…..

I am not in parish ministry at the moment, so during
the last three years I have conducted just four funerals. A Christian
lady in her fifties died of an asthma attack. An unhappy young
man put a gun into his mouth and blew the top of his head off.
Another mixed-up young fellow gassed himself in his car. And a
Christian man in his mid-sixties died of complications after heart
surgery. At each of these very different occasions I read the
same words from Jesus: ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’

In Ezekiel’s well-known vision where he saw a valley
covered with dry bones, he is commanded to predict their resurrect-
ion. Those bones rattled into life. The Lord similarly commanded
the dead body of Lazarus to come back to life.

But we can die before our death. Indeed, life comprises
many deaths — separation from loved ones, the break-up of a romance,
our children ‘leaving the nest’, the loss of a friend, or a pet,
or a job. Some of the mystics, with their deep objective sense
of sin and their insights into the ways of the Divine healer,
talk about God infecting us with a wound of love. We are still
seeking God, even perhaps with deep longing, but the way is dark
and hard. At these times (in Catherine de Hueck Doherty’s words)
we must fold the wings of the intellect, and open the door of
the heart. Our loving nurturing God has not forsaken us. God is
there in the darkness and can see, if we can’t.

John of the Cross believed the dark night is God’s
gift to those whom God most desires to purify and draw into the
light of the Divine presence.

When the seed, in Jesus’ short parable, is put into
the ground, and the earth is heaped onto it, there is a dying
before germination and life. Imagine you’re the seed. The feeling
of entombment in the earth is aweful – it’s black, lonely, cold,
dark and damp. But the Divine Gardener knows what’s happening.
And with God there is always resurrection at the other side of
Calvary. (So don’t ever, ever, let any person or event crucify
you that can’t resurrect you!).

The biblical stance during these death experiences
is hope. Not optimism (‘things will get better’) or pessimism
(‘things can only get worse’); but hope, which rests on the promise
that whatever happens, God is with us (as God was with God’s people
in the past).

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, gunned down
as he preached at mass during Lent, 1980, left a legacy of hope
for his people, which has strengthened them through the years
of slaughter and hardship that have followed his death. The hope
shines even when the world looks hopeless. ‘We are living in a
black night’, he once told his people in the midst of violence
and suffering, ‘but Christianity discerns that beyond the night
the dawn already glows. The hope that does not fail is carried
in the heart. Christ goes with us.’

…..

To each one of us Christ is saying: If you want your
life and mission to be fruitful like mine, do as I. Be converted
into a seed that lets itself be buried. Let yourself be killed.
Do not be afraid. Those who shun suffering will remain alone.
No one is more alone than the selfish. But if you give your life
out of love for others, as I give mine for all, you will reap
a great harvest. You will have the deepest satisfactions. Do not
fear death or threats; the Lord goes with you.

Oscar Romero, April 1, 1979, a year before he was
shot while preaching at mass.

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and empty desolation.

T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets

You say you are more disposed to cry, ‘Miserere!’
than ‘Hallelujah!’ Why not both together?

John Newton, Letters

…..

Lord, the pain is severe, the terror of dying is
sometimes unbearable, the darkness is frightening, and I am tempted
to abandon faith in your mercy. When the light flickers, and dusk
settles over my mind and emotions, and I wonder about the sense
of any commitment to your love, teach me again about your presence
in the dark night. You wound to heal. You allow me to be severed
from my alternatives to ultimate security, so that I may, beyond
the pain of grief and loss, experience the reality of eternal
joy. I am faced at these times with a choice between death and
death: death to all that is not God and good, or a slow extinction
of my true self as it is submerged in unreality.

So, with Jesus, I lay down my life to receive it
again. I lay it down of my own free will. This charge I too have
received from my Father.

May your holy name be praised, for ever and ever.
Amen.

…..

Benediction

After you have suffered for a little while, the God
of all grace, who calls you to share his eternal glory in union
with Christ, will himself perfect you and give you firmness, strength,
and a sure foundation. To him be the power for ever! Amen (1 Peter
5:10,11).

Rowland Croucher