Homily at the Wake
We never know. We never know God’s good time.
You suspected it three years ago when Jarvis first got cancer. But then he got better. And then it came back. And then he got better.
And then they thought it might make it to next year. And then it was thanksgiving. And then it was just a few days. You never know.
So, Jesus tells us, not knowing the day nor the hour, we must be ready at any time for the Lord to call us home. Maybe tonight? Maybe next year? Maybe in twenty years? Who knows.
Jarvis knew that he did not know when he would die, but he also knew what he knew. He knew that God loved him. He knew that God made him to give what he knew, to give the strong faith he had received, to spread it to his children. That’s why he married Virginia. Because she deeply believed that what life is all about is believing and loving and striving for holiness. Of course, it helped that she was beautiful and bright and so easy to get along with. But at the root of it all was the hunger for holiness which joined them together, the hunger for God.
A hunger so deep that it was fruitful, and planted the faith so deeply in their hearts of their children and grandchildren and everyone whom they met, that it shone forth like a lamp, enlightening the lives of everyone whom it touched and bringing them joy.
Joy as at a wedding, when the bridegroom arrives and knocks. The bridegroom came knocking at 6 Cotuit Street the other day at just about five O’Clock. And how blessed was that servant whom the master found vigilant at his arrival. That servant who had received the Apostolic Pardon and absolution and the consolation of the Sacraments. That servant who knew the Cross as well as the glory, and whom you sang into the arms of his beloved Lord.
May that Lord judge him with mercy, as we now pray the last prayer he heard upon this earth. So may our voices be joined with the angels in heaven.
Homily at the Funeral
Thus began a great journey, as Gervais was joined to the death and rising of Christ Jesus.
Day by day and year by year, he came to know Christ Jesus. He learned to love and to forgive and to live in the model of his Lord and Savior. When they crossed the border they came to live in Holyoke and even after the tragic death of his father, Gervais continued to grow in the deep faith to which Cecile and the family clung with all their might. I’m sure Lucie, Sylvie, Serge, Marguerite Boudreau and Jean Pierre could tell many stories if the faith of their mom and how it sustains them, even to this day.
And then he met Ginny. And Ginny and Jarvis stood before the altar at Sacred Heart in Weymouth and promised to remain faithful to one another and to God: a promise they lived for forty years. And from that faithfulness, God brought forth John and Jo, Tony, Pauline, Joel, Robert, David and Grace as concrete signs of the willingness of Jarvis and Ginny to cling to faithful love in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, until death.
In fact, on the day, after they were married, Jarvis and Ginny knelt before that altar in Weymouth as the priest, extending his hands over them, blessed them with a quotation from Psalm 128: videas filios filiorum tuorum: May you live to see your children’s children. And so faithful was God’s love for them that they lived to know and to love twelve grandchildren, with two more on the way.
And so we gather here to pray for Gervais, a man who loved to pray. A man who knew right from wrong, and would not hesitate to remind you, if you needed reminding. But a man who came to grow in his appreciation for God’s infinite mercy. “If you want to get to heaven,” he used to say “work on getting someone else to heaven.” And so he spent his life trying to get you all to heaven.
He was even willing to take the road of suffering and sorrows if that’s what it took. He picked the harder way, he prayed for the harder way because, like his beloved Lord, he knew it was God’s will that he might pick up his Cross and carry it with obedient love.
So, don’t let your hearts be troubled, for there is a secret we heard in the Gospel here today. A secret which Jarvis knew and lived and carried with him all the way to death. He learned it from another son of a carpenter, who told him there were many rooms in his Father’s house.
And so we gather here to pray for Gervais, a man who loved to pray. A man who knew right from wrong, and would not hesitate to remind you, if you needed reminding. But a man who came to grow in his appreciation for God’s infinite mercy. “If you want to get to heaven,” he used to say “work on getting someone else to heaven.” And so he spent his life trying to get you all to heaven.
He was even willing to take the road of suffering and sorrows if that’s what it took. He picked the harder way, he prayed for the harder way because, like his beloved Lord, he knew it was God’s will that he might pick up his Cross and carry it with obedient love.
So, don’t let your hearts be troubled, for there is a secret we heard in the Gospel here today. A secret which Jarvis knew and lived and carried with him all the way to death. He learned it from another son of a carpenter, who told him there were many rooms in his Father’s house.
And just as Jarvis sided more homes than he could count in one lifetime, he has now gone to prepare a place for you in heaven. He and Jesus are working on a place for you to live with him in heaven. A place where Randall, Katie, Mary, Ian, Evelyn, Catherine, Elysse, Robbie, Lily, Joey, Hanna, and Claire and each one of us can be with him in the presence of Jesus with all the angels and saints, singing God’s praise forever in a place we can’t see yet. Because he’s still getting it ready for us.
But as the Liturgy tells us, some day we will see Jarvis again and he will run out to meet us and he will lead us to Jesus, who is the way to heaven, the truth about everything and the hope of eternal life.
So join with the whole Church in praying for Gervais, this good man, that Christ might judge him with mercy, lead him gently home to his side and prepare for all the just a place to rest with him in glory forever.
