The World of Grandpa Don

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Bereavement Reflection
May 8, 2002 Bereavement Service 
Deacon Mike Kiley

At every mass we profess our faith in the resurrection, not only of Jesus but of every man, woman, and child, from the beginning to the end of human history. For many, it may well be that when we recite the words of the creed, `we look for the resurrection of the dead,' we give them little more than passing attention. 

Then comes the day, which has come to everyone here, when the words, ` we look for the resurrection of the dead,' take on a deep personal meaning, because we have laid to rest someone we love. We look for the resurrection of the dead now because life without that expectation would lack meaning and completeness. At moments like these we are forced to draw seriously on our faith and to explore its meaning with our hearts as well as with our minds.

At moments like these the holy spirit of god draws especially close to us because our defenses are down and because we now not merely profess, but really experience, our need of him as comforter. It is one of the graces that those we have loved in life bequeath to us when they go before us on the road to god. The holy spirit, whom the gospels speaks of as the `first gift' of Jesus to those who believe, comes to us as `the best of comforters.' the comfort he offers us is not a superficial thing removing from us the sorrow and sense of loss we feel. Belief in the resurrection does not relieve us of our grief. Nor should we expect it to come automatically. The affirmation of faith which we are asked to make is too profound and important to be easy.

To all appearances death is a very final thing, and we should not feel that our faith asks us to think otherwise. Faith in the resurrection does not remove our tears; it allows them to glisten faintly in the light that lies beyond, the light in which god himself lives. It is that light where god himself lives. It is that light which helps to explain and give meaning to the sense of incompleteness, the heart-hunger, the instinct within us all that we were made for more than even the loveliest and worthiest of earthly experiences.

Life is a series of journeys, concluding with the greatest one of all, when we have done everything that can be done and now must give ourselves over into the hands of god who made us, and who, through Jesus, has taught us to think of him and approach him as abba, father.

He has given us a strange, beautiful, and frightening world to live in. As Christians we believe that he shares our life in this bewildering world by sending his son to be one of us. Jesus spoke often about the need for the seed to fall to the ground if there was to be a harvest. That is a difficult teaching; but it responds exactly to our experience of life with its blend of light and shade, joy and sorrow, which can be so hard to understand and accept. Instinctively, we would like it otherwise: light without shade. But that is the condition of eternity, and here below we have no way of knowing what such an existence might be like.

God's own son, at his father's bequest, took upon himself the dark journey of death. On the third day his father raised him from the dead. The Christian church, from the very first moment of its existence, has believed and preached that what had happened to him, will happen to us. Jesus was separated from the one he loved most only to be reunited in a more true, beautiful, and holy way. We shall be raised to new life, because he took on himself the experience and the pain of death. That is why, although we mourn the departure of those we love, we do so in the knowledge that we are also celebrating their homecoming. But we need to remember that they in turn wait for us to celebrate our homecoming. They wait for us in the new light, in the new dawn.

In the words of an Indian poet and mystic,

 "Death is not extinguishing the light, 
but putting out the lamp ...
because the dawn has come."

Mike tells us that he adopted this reflection
from a piece by Augustinian, Gabriel Daly, OSA

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