that once our beautiful loved one has passed away there is a veil, a heavy, black, velvet curtain that falls and separates us from them so that we can’t speak to them, or pray for them.  We can remember them, but that is it, they’re gone.  We’ll see them again some day, but until then they are separated from us and we have only to miss them.  But you Catholics.  You have a veil too, only it’s not made of heavy velvet.  It’s more like a chicken wire fence.  When your beloved die, they’re not so completely gone.  They can reach their finger through that fence and touch you.  And you, you can reach your finger inside that fence and touch them.  You can pray for each other and you can talk to each other.  They are still with you and you both hope to be together again, in heaven, but until then you have those little holes in the chicken wire.

 

Yeah.  I think he got it.

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