The Gift of Hospitality

The following is the eulogy/homily offered by Father Skip Flynn at the Memorial and Mass of the Resurrection for his mother, Mary T. Flynn, on Monday, June 14, 2021 at Epiphany Church, South Miami. Mrs. Flynn died on Thursday, June 3 at age 102.

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For years I have promised myself that I would open this homily by saying:

Provided she were still able to go shopping and cruising or take in a few Broadway plays each year, Mrs. Flynn had planned that we would not be here until the year 2031. But she was a dedicated Miami Hurricanes football fan and, on more than one occasion, swore “That damn team has taken ten years off my life.” 

Many of you express astonishment that Mrs. Flynn never drove. Her explanation: Every time she took driving lessons, she became pregnant and after four kids….

Throughout the course of their marriage, our father often insisted that Mrs. Flynn had a one-legged boyfriend. It was, he said, the only possible explanation for his collection of unmatched socks. 

Few know that our mother was an Olympic-caliber side-stroke swimmer – as long as she had one foot firmly planted on the bottom of the pool at 7740.

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We began this morning with the Rite of the Blessing and Sprinkling of Holy Water and it reminds me of one of my clearest images of our mother: At my first Mass at Maryknoll, New York, my family occupied the first pew on the Gospel side and we began with a special Water Rite. With the aspergillum - the holy water sprinkler - really, really well-loaded for soaking, I headed from the sanctuary and down the aisle. To this day, I remember the rapidly changing expressions on my mother’s face as she sat there so well-coiffed in her brand-new dress: “He’s not going to throw that water on me; he is going to throw that water on me; he’s throwing that water on me; I can’t believe he threw that water all over me; I’m soaked.”

In 1224, shortly before his death and while enjoying the hospitality of St. Claire and her Sisters, Francis of Assisi wrote his great Canticle of Brother Sun in which he sings “Be praised, my Lord and God, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and fair.”

It was especially appropriate for Francis to praised Sister Water, for she plays an essential role in the Life for Faith. As infants, we were carried by parents, grandparents and God-parents to be renewed in the waters of Baptism and admonished “As Christ Jesus was anointed priest, prophet and king, so may you live always as a member of His Body sharing everlasting life.” 

As children at St. Michael’s and Epiphany we were taught us by our parents to dip our fingers into the holy water font at the doors of the church and sign ourselves with the Cross. 

Today, as we present our mother and friend again in the Church - this time carried by her children and their friends, we vest her in the white pall that recalls the day of her Baptism and, again, sprinkle her with Holy Water, remembering that “by Baptism into Christ’s life and death” she has been called to share in his Resurrection. 

I celebrate the fact that St. Francis wrote his Canticle of Brother Sun while enjoying the gift of St. Claire’s hospitality because some years ago a friend asked what particular value or virtue I learned from our parents. My first thought was to say “to hate the Notre Dame Wimping Irish and Lou Holtz.” But, in truth, many of you are here today because - at 7740 - together we learned the virtue, the value and the importance of Hospitality. 

From his conception to his Nativity, Jesus enjoyed the hospitality of the womb of Mary; as an itinerant prophet he reveled in the hospitality of the holy women of Capharnaum; and, having been lowered from His cross and cradled in the arms of his mother, he was sheltered in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea to await the Resurrection. From beginning to end, the Jesus-experience was marked by Hospitality.

When Barry was a student at the University, 7740 was a second home to many in his circle of friends at the Newman Center.  His homes in Tennessee and Washington became fonts of refuge and hospitality to his Air Force Reserve and other friends.

Colleen’s and Blaine’s homes in Palm City and Vero Beach and Lakeland reflect attitudes of openness and acceptance that characterize their lives and make them constant, caring hosts for those who need, and has always made Blaine a tribute to his parents’ guidance and a valued friend. 

And we all know that Conway Cove, or as I call it Michaellandia, is not just a place but a state-of-mind and way-of-being - complete with new recipes to try, air mattresses and thousands of mangos each season for the claiming and the sharing. 

Post-prom breakfasts. After-square dancing desserts. Hosting half-a-dozen priests and seminarians for a first Mass week or Chinese nurses visiting the States. Dinners and over-night stays for some rapscallion missionary priest or a safe refuge for a missionary Sister with a broken heart. More than two decades of Christmas Eve masses for congregations - as small as a dozen and as large as 150-plus - of ex-convicts and recovering addicts, as well as family friends of many years.  

Without ever saying a word, our parents taught us the great Christian virtue of Hospitality. Indeed, by teaching us Hospitality, they taught us the Gospel. To shelter the homeless; to comfort the sorrowing and offer healing – spiritual, emotional and physical – to the sick; to follow the example of the Christ who, like our mother, fed the multitudes or, like my father, asked “What can I get you to drink?” And, in all of this, to be peacemakers and to do this not for the high and mighty or socially prominent but for the People of God, not with thought of reward or expectation of praise, but because it was – simply because it is – the right thing to do. These were the lessons of Hospitality we learned at 7740.

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Some years before he died and after I had celebrated the funeral Mass of one of his friends, I heard my father remarking, “I don’t know where he gets all this nature and flowers stuff. He sure doesn’t get it from his mother or me.” But, in truth, I did. Our Faith – Barry’s, Michael’s, Colleen’s, Blaine’s, my Faith in the Resurrection was nourished and nurtured alongside Mrs. Flynn’s chair - hearing her repeat through the years that observing her blooming orchids in all their beauty convinced her of the existence of God and his love for us. 

In the back yard at 7740 we had three magnificent testimonies on which to anchor our Faith. At Christmas 1976, Michael presented Mom with a spindly little white flowering euphorbia that she determined should be planted directly in front of the kitchen window – so that she would be reminded to pray for Michael whenever she saw it. As luck would have it, weeks later it snowed in Miami and that little would-be tree seemed to wither and die. But Mrs. Flynn would not allow it to be uprooted. By Christmas 1977 its seeds had given life to The Michael Tree. Each year we’d cut it to knee-height and each Christmas it grew to way taller than Blaine and a magnificent white ball of thousands of miniscule flowers - testimony to our Faith in God’s goodness and the Resurrection. 

The oak trees outside Mrs. Flynn’s bedroom testified to the Resurrection in two ways. Well more than thirty years ago, a tiny orchid plant mysteriously attached to one of those stately giants. For most of each year it clings to a branch – appearing to all the world leafless and dead. Until Spring. When its dangling tendrils blossom with hundreds and hundreds of flowers. And we witness Resurrection.

Those same wizened oaks are also covered with tiny – finger-sized - ferns that appear to all the world to have died long ago. But let it rain just a little and suddenly those seemingly lifeless ferns burst into a magnificent emerald green. Not without reason they’re called Resurrection ferns.

So, today we come together in this church – perhaps, because of those damn Miami Hurricanes ten years sooner than she might have planned – to honor the life of our mother and your host and friend. We come together as the beneficiaries of her and our father’s lessons of Hospitality. And we come together to recognize and learn again their simple lesson of Faith in God’s goodness made visible in the Michael tree, in orchids that wondrously defy death and in Resurrection ferns that, blessed in the Water Rite of summer rains, remind us “Death is swallowed-up in Victory.”