Like many of you, when I was a little kid one my parents, most often my mother, ‘heard’ my prayers.  I would be already in bed and we would pray together.  After the sign of the cross, the first prayer was:

 

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

 

I would then move to the conclusion in which I said ‘God bless…’ for just about everything that breathed, including the animals.

 

What is striking about that little poem-prayer is its stark realism about the possibility of death.  One would think it too much for a child but I wonder: best to get that word die out there and put it all in the hands of God.  Also, important is the realization that there is a part of me which lasts forever, invisible and beloved of God, my soul.

 

Those crucial truths—that I will die someday, that I have a soul, and that my deepest desire is to be taken by God—have stayed with me my whole life, preventing me from making more a mess of a life my life than I have and, now in its last third, inspiring me with hope.  I also must confess that this sense of our brief time here and eternity with God does not, in the words of the late Fr. Markey, seem ubiquitous in the Church nowadays.

 

Recently a friend of mine who works in a mortuary told me how radically the attitude towards funerals has changed recently.  In a word, for more and more people, it is only disposal.  If there is a service—and in the majority of deaths in Santa Cruz county there is not—there is often an emphasis on ‘celebration of life.’  To be honest, I love eulogies and anecdotes about the life of the deceased; however, I am afraid that more and more the vision of the grieving remains earthbound.

 

At the end of the funeral rite in our parish we sing David Hass’ Saints of God.  It is one of the most lyrical, in the best sense haunting, pieces of music we ever sing.  And the vision of all those present is drawn into the mystery that, as we say goodbye on earth, a magnificent welcome arises from the saints, angels, and our own beloved dead from heaven.

Even if you and I must undergo purification, we have still made it, delighting the heart of God that ‘not one be lost.’

 

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love life: good food, delicious wine, travel, dear friends, the month of October, books without measure, being a priest, I could go on.  And yet, and yet…there is this longing becoming increasingly more apparent for…heaven.

If anything enjoyment in life makes me yearn for the complete and final bliss.

Again, like many of you, I have had little intimations of this experience, tiny seconds of glory that point beyond the day in & day out. 

This is part of our birthright as baptized people.  In the eyes of our culture this belief is delusional, too good to be true.  All the more reason to keep this hope in the minds of our children as well as our own; to make the connection between this world and the next in Sunday Mass; to truly celebrate the departure of a loved one in the church and at the graveyard.

One last thing: When I bless a grave, I use these words: ‘Lord Jesus, by Your own three days in the tomb, you made holy the graves of all who believe…and made the grave a place of hope even as it claims our mortal bodies…’ It makes me recall a tour of the scavi [underground burial sites beneath St. Peter’s in Rome], during which I learned the change of words used on funeral monuments after Christianity.  The new word?  Depositum: the body was only deposited, soon to be reclaimed in the resurrection.