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| Homily for the Mass for the Deceased: Abandoning Oneself in Life Prepares One for Abandonment
in Death
2 Mc 12: 43-46 Philippians 1: 20-24, 27 John 11: 17-27
For over a dozen years, as a priest of the Archdiocese of Detroit, I belonged to a Jesu Caritas Prayer Group. We always finished our meetings with the following prayer of Charles de Foucault:
“Father, I abandon myself into your hands, do with me what you will. Whatever
you may do, I thank you: Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures – I wish no more than this, O Lord.”
I always felt and still today feel a little insufficient when I say that prayer because in point of fact I am not always ready to abandon myself completely and fully, without reserve to the will of the Father. But I do believe that this kind of abandoning experience prepares us for the adventure of our own death. And in this context, I believe we best understand the profound assertion that Jesus makes in the Gospel that we have just heard.
To begin with, it’s important that we notice the level at which the dialogue between Jesus and Martha takes place. Obviously, Martha is deeply stung and saddened by the sudden, unexpected death of her brother.
Yet, even in the face of this grief, Jesus challenges her understanding of death by assuring her that her brother will rise again. Like so many of us would probably do, Martha acknowledges her hope for some future rising, some eschatological event that will happen on a future tomorrow: “I know he will rise again,” she says, “at the Resurrection on the last day.”
But here Jesus contradicts her, pointing out that this is not the complete meaning of death that he has come to teach us: for in counter distinction to her statement, Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. If anyone believes in me, even if he dies, he will live . . . he will never die.”
These words imply that life after death is not just some future event, but a happening in the here and now, so much so that Jesus immediately goes on to prove the point by raising Lazarus from the tomb.
It seems to me that Martha’s response is the only one that any of us would make before such an incredible mystery and it is the response of faith: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ.”
But what does Jesus mean when he says: “Even if one dies, he will live.”
The unbelievable meaning of Jesus’ words suggests that in some way life is a way of dying; death is a way of living; death is the moment at which we are finally able to give ourselves over in total abandonment to God’s Holy Spirit. It is that moment in which the Holy Spirit is able to take complete possession of us, without any earthbound resistance on our part, without any reservation or excuse. Death allows to happen that which human life cannot achieve in the full fashioning of our character into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. That fashioning into Christ’s image begins at the moment of our baptism, yet we are not free enough to realize that configuration until the very moment of death.
This is why St. Paul in our second reading struggles so mightily with the tension between life and death. Paul, I am convinced, understood the Gospel insight thoroughly. When he says, “For me, life is Christ, and death is gain,” he implies that life here and now is the abandoning of himself to Christ and death is the full and complete abandonment of his being to the Lord. Death, then, for Paul, was not an experience to be endured with dread, but rather a supremely human act to be openly faced and consciously performed.
At the same time, this insight also explains why it is so necessary to pray for the dead as second Maccabes recommends. If those who have experienced death had formerly been unable or unwilling because of sin or human weakness to abandon themselves to the Lord in their daily living, to that extent there will be a continuing resistance to the process of abandoning themselves in the moment of death. Yet, our prayer, the Church assures us, releases a power that helps to purge that resistance, allowing a greater willingness for a surrender to the eternal “yes.”
In summary, then, our struggle is not so much one of how we approach death as it is how we should live our life. The abandoning of ourselves to the Lord and for the sake of others in the daily pattern of our existence becomes the model for the inevitable abandonment of ourselves at the moment of death.
Today we come together to pray for those who have gone before us, especially Bishop Schladweiler, Bishop Lucker, all the priests, deacons and pastoral administrators who have preceded us in death. In a particular way, we pray for those who have passed away this past year: Father John Siebenand, Father John Fleming, and Father Ed Wojtowicz. We certainly pray that God will forgive them all their sins. We also pray that he will raise them up on the last day. But in light of today’s Gospel, we pray even more so that the times in which they abandoned themselves to the Lord through their ministerial service and now with the help of our prayers, they might today be capable of abandoning themselves completely before the power of God’s eternal love.
May their example be an inspiration to us, and finally may it be a source of motivation for us to pray with greater meaning the rest of Charles de Foucault’s prayer: “Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer to you with all the love of my heart. For I love you Lord and so need to give myself, To surrender myself into your hands, Without reserve. And with boundless confidence. For you are my Father.”
May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
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