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| Mass for Deceased Priests
and Bishops by The Most Reverend John C. Nienstedt
Jn 14, 1-6 I am going to prepare a place. Recently, the Cincinnati Mortuary College was built directly across the street from St. Xavier Catholic High School, an all male high school of 1,4000 students. Since their opening, CMC cannot keep their logo sweatshirts and t-shirts in stock. Every time they restock the shelves, the high school boys scoop up the mortuary merchandise. Well maybe those teenage Catholic youth have stumbled onto an age-old truth: that death is, after all, a part of Christian living. Life is not ended. In
the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples
that they should not be troubled for he goes to prepare “a place” for
them in his Father’s house. The Greek word for place is Topov and is
used to describe a physical, recognizable place. The Father’s house
to which Jesus makes reference is found anywhere God is present. Johannine
exegetes tells us that it may well refer to either a heavenly or an
earthly “place.” He goes on to say that at that precise moment, the power of death and the influence of sin will be forever vanquished.
This teaching clearly reminds us that our bodies, as well as our souls, are destined for redemption and resurrected life. As St. Paul tells the Philippians: “He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.” (Phil. 3:21) We declare this fact every week in our recitation of the Creed when we mention the “resurrection of the body” among those truths which we believe.
Thus, we do not become angels when we die. We remain human beings, awaiting glorified bodies: bodies that will be changed, glorified and perfected, but still very much our bodies and recognizable as such in some way or fashion.
Jesus, himself, after his Death and Resurrection, was seen and recognized as himself by his disciples, who dared not ask him who he was, because they “knew” it was he (Jn 21:12). Jesus ate and drank with them, he was present to them and spoke with them. Thomas was able physically to probe the nail wounds in his hand. With both human and divine natures, therefore, Jesus ascended into heaven to be seated at the Father’s right hand. In just such a way, we are called through baptism to life eternal as a human being, composed of both body and soul.
St. Irenaeus wrote: “If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood: the Eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood; and the bread we break does not make us sharers in his body.” The human body, then, as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, shares in the call to holiness that is the universal summons of every Christian disciple. In case you haven’t noticed before, Catholicism is a very fleshy, sensual religion. Catholics encounter God through their bodily senses: the bathing of the body in baptismal water; the anointing of the body with sacred oils; eating and drinking the Body and Blood of Christ; the laying on of hands; the confession of sin with one’s lips; the joining of one man and one woman in a covenant of “one flesh.” For Catholics, heaven meets earth in the locus of human flesh.
Pope John Paul II spoke of the human body as a “sacrament” which makes visible the invisible presence of God. God’s eternal desire to reveal himself takes the form of “the Word-become-flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn 1:4)
The Church has always professed that the human person is an embodied spirit or a spiritualized body. As such, the spiritual dimension is made present through the body. The genius of Pope John Paul II’s insight in his “Theology of the Body” is to study the embodied spirit, not as a biological organism, but as a “theology” or a “study of God.” In other words, as a sign of the divine mystery, there is a language here that speaks to us of the mind and intentions of God. This is the mystery of Christmas, which can be celebrated all year long. For again as the late Pope John Paul tells us: “Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh, the body entered theology . . . through the main door.” ( April 2, 1980 ) For the married person, then, God may be found in loving the spouse. For the celibate person, ordained or in consecrated vows, God is found in loving the Church, the Bride of Christ.
To the extent that we are able to share our love chastely and selflessly, to that extent do we prepare our bodies for the incorruptibility and immortality that we will experience in death.
The pattern of our daily dying and rising, then, is the pattern of the Paschal Mystery working in and through both our bodies and our souls. And when we die that pattern is perfected if it has been lived, but rejected if it has not. This explains the account in Matthew 25 of the acceptance of the sheep and the condemnation of the goats, all of whom had the opportunity to experience the Paschal Mystery before they died by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.
Spanish:
Queridos hermanos y hermanas, Nuestro último Papa Juan Pablo II nos enseñó “La Teologia del Cuerpo” la cúal, en efecto nos permite conocer la mente de Dios a través de sus trabajos de creación. De esta manera, entendemos que nuestro cuerpo, así como nuestras almas, estan destinados a vivir con Dios por siempre. Lo que hagamos y como actuemos con nuestro cuerpo será juzgado por Dios al final de nuestros días.
Hoy, venimos a rezar por nuestros obispos y sacerdotes ya fallecidos. Ellos que vivieron la vida del celibato por el reino de los cielos. Aquí en la tierra, ellos sacrificaron el matrimonio y la familia en anticipación al banquete de la unión en el cielo con nuestro amado Señor. Su presencia es lo que nos inspira, incluso al rezar para que sean enviados a consecuencias de los efectos de sus pecados. [End Spanish]
We gather today to pray for those pastoral leaders, our late bishops and priests, who were called to shepherd the people of God in the ways of faith. They lived their lives as celibates for the kingdom of heaven and therefore, sacrificed the human goods of marriage and family in favor of their fulfillment in that heavenly marriage in which we pray they now participate. For it is in our final union with Christ that the nuptial meaning of the body finds ultimate meaning.
As we know, our beloved deceased bore awesome responsibilities, full of challenge – responsibilities that required the daily exercise of holiness in patience, courage and perseverance. And while we know that judgment belongs to God alone, at the same time, we can relate to their weakness at certain moments even as we admit our own. While they may not have worn mortuary sweatshirts, nevertheless they carried about in their bodies, the dying of Jesus.
And so we pray that God will forgive their sins and the punishment due them. We also beseech God to admit them into his heavenly Presence. We also ask that they, in turn, will seek intercession for us from their vantage point of being with the Lord.
And the most perfect prayer, we as a Church can offer, is this Holy Eucharist in which we enter into the very mystery of our salvation by the self-immolating sacrifice of Jesus, in which he offered his body on the Cross. Joined in Christ’s Passover, his Sacrificial Meal, we, together with our beloved deceased, “look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come.” Amen.
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