Beannachtai Na Cascal! Blessings Of Easter! (Gaelic Eastern Greeting)

The book – barely 9 x 7 inches and only 250 page – is falling part.

Its pages almost as brittle as ancient parchment, its binding broken and its deep blue cover scarred from too frequent use, it sits on my office shelf waiting for the next time I must apologize for its appearance.

I probably should have discarded it years ago, when Rome and U.S. bishops essentially rendered it obsolete, but it carries too many memories. It has been used too many times and its use ties me to too many people. 

Rite of Funerals

The deacon’s or priest’s how-to guide for the rituals of mourning, grief and hope.

At a graveside, if there’s the slightest breeze, I need extra hands just to keep pages, memorial cards and slips of paper with memorable quotes from disappearing into the horizon.

I can’t abandon it for a newer version. It is my link – a personal tie – to so many. My parents and brother, close friends and strangers, children – too many children, men and women of profound and enviable Faith and more than a few who – in this life – did not share our Faith.

One of the first times I ever used that now tattered Ritual was for the funeral of a teacher from my grade school days. Those who chose the readings, authored the prayers and provided the instructions of the Ritual probably never thought of young priests who grew-up addressing adults as “Sir” and “Ma’am.” Their Ritual instructs that the deceased should be referred to by their first name.

At the church door, I grabbed the aspergillum – the holy water sprinkler - and began “I bless the body of Ma…” Her name stuck in my throat. Returning the sprinkler to the situla – the bucket, I looked at the gathered congregation and explained, “You will pardon me, please. The ritual says that I am to refer to Mrs. Jones by her first name. But all my life she has been Mrs. Jones and, if you will permit me, I will refer to her as Mrs. Jones today.” Mercifully from the crowd gathered around the coffin, Mrs. Massey declared in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “That’s alright, Skipper. We understand.”

The Ritual is laden with deep and personal memories. Simply holding it at a graveside or the doors of a church ties me to generations past.

I love it. 

And yet I hate it.

It offers us one of the most beautiful and comforting prayers of the Church:

Peace be with those who have left us and gone to God.
May Mary our mother, Frank our father, Barry our brother be at peace
May they be with God
May they be with the living God.
May they be with the immortal God.
May they be in God’s hands.

May they sleep in peace.
May they live in peace.

May they be where the name of God is great.

May they be with the living God now and on the day of judgment.
May they live with God
May they live in eternal light.

May they live in the peace of the Lord.
May they live forever in peace.

With God in peace.

The cadence, the rhythm, the simple hope!

The prayer has such an almost transcendent, almost magical wonder to it!

And yet, it is so bad!

I hate it!

The author of the Book of Wisdom assures us:

The souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment shall touch them… 
The faithful shall abide with him in love
Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones and his care is with his elect
Wisdom 3:1,8-9.

In Christian theology God is omniscient – all knowing, eternal – without beginning or end, and omnipresent – everywhere.

The souls of the just do not “go to God.”

God has been with them from the moment they entered this world, through their lives among us and when they can they can no longer whisper their love to us or experience our caress.

Easter is a multifaceted expression of God’s love.

Personally (and from the time I was in grade school and able to begin questioning), I’ve always rejected the idea of Jesus dying in atonement for the sins of humankind. I’ve often thought “If ‘God so loves the world,’ a simple splinter in Joseph’s carpenter shop would be enough to have made ‘atonement for the sins’ of mankind.”

As an adult man of faith, I believe the death of Jesus was the consequence – the prophetic and the political consequence – of Jesus’s refusal to abandon his message that mercy and simple kindness – to the widow of Nain, the thief on the Cross, the Samaritan woman at the well, the blind (believed to be a consequence of sin), persons with leprosy, tax collectors and Roman soldiers – are more important than the strictures of the law. Clearly, Jesus the messenger could have escaped the cross and death. But he accepted death as the ultimate consequence of his continued proclamation of God’s – the Father’s – goodness.

At the same time, he accepted his continued mission with a confidence that the Father would not allow the cross – the fate of insurrectionists and anyone who might challenge Roman authorities and their allies - and the tomb be the end.

In the end, as St. Paul tells us, “He was raised.” 

He was raised from the dead by a loving Father.

A Father who is consistent: If he raised the Son from the dead because the Son was faithful to the Father’s love and will to the end, the Father will also raise us – if we remain faithful. 

In the end, that has always seemed to be the Faith of martyrs through the twenty-two-hundred years of Christianity: The Father who loves me will not allow death to be the end of me if I remain faithful to his will.

Saturday evening Compline (Night Prayers) begins with the words of St. Augustine:

“The resurrection of Christ was God’s supreme and wholly marvelous work.”

God’s supreme and wholly marvelous work!

The omniscient, eternal and omnipresent God caused the Resurrection so that those who have died in faithfulness to his will might forever be with him.

And, if God is omnipresent, those who are present with him are equally present with us.

The Lorica – “Breastplate” – of St. Patrick, the fifth century Romano-British missionary and bishop in Ireland, captures a different sense of the Ritual prayer I so deeply prize. In part, the Saint’s prayer reads:

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,…

… I arise today, through
God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me…

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today….

In years to come I will continue to use my broken-binding, worn-pages, mementos-filled Ritual. I will continue to pray “Peace be with those who have left us and gone to God.” 

And I will continue to assure the mourning that our God is omniscient, eternal and omnipresent and those who are with God are “right here” “with us, before us, behind us, in us, beneath us, above us, on our right and our left, when we lie down and sit down, and when we arise.”

I will also continue to call folks “Sir” and “Ma’am” because the Spirit of Mrs. Massey has assured me “That’s alright, Skipper. We understand.”

Happy Easter!

Father Roger Tobin
Father Skipper Flynn