Words of saint offer hope, consolation, to grieving

Article 128 - Catechism of the Catholic Church Series
Paragraphs 1680-1690
The most beautiful legacy my father left to his family is that he taught us how to live and he taught us how to die. During his lifetime, the words my dad spoke to us, and the example he set, were a perpetual lesson in how to live virtuously. Throughout his life, though deaf from the age of 21 and blind in the years before the end of his life, having battled years of sickness due to tuberculosis and many major surgeries that included the removal of a kidney and lung coupled with cancer and heart disease, my dad never thought of himself as disabled or needy, or otherwise less blessed by God.
During the last days of his earthly life, knowing that he was about to die, my dad lay prayerfully in wait. In his final prayer to the Blessed Mother, he prayed: “... Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” No ugly words came from his lips. No regrets. No bargaining. No tears. No fear. My dad just showed us a joyful and hopeful disposition with a sincere and strong faith for a new beginning into everlasting beatitude.
As the Catechism states, what my dad “confessed in faith and hope would be fulfilled: ‘I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come’” (ccc 1680). The Catechism continues: “For the Christian the day of death inaugurates, at the end of his sacramental life, the fulfillment of his new birth begun at Baptism, the definitive ‘conformity’ to ‘the image of the Son’ conferred by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and participation in the feast of the Kingdom which was anticipated in the Eucharist – even if final purifications are still necessary for him in order to be clothed with the nuptial garment” (ccc 1682).
For almost 60 years, following my dad’s courageous conversation to the Catholic faith, the Church as his Mother “bore” my dad “sacramentally in her womb during his earthly pilgrimage, [and] accompanied him at his journey’s end, in order to surrender him into the Father’s hands” (ccc 1682).
Before this, as a young teenager, my dad in a misdirected way, promised to avoid all association with any and all “Papists” (or Catholics) who would, in the words of the Oath against Papist’s of the Young Britons Orangeman’s Brigade, lead souls away from the true faith of Jesus Christ. This secret society claims the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 as its origin. Thus, I call my dad’s conversion “courageous” since he turned his back on the misdirected faith of his teenage years, which in its secret societies spoke so disconcertingly of the Catholic faith.
At the final prayer for my dad at the Catholic cemetery, “the Church committed to the earth, in hope, the seed of the body [of my dad] that will rise in glory. This offering is fully celebrated in the Eucharistic sacrifice” (ccc 1683). As the Catechism expounds: “When the celebration takes place in church the Eucharist is the heart of the Paschal reality of Christian death. In the Eucharist, the Church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed: offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify his child of his sins and their consequences, and to admit him to the Paschal fullness of the table of the Kingdom.
It is by the Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the faithful, especially the family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who ‘has fallen asleep in the Lord,’ by communicating in the Body of Christ of which he is a living member and, then, by praying for him and with him” (ccc 1689).
In the Order of Christian Funerals (the Funeral Mass), there are four principal elements: 1) the greeting of the community, 2) the Liturgy of the Word, 3) the Eucharistic Sacrifice and 4) a farewell.
1. The greeting of the community: In addition to the consolation afforded the family and friends of the deceased, the community assembled in prayer “also awaits the words of eternal life” (ccc 1687). The death of a loved one should also “draw the faithful into the true perspective of faith in the risen Christ” (ccc 1687).
2. The Liturgy of the Word: Careful preparation is recommended in choosing the readings from Sacred Scripture for the Funeral Liturgy. The homily in particular must “avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy,” but instead “illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ” (ccc 1688).
3. The Eucharistic Sacrifice: (See ccc 1689 described above).
4. A farewell to the deceased: This is the final “commendation to God” by the Church. It is “the last farewell” by which the Christian community greets one of its members before the body is brought to its tomb (ccc 1690).
The last paragraph in this section of the Catechism quotes a mostly unknown 14th-15th century monk, bishop and theologian named St. Symeon of Thessalonica. In one of St. Symeon’s writings, he states: “For even dead, we are not at all separated from one another, because we all run the same course and we will find one another again in the same place. We shall never be separated, for we live for Christ, and now we are united with Christ as we go toward him...we shall all be together in Christ” (ccc 1690). The words from this lesser-known saint offer great consolation and hope to those who must deal with the physical absence of a loved one after being left behind following that loved one’s death.
Father Hillier serves as Director of the Office of the Pontifical Mission Societies, Censor Librorum and oversees the Office for Persons with Disabilities