10th Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2016

Two of today’s three readings present us with the situation of two widows, each confronting the death of her only son, a young boy in one case, a grown youth in the other. The readings come just a week after a tragic accident in the parish, where a teenage girl was killed and her companion in the car injured, and facing an unthinkable future.

As I reflect with you this morning, I am acutely aware of my ignorance of your personal experiences of death, and of any lingering rawness you carry still in your hearts. I want to speak gently. And yet there is a time when it can be important to think aloud, as it were, and to wrestle with the mystery of death and how we can fruitfully interact together as a caring community.

When death is fresh and people are still in shock, feelings flow freely, their intensity a factor usually of the love and attachment felt for the one who has died. People are hurting, deeply hurting, and pain gives rise inevitably to sadness and a cocktail of other feelings, some surprising and unexpected, even apparently contradictory, from being stunned, to feeling angry, guilty, vengeful, sometimes proud, grateful, and so on. Some will hold their reactions in silence, or tears, others needing to talk, others again questioning indignantly or desperately, or simply confused and empty. It seems to me that people need to be allowed to feel what they are feeling, that their pain be respected, however it be expressed. At that time, questions do not need answering; they need to be heard and honoured. People usually are in emotional turmoil and in no mood for academic discussions. The best we can give is our caring presence, a ready ear – and sometimes our practical help.

Where is God? In the immediate shock and turmoil of death, people sense God differently. God may seem anywhere, or nowhere. As Jesus confronted the sisters, Martha and Mary, after the death of their brother, Lazarus, he was deeply moved. We are told that he wept. As he faced death himself, Mark tells us that Jesus felt that God was disturbingly absent. Somehow, he managed to keep trusting. If we gaze at the crucifix, we see that even the Trinity knows the agony of grief. When we weep, we do not weep alone.

But time passes. Emotions can lose their rawness, even though they may never disappear. This can be the time to face the God-questions. I believe that God is present to us always; God is helping us. In every situation, I hold firmly to the conviction that Paul once expressed in his letter to the Romans, “God makes all things work together for the good of those who love him”. The important task is to ask myself, “What is God doing now, in my life? How is God helping me, right now, to grow? to become more alive? to mature? How do God and I work together?” What God is doing may not be obvious or we would not need to search. Perhaps we are not used to asking the question. It is not a theoretical question seeking a theoretical answer. The answer will be different, tailored to each of us. It will change as time passes, and weeks become months and months become years.

There is a second conviction I hold. Jesus said to his disciples not long before he left them, “My own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you.” It is there. We may have to look for it, sitting lightly with our expectations, not knowing precisely what we are looking for, because “his peace” is somehow different from what he calls “the world’s peace”. Finding it is the satisfying fruit of our determinedly taking a contemplative stance towards our life and our world. It does not replace grief, but allows it to be life-giving.