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| Burial of the Relics of Saint Ignatius of Antioch |
During one of my years as a seminarian, the mother of one of our Faculty members died... and on the day before he got on the plane to fly home to bury her, I remember staring at him from afar, wondering: What it’s like? How does he feel? How is he ever going to get through it? And almost forty years later, I have the answer.
When I buried my dad several years ago (many of you were there) and in these days as I prepare to bury my mom, I am suffused with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Sure, there are the waves of grief and tears and a kind of uneasiness about what it is going to be like to be a son without a father or a mother; but more than anything else there is gratitude: for the Lord who rose as the firstborn of many brothers and left us his promise that we would follow, for the Church which nurtures and sustains me in this hope, and for those who love me and affirm me and just want me to be alright. Deep gratitude. And, likewise, the Cross.
It all leads to the cross. Standing beside my mom’s bedside in emergency rooms and nursing homes for hours at a time. Holding her hand for the fifth decade, straining to understand her words. Helping her make sense of a world increasingly remote and clouded by the illusions of the thickening fog of dementia. You’re like Mary and John by the cross, just trying to remain faithful and show love until the end.
It all leads to the cross. The sign that our waiting in joyful hope is not for a Godot who fails to show up, but for a God who will raise up and restore these decaying bodies as surely as he himself rose triumphant from the tomb. The cross before which your mom will someday die, the cross beneath which you will bury her and the Cross to which we cling in days like these.
Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whose feast we celebrate this morning, has always been a favorite of mine. For he desired nothing so much as that Cross. “More than powers over the farthest limits of the earth, “ he once wrote, “I prefer death in Christ Jesus.”
That’s what its like. And that how you get through it.
