I know how Martha felt. And so does Julie-Ann and all who loved David. I know how she felt, when Jesus finally gets there, four days after Lazarus’ Funeral, and her first words to him are “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would never have died…”
It is the kind of honest venting you can only speak to someone whom you really love: if you had been here…why weren’t you here! Why did he have to die!?
It’s the kind of groan from deep within our being that rises up every time we talk to God about what happened to David. Why someone so good? Why someone whom we loved and who was so good at loving us? And why lung cancer when he never smoked a day in his life? And why did the immunotherapy do him more harm than good? And why the strokes at the end? And why didn’t you let us see David and Jules grow old in goodness and faith? Why?!
And if we truly believe in an omnipotent and all loving God, we, modern-day Marthas will repeat those questions to him, over and over again…but always quickly followed by an anything but begrudging act of faith: ‘even now, I know you are the God who loves us.’ Even though, I just don’t understand.
And Jesus smiles at us with compassion, looks at us with love and says simply: “Your brother will rise.” ‘ For I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
As we celebrated Mass, gathered around David’s bed a few days ago, Jesus was asking us all the same question he then asked Martha: “Do you believe this?”
Do you believe that I am the Son of the Living God, the one who is coming into the world?
Do you believe that I will make sense even of this?
Do you believe that in some inscrutable way this is all a part of God’s plan?
Through the fog of your pain and veil of your sorrow, do you believe?
At that Last Mass around the bedside, David answered those questions, when at the time for Holy Communion he weakly hiked himself up with the last bit of strength he still had, sitting up to receive the Body of the Lord and take the Chalice of his Precious Blood into his hands for the last time.
He believed with each dying breath that Jesus was his Lord and Savior and that death was but a door to be passed through to the other side.
He believed that he would see his dad run out to meet him..running like he had never seen him run since he was a little kid..
He believed that all the saints and angels who had been his patrons throughout the years would be there to greet him…
And most of all, he believed that the mercy of Christ, which flowed as blood and water from his pierced side on the Altar of the Cross would lead him mercifully to a heavenly home of refreshment, light and peace.
He believed not just in a doctrine or a religion, but in a person who is God and man, Jesus, through whom all things were made, who is love incarnate and who is the source and the summit of it all.
That’s what believed and lived so well; and if we who are left behind are called to believe like him, then we still have some work to do.
First, we must pray. Pray for David, that God might forgive whatever sins he may have committed and lead him home to that place where there is no more pain or crying out, or tears or death…but only perfect peace in the light of the face of eternal love.
And then, we must believe. Like David, pushing himself up to receive Holy Communion, crying not so much at his pain as at ours, weeping when he looked up at Jules standing by him like Mary by the Cross of her crucified Son. We must believe in the Lord, walk with the Lord and love all whom he will send to us with the same self-sacrificing love he showed us unto death, death on a Cross.
For this is not the end of the story. The story that began when David was carried by Bev and Leb the font at Sacred Heart, the story that continued when he received his First Communion and when he was sealed with the Holy Spirit by Bishop Harrington. The story which reached its highpoint when was joined to Julie-Ann for better and worse, sickness and health, and even unto death.
No, this is not the end. This is the beginning…the beginning of David’s taste of the paradise for which he longed, and of the promise that “one day we shall joyfully greet David once again when the love of Christ, which conquers all things, destroys even death itself.”*
* Order of Christian Funerals, Introduction to the Final Commendation.
