Mum was quite specific about what she wanted me to emphasise to you - it was what she wanted me to say to everyone gathered for her Mass in the parish Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Birmingham last Thursday. It was one thing. To pray for her. To pray for the repose of her soul.
No eulogy – simply an exhortation to pray.
There is a beautiful quotation from St Peter Chrysologus that I spoke of then; it bears repeating: “Love cannot bear not to have sight of what it loves”.
Dad. Sean. We love mum, so we grieve because we have temporarily lost sight of her. Mum loved God and loves Him now, so we pray for her that she may enter heaven and see the face of God for “Love cannot bear not to have sight of what it loves”. And because that is so, we can be sure that she looks on us all now because she must look upon those that she loves; that means all those God Himself loves.
Mum had a great fondness of the painting Christ the Light of the World by Holman Hunt – Christ, bearing a crown upon his head and a lantern in his left hand, for it is night, knocks at a closed wooden door overgrown with ivy. There is no handle on the outside of the door, Jesus cannot open it. He knocks in the hope that the occupier will open the door from the inside and look upon Him for “Love cannot bear not to have sight of what it loves”. The light from the lantern is gentle, warm and inviting.
St Bernard tells us that God goes in search of the poor. And though it would have been more seemly for the poor to go in search of Him, our eyes are dim and God dwells in unapproachable light and, alluding to the paralytic of the Gospels, we are unable to lift ourselves up from our pallet to reach the summit of the Godhead. So, St Bernard says, our Saviour the physician of souls came down from his great glory and tempered his glory to our weak eyes he:
“shielded himself in a lantern when he took to himself that glorious body entirely free from all stain”.
The lantern Jesus bears is his humanity. He knocks on the door of our hearts as one of us. Hidden for nine months in the womb of Mary, he first illumined the stable in Bethlehem and will once again knock on the door of every human heart this Christmas.
Mum died on 24th November, the feast of all the Vietnamese martyrs. Today 21st December, her requiem and burial, is the dies natalis of two of them born to heaven as martyrs for refusing to trample on the cross. One of the martyrs wrote this:
“Our Master bears the full weight of the Cross himself, leaving only the last and least share to me. He is no mere on looker in my struggle, but a contestant and conqueror...upon his head is placed the victor’s crown, and his members share its glory”.
The smile mum retained up until the last few days, the repeated whisper of “thank you” was testament to the fact that Christ was bearing the full weight of the Cross for mum, leaving only the last and least share for her. Like one of the martyrs she could say “I am, by the grace of God, full of joy and gladness, because I am not alone, Christ is with me”. Christ was with her. Jesus was knocking on the door of mum’s heart bearing the lantern of his humanity and his victor’s crown and she opened her heart wide to Christ and now we pray shares in His glory.
Christ, God, was with her. And Christ, God, is with us. Emmanuel.
Mum’s month’s mind, the monthly anniversary of her death, falls on Christmas Eve. Perhaps it is a call for preparation. Before we can embrace the cross, we must first seek out and embrace the One in the crib. Hearts that are closed to the Crucified One may open wide to the babe cradled in the manger. This year marks the 800th anniversary of the first crib made by St Francis in 1223. St Francis, before being conformed to Christ crucified in bearing the stigmata, first loved Him in the crib. Before climbing Calvary we must journey to Bethlehem. Before we can be born to heaven we must contemplate the one who came down from heaven, born of Mary.
“The little Lord Jesus no crying he makes” says the carol. But he became one of us to take on our tears, our sorrow. “Jesus wept”. He became one of us to destroy the power of sin, to destroy the power of death. The little Lord Jesus will enter our sorrow and tears this Christmas, Dad and Sean, as we, in turn, pray that mum will enter eternal life. Jesus will bring His joy and consolation. We have experienced it already – there will be more to come.
We spent many a happy family holiday in Inverness and the Highlands, but we never happened across Pluscarden Abbey. The furthest we journeyed by train in this direction was Nairn. Well, we have all travelled a little further east this time and soon further still, so as to lay dear mum to rest.
It is the shortest day of the year. From now on the days will lengthen. Mum will be laid to rest so as to rise on the Eternal day facing east, where night shall be no more, with no need for light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be the Light of the World. We await in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ this Christmas and at the consummation of all time.
About mum so much left unsaid but mum wanted us to pray for her, so we do that. We pray for her that she may look into the eyes of Jesus her Saviour and pray that one day we will all join her; that in our grief and tears she will win us divine consolation and keep our gaze fixed on the day when many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. “O Oriens” we will sing tonight for the Magnificat antiphon, “O Rising Sun, you are the splendour of eternal light and the sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death”.
Eternal rest grant to her O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon her may she rest in peace. Amen.