Getting Ready to Pray                     

I write this with some tenderness. Years ago, my younger brother died suddenly of a heart attack. I am sure most of you have lost close ones.

When we ask the natural question, “why” we get an understandable answer. God was testing them like gold in the fire.

No. Our faith may be tested by our intellects as they struggle to make sense of loss and death, but we cannot hold that God, who is infinite love, would torture for the sake of purification.

The souls of the “just” are in the hand of God. My brother was a “just” man, in our eyes, but did God knew him in the same way?

Some Thoughts 

The Gospel (Matthew 5:1-12a) contains seven invitations to holiness are the orientational program for those who will follow Jesus through this life into the next.

This would have been a good Gospel for Terry. As I said at his funeral so long ago, “Terry had many problems with God. God did not have any problems with Terry.” It is a good checklist for our examining the lives of those whom we grieve, even now, even for years.

The poor in spirit, How did he/she live a spirit of sharing, receiving, spreading life around? Were they aware of their gifts and not keep them to themselves? My brother gets a straight A for this first question. How about your own departed? I judge that the kingdom of God is theirs as Jesus has said.

Did my brother mourn? When our mother died, Terry, then thirty, could not go into the funeral parlor for the wake. He just stood outside the room and kept saying, “She loved me like a rock.” If our siblings, friends, parents were ones who loved, then they mourned. Terry gets a second A for loving enough to grieve the losses of life because of injustice and cruelty. You can give a grade to your lost-ones and rejoice that they now are being comforted.

Meek? The meek are not the weak, they are self-possessed enough to withstand insults and keep standing for what’s good and true. A plus, plus for Terry on this one. The meek inherit the land by not having spent their lives fighting for turf. What’s the mark for your lost?

The merciful and peacemakers have experienced peace in their lives by experiencing mercy. Terry labored hard to unite family members, unite Catholic young Americans with Protestant teens from Northern Ireland. I hear Jesus saying a big Irish A as Terry sees God. Jesus, shouting his acceptance to those who allowed peace and mercy to come in and then spread it around. How do your past-ones hear the shout you give them?

Enough. The Readings did get a lot better for our celebrating how we were touched by those who did more than just visit this earth. We pray, perhaps with tears, gratefully for the gifts of not having been left alone, but accompanied by such souls, such saints.

Though I walk in the valley of darkness,
I fear no evil, for you are with me.
Pslamss 23:4ab