She is finished

A half sheet of a yellow legal pad fell out of the brown envelope.  It was the morning after we buried my mother.  The brown envelope had contained her instructions regarding her funeral arrangements and last wishes. We all gasped when we realized that it was a love letter to us, something that our eldest sister had overlooked when she had previously taken out the contents. It started out with "I wish I could whisper into each ear how much I love each one of you" and it ended with "Know that I am in the bosom of my God."  That was a little over two months ago.

Mother's Day is fast approaching and for the first time, I am really resentful of the constant reminders. I walk into a store and there are rows of greeting cards designed to tell her how much I love her. There are mugs inscribed with "Best Mother in the World" which bring me to tears. Even my news feed directs me to links to purchase jewelry and other worldly goods which meant nothing to her when she was still alive, specially during the last year of her life. 

Grief is a strange thing. Just when you think that the worst has passed, it comes back like a thief in the night. A good friend told me to listen to the words said by Fr. Martin Tobin during the funeral mass when I needed comfort. I cling to his words and my faith with the hope that one day, this too, shall pass.  

We have loved Evelyn during her life, particularly the members of her family and those of us who got to know her and to treasure her. We have loved her and now we are here to express again our love for her as she passes into eternity. And it is a beautiful thing that we can gather together in faith, faith in the resurrection knowing that she is with the Lord. She has departed this life, but we are still in touch with her and you know she too is in touch with us through her prayers now. She can do far more for us now than she could while she lived among us.

As you all know, Evelyn was a great woman, a wholesome woman, a woman full of love, and wisdom, and faith. Those would be the three things that I noticed particularly in her. A woman of great love, a woman of tremendous faith, and a woman of deep wisdom. Those of you who have interacted with her by reading her column or listening to her advice or simply talking to her would know that she was a woman of wisdom. We appreciate so much the wisdom that she showed us. I have only got to know her in the last what several years - maybe 10 years since she joined our meditation group but I was deeply impressed with her wisdom and her faith, and her love. And so today we say goodbye to her until we all meet again in the eternal kingdom.

Thanks be to God that our salvation does not depend on us. Our salvation depends on the goodness of God. To put it simply, we will be saved not because we are good but because God is good and the readings bring that out very beautifully today. In the first reading, we heard the prophet; we heard from the Book of Wisdom, "the souls of the just are in the hands of God." There is no more comfortable place one can find oneself to be than in the hands of a merciful, compassionate, forgiving God, and that is where Evelyn is, in the hands of God. She was tried by God like gold tested in the fire and she proved worthy, she proved her mettle, she proved her faith. The second reading is a beautiful reading from St. Paul that reminds us that nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even our sins. God's love is so powerful, so strong, so protective, that nothing can separate us. All that can separate us from God would be our lack of faith, our refusal to believe. And then in the gospel, we have a beautiful reading where Jesus says in John's gospel, "Do not be disturbed, do not be troubled, I am going to prepare a place for you. There are many rooms in my Father's mansion, and I am going to prepare a place for you and I will come back and take you to be with me." Well, Jesus has done that in the case of Evelyn. He has come back to take her to be with him. His disciples did not understand fully what Jesus was saying, and we have Thomas saying to him “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”and Jesus said to him, “I am the way” and I understand that to mean that if we live like Jesus, if we have his compassion, his mercy, his love, his self-sacrifice, then that is the way that ensures that we will go to his eternal wedding and I believe that Evelyn had that. A woman of great compassion, a woman of great mercy, a woman who reached out to all who were suffering.

William Shakespeare, you have heard of him, no? I don't like to disagree with him but I disagree with him in a sentence he said in Julius Caesar. He said, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."  But that is not the case with Evelyn. The good that she has done lives well after her. Testimony to that are all these flower bouquets I have seen outside from her students in the past, going back to the eighties and nineties. They remember her. They saw the good things that she did, and they gave those bouquet of flowers to express their gratitude. So the good that she has done will not be interred with her bones, it will live long, long after her.

So today, even though death is a painful reality, and it only becomes a deep reality when it touches a member of our families. Death happens every day, every hour, but when it touches someone that we know and love very much, then it comes home to us, that death is very much a separation. A door is opened, someone whom we have loved passes through it, and the door is closed. And that is why we grieve. And give vent to your grieving, there is nothing to be ashamed of about grieving and shedding tears for the dead but let not your grief destroy you because we must also look at death in the light of faith. As the gospel tells us, at the preface of the mass, that death is simply ending of this life but moving in to eternal life. 

So we give thanks to God for the goodness that was in Evelyn and that goodness I believe will continue to live on in her children, in those of her students, in those who read her column, in members of our prayer group where she was so influential, and in many many people whose lives she touched. She will remain alive in them, and we pray that we may always treasure the memory of such a great woman. We rejoice that God has given her graces and we believe that she today is with God. We, one day will pass through that door as well and we pray that we may have the same faith, and courage, and love, as Evelyn had.

So finally, condolences again to all of you children and members of her family, to those who loved her deeply. Do not let your grief destroy you. Plug in to your hope and your faith that the dead are alive in the presence of God.

Amen.