HOMILÍAS/HOMILIES
Homily 1
Funeral
At times like these, when we gather together to say our last farewell to N., the Church invites us to keep our eyes firmly on heaven, our true homeland to which the Lord calls us. During the Last Supper, the Lord told his disciples that he would return to his Heavenly Father but that they should not worry because he would take them to a place where they could be with him again.
He also promises to us that if we are faithful to him and we have tried to follow his teachings during our life, our death will be a joyful encounter with him. In the meantime, he is present now in the Most Blessed Sacrament and we should go to him whenever we can because it is from frequent visits to the Lord that springs the desire to be with him always.
If we have faith in Our Lord, we should not fear death. The love that we have for him should completely change the meaning of that last moment that must come to everyone. While we wait to be united to the Lord, the thought of heaven should help us to live an honest life, to continue praying to the Lord and, when we are tempted, to think about what is in store for us in heaven.
The eternal happiness of heaven is one of the great truths that Our Lord preached. He compared heaven to a mansion that God had prepared for those who follow his commandments. During the Last Supper he told his disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions, and I go to prepare one for you....” In heaven our hopes the hopes for happiness that we carry in our hearts will be fulfilled.
We should always remember that while we are alive here on earth nothing that we do is irreparable. All our sins can be pardoned. The only failure that we could experience in this life is if we do not ask for pardon for our sins and we find the door to heaven closed to us. For that reason the Church encourages us to prepare for the our of our death by frequently confessing our sins and asking the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, to intercede for us, “at the hour of our death.”
Saint Francis of Assisi said in his Canticle:
And for Sister Death, Praise be my Lord!
No living being can escape her;
Woe to the sinner who is surprised by her in grave sin!
Blessed be those who do the will of God!
Homily 2
Funeral
In Chapter 14 of the Gospel according to John, Jesus tells his disciples, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.” Then Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way?" Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me."
Thomas expresses the same doubt that we all feel when we approach death. We ask ourselves: how can I face this tragedy? It is natural to feel sorrow at the death of a loved one but, as Christians, we should also feel a the same time a firm hope that what we are confronting is a separation that may be long or short but that it is not a total loss of contact forever. Our lives are too precious for them to end without a trace. We are acutely conscious of this when we face the death of someone that we love.
As Christians, we believe that death is not an end. It is a transition. It is not a break in existence. It is a transformation. We believe that when the hour of our death arrives, when our existence on this earth reaches its end, we don’t find ourselves facing nothingness. We end up facing the merciful hands of the living God who welcomes us and converts our death in to the beginning of our resurrection.
We should not doubt that death is the most serious crisis that we will go through in our mortal lives. Death rips us out of our being on earth. It is a crisis without remedy to which we have no means of responding. Death takes away our ability to communicate with others. Only God can respond to the uncertainties that we feel about death. Because God is really our merciful Father, our friend and our ally, God cannot look indifferently at death. God is there to welcome us and to show us that the answer to death is eternal life and, ultimately, resurrection.
In Chapter 2 of his Second Letter to Timothy, Paul says, “If we have died with (Christ) we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him. Paul doesn’t tell Timothy that he should not grieve. We all grieve at the death of a loved one. What Paul says is that we should not grieve as we had lost all hope. Sooner or later this sorrowful separation will end and we will be reunited.
Christians believe that death is not final. We will be raised from the dead. We do not give up our lives in vain; we return them to the Creator. In death we attain the fullness of our being and we reach true life, which we call eternal life. We don’t believe that there are two lives, this one and the one beyond the grave. We believe that what some call “the other life” isn’t “other” at all. In reality it is a continuation of this life. It is the fullness of life that began at baptism and which no reaches its supreme moment when we come into full communion with the Father.
Sisters and Brothers, we are gathered here today to pray for our sister/brother N. The physical separation that death brings does not mean that N. is too far away to feel our love for her/him. Our love reaches her/him in the form of prayers. At this critical moment when N. comes face to face with God, the entire church is united with us in prayer. N. is not alone. We are with N. in prayer as we remember the consoling words of Our Lord, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and faith in me… I shall come back to take you with me, that where I am you also may be. You know the way that leads where I go.”
Homily 3
Funeral
Today is a very sorrowful day for the family and friends of N. Pain, sickness and, above all, death place in situations of life that make us ask questions that reach down into our very depths. I suppose this is because we all love life so much and we are so life-centered that even when a sickness, an accident, endanger our life we ask profound questions. and these questions are much more serious when we experience the death of a member of our family or of one of our friends or acquaintances.
We have doubts. And sometimes we ask ourselves: How is it possible that so much pain exists? Has God forsaken us? Has God stopped loving us? Is God punishing us?
Death always forces us to choose, to say yes or no, to our faith.
Today we are here as believers, in other words, today we face the reality of death through faith. So, what are we doing here as believers? Well, besides remembering N. - his/her life among us and his/her way of living, above all we remember another name and another death, the name and death of Jesus. and we thank God because Jesus' death was not in vain. It is the cause of our salvation. and together with the name and death of Jesus we remember the name of N. - and other names and deaths of our loved ones - and we declare that we believe that these deaths were not in vain, were not senseless. For these deaths, united to Jesus' death, are only the beginning of salvation and life.
That is why Christians make of this gathering a celebration, not that we celebrate the power of death, which scares us. We do not celebrate the fact that our life is full of deaths, or the possibility of death. We celebrate something completely different: that our death is life-filled when we unite it with the death of Jesus. Despite de pain we feel, the truth is that we do not celebrate death, we celebrate resurrection. The Resurrection of Jesus. But not that alone. We also celebrate the resurrection of N., of all of our own loved ones who we remember always in our prayers, and, of course, our own resurrection. So in the face of death, we remember the resurrection and we are gladdened by it.
When we celebrate the Holy Mass, after the consecration, we say: "Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life. Lord Jesus, come in glory." And this is the great proclamation that our faith gives us today. Christ himself tells us: do not be frightened, do not be afraid. Death is not the end of life. Christ Jesus is waiting for all of us to give us the reward that we deserve.
For those of us who believe in the Lord, our life is not taken away, it is changed. It is completely changed for the better. It will no longer be a life prone to pain and death. For those who are believers the death of a loved one is, above all, a remembrance of our own resurrection. Of course, we know that the death of a loved one is painful but we try to accept it valiantly and with sacrifice.
So when we remember N in our prayers, let us join to his name the name of Jesus, let us remember that resurrection is our ultimate destiny and maybe we will be able to understand a little better what the meaning of death is in our lives.