Daniel
Pobolski, Patricia Kowalski, Antonia Ransberg, Hilda Gzregorek, Geraldine
Tajkowski, James Plencner, Patricia Carter, Larraine Cress, Joseph Hartz, Ed
Lind, Loretta Zygulski, Eugene Lizzi, Josephine Sopzcynski, Esther
Gromski. Since my ordination, these are
the fourteen men and women that I’ve buried (one, but a boy); confining that
list to just those whose funeral I’ve presided and preached at, just those for
whom I’ve been the one the Church has charged with standing by a casket or an
urn and proclaiming hope.
James
Plencner has the dubious privilege of being the last person I buried as a
deacon, before my priestly ordination. I
remember his face very well. I never
knew him when he was alive, but I almost feel like I did, because I remember
sitting around the kitchen table with his widow, his daughter, his son-in-law,
as they shared stories, as they laughed, as they marveled about God’s grace as
revealed in his life, and as the laughter petered out, and the tears came
back. I buried him on the Saturday
before Palm Sunday and drove straight from Kaniewski’s to St. Stan’s, to deacon
the first of our Palm Sunday liturgies. As
we contemplated the weeping women, it was James’s widow’s tears that became
fresh for me once more. As the lector
proclaimed that Christ had died, and we all knelt, it was James’s face that I
saw. Christ had died. I couldn’t let that sit tamely as an idea
anymore, as a creedal statement too precise to shake me: moving from a casket,
to our liturgical reading, the truth was enfleshed for me in revivified way:
Christ had died. Christ had died for us. Christ had died.
And
that’s what lets me proclaim hope in the face of death. Because Christ told us what his death was
for. Our Gospel reading is from Jesus’
long speech to his disciples at his Last Supper. Just before he says this, he has bent down to
wash their feet and then predicted that one of his closest disciples would betray
him. And then he embarks on this
speech. He takes the doom out of his
departure. He offers comfort and invites
trust. He has a promise, and a meaning
to give to the gift of self he’s promised he will give: he is going to prepare
a place for them. He’s going to build a
home, to serve a banquet, to over-fill a cup, ready the oil, station the rod
and staff that we might fear no more the valley of death. And he doesn’t do this in vain. He goes to prepare a place for us because he
wants us there with him, and since he wants us there, he provides a way for us
to get there. And the gift is the giver:
the Way is he. The Way of Jesus is total
and loving gift of self: offered, and invited.
Here’s
another list of names that builds me up in hope, my baptismal resume: Alyssa
Hoeppner, Audrey Foldenaur, Liliana Gannon, Julian Gomez, Jesús Gomez, Chase
Yates, Elliana Nelson, La’Miyah King, Kaiden Wilburn, Armando Femia, Scarlet
Boocher, Trenton Sypel, Jack Dvorak, Greyson Bishop, Marilynn Robertson,
Augustine Garro, John Lamphier, James Ziegert, Theodore Stancowicz, Leo Huffman,
August Fisher, Marie Hoipkemier, Juliette Kaufhold and Maddux Thoma. These are the twenty-four babies and children
that I’ve baptized since my ordination.
These are deaths I’ve witnessed too, but joy-filled ones: death to sin;
for most of them, before they’ve ever known personal sin. In these watery rebirths, we’ve declared that
we don’t want these lives claimed by sin and death; that they are, instead, to
be ruled by self-gift and love. In their
anointing, they have gained a conformity to Christ, the Anointed one, a
conformity to his entire ‘career:’ baptized into his death, that they might also
rise with him. Embraced by God in
baptism, they are sent forth on a life of pilgrimage, leading to that final
embrace that never dies.
Today
is a day to pray for our dead, that they might continue striving on that path
of holiness Christ has marked out for us, that they might be received in his
loving embrace, seated at the banquet table, and housed in the place prepared
for them. It’s also a day to pray for
ourselves, to remember that we will die, to trace our liturgical fingers along
the map of holiness, relearning the contours of a life of grace, of gift, of
love. To taste, under form of bread and
wine, at once Christ’s death and the eternal banquet. To be led, by that taste, to follow the Way,
to live, and to die, in Love.
No comments:
Post a Comment