Between Christmas and Easter, I attended a humanist funeral. It was not by design. I had assumed the deceased was of another Christian denomination, and there would at least be a religious element to the service at the crematorium. “Oh my God,” I thought as the humanist ‘minister’ rose to speak about John (not his real name). The deceased was a loving husband, father and grandfather, and my sorrow deepened, along with my sympathy for this poor family. As a Catholic lay funeral minister, I have attended quite a number of Requiem Masses in the past year, praying with mourners for the deceased. And it is always a comfort to know that we live in the power of the resurrection. How powerful are those words in the Gospel of John (11:4) when Jesus is told that Lazarus is dying. “This sickness will not end in death but in God’s glory.”
Humanist
The humanist ‘minister’ offered no such comfort. In fact, he was honest enough to say he did not know the deceased, but shared stories from the family, including John’s quirky sense of humour. “Apparently,” said the humanist, “this was John’s favourite joke.” Not only was this humanist quite unbelieving about God, but he seemed sceptical about everything – surely he could rely on the word of the family for this fact?
Just before a Dolly Parton song was played, he told us that we could meditate or pray as we wished. I did my best to pray through the music. At least it was about love which, in its truest form, never dies.
We live on in the minds of our family and friends,’ he said, ‘and then they die also, and we are forgotten’”
Jesus after all is the love of God wrapped in a person, the anointed one who came down at Christmas, was crucified on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday. Because true love never dies – and if I did not believe this, I would not bother to get out of bed in the morning. As St Paul reminds us, without the resurrection – the gamechanger – our faith is in vain, and we have no hope.
And sadly this humanist ‘minister’ offered this family and the mourners no hope. He told everyone that each one of us is like a spark, a light, which appears for a while and then goes into the darkness. “We live on in the minds of our family and friends,” he said, “and then they die also, and we are forgotten.”
“Eventually,” he added, “the earth will die too.”
A cycle of life that ultimately ends in death and darkness.
“That’s not true,” I desperately wanted to shout out.
Believe
I began to wonder why John did not believe in God. I assumed he was baptised. Certainly, there was a lot of goodness in his life; almost sixty years of marriage to his teenage sweetheart. John’s life had a lot of beauty in it – but was marred by the very violent and traumatic loss of his father, which he witnessed as a small child. Perhaps something shattered. Faith is a great gift and can be as fragile as humanity itself.
He had been a huge fan of The Beatles, who provided much of the soundtrack to John’s life. After the service, I did my best to comfort his bereaved son. It was a grey day and he smiled as I said, “Here comes the sun.” He assumed I was referring to the lyrics of the Beatles’ George Harrison. I didn’t correct him. I was actually referring to the words of the prophet Malachi (Chapter Four, Verse Two).
Righteousness
“The Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.” This living word carries the promise of spiritual and physical restoration.
We shall rise some day in the brightness of the sun – that is the glory of Christ Jesus”
It is the hope of Easter. In Chapter 24, we learn of two men, angels actually, who tell the frightened women, at the empty tomb in Jerusalem: “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here, he has risen.” The women were told to “remember” what Christ told them when he was still in Galilee, “that the Son of Man had to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified and rise on the third day. And they remembered his words.”
This Hebrew word used for ‘remember’ is actually ‘Zakar’, and it means to focus and then act in trust and transformation.
In other words, we are called to remember the empty tomb, to live as people of hope, to witness to hope, just like our patron, St Patrick. “It is certain,” he wrote in his Confessio, “that we shall rise some day in the brightness of the sun – that is the glory of Christ Jesus, our redeemer as children of God, as joint heirs with Christ.”
***
‘There’s peace in here’
An IRA Easter commemoration in Ardoyne almost twenty years ago shook me to the core. I knew the flames of faith were waning in Belfast, but I had no idea how cold it had become in some hearts. A priest had come to pray, and as he began the ‘Our Father’, there was a near stony silence and many folded arms. I was only there to witness and report the event for the BBC, and it was hard to bear. By the time the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising rolled around in 2016, I was in the Adoration convent on the Falls Road, now closed, in full Carmelite habit as family, Sinn Féin leaders and followers marched by.
The congregation took Pope Francis’ advice to have the smell of the sheep on us. As the republicans walked by, I wished them a Happy Easter and told them ‘the real rising’ was inside our chapel. A few days later, still in the Easter Octave, a republican veteran came into our chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Jesus, was perpetually adored. As he left, he spoke to the Superior, and his words have remained with me. “Sister,” he said, “I would rather rob a bank than go into a chapel. But there is great peace in there.” A peace the world cannot give.
***
A man came rushing out of his house the other day, moments after I delivered a postcard through his door. It was an invitation to Holy Week celebrations at my parish, St Michael the Archangel. More than a thousand, in fact, were distributed. As he called after me in the rain, I braced myself for a complaint. Instead, he pressed a handful of Divine Mercy prayer cards into my palm and asked me to share them.
This Divine Mercy Sunday is a wonderful occasion to remember the dead and the dying. Let us, in our charity, remember Noelia Castillo Ramos, the first person to die in Spain through euthanasia. She had suffered the indignity of being raped by multiple men and had sought solace in drugs. She attempted suicide by jumping out of a window while high on cocaine. It left her a quadriplegic. Days ago, aged twenty-five, Noelia rejected the pleas of family and friends not to give up. “How sad,” my friend remarked, “that a girl whose name bears witness to the joy of Christ’s birth should die so tragically.” This is the ugly consequence of a vile law passed by politicians.
The grace of Divine Mercy gives us hope of redemption in a world where politicians no longer wash their hands of innocent blood with water, but with indifference.
Photo: US Navy /USNA Staff Photographer Stacy Godfrey
The darkness of humanism and the light of Easter
Between Christmas and Easter, I attended a humanist funeral. It was not by design. I had assumed the deceased was of another Christian denomination, and there would at least be a religious element to the service at the crematorium. “Oh my God,” I thought as the humanist ‘minister’ rose to speak about John (not his real name). The deceased was a loving husband, father and grandfather, and my sorrow deepened, along with my sympathy for this poor family. As a Catholic lay funeral minister, I have attended quite a number of Requiem Masses in the past year, praying with mourners for the deceased. And it is always a comfort to know that we live in the power of the resurrection. How powerful are those words in the Gospel of John (11:4) when Jesus is told that Lazarus is dying. “This sickness will not end in death but in God’s glory.”
Humanist
The humanist ‘minister’ offered no such comfort. In fact, he was honest enough to say he did not know the deceased, but shared stories from the family, including John’s quirky sense of humour. “Apparently,” said the humanist, “this was John’s favourite joke.” Not only was this humanist quite unbelieving about God, but he seemed sceptical about everything – surely he could rely on the word of the family for this fact?
Just before a Dolly Parton song was played, he told us that we could meditate or pray as we wished. I did my best to pray through the music. At least it was about love which, in its truest form, never dies.
Jesus after all is the love of God wrapped in a person, the anointed one who came down at Christmas, was crucified on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday. Because true love never dies – and if I did not believe this, I would not bother to get out of bed in the morning. As St Paul reminds us, without the resurrection – the gamechanger – our faith is in vain, and we have no hope.
And sadly this humanist ‘minister’ offered this family and the mourners no hope. He told everyone that each one of us is like a spark, a light, which appears for a while and then goes into the darkness. “We live on in the minds of our family and friends,” he said, “and then they die also, and we are forgotten.”
“Eventually,” he added, “the earth will die too.”
A cycle of life that ultimately ends in death and darkness.
“That’s not true,” I desperately wanted to shout out.
Believe
I began to wonder why John did not believe in God. I assumed he was baptised. Certainly, there was a lot of goodness in his life; almost sixty years of marriage to his teenage sweetheart. John’s life had a lot of beauty in it – but was marred by the very violent and traumatic loss of his father, which he witnessed as a small child. Perhaps something shattered. Faith is a great gift and can be as fragile as humanity itself.
He had been a huge fan of The Beatles, who provided much of the soundtrack to John’s life. After the service, I did my best to comfort his bereaved son. It was a grey day and he smiled as I said, “Here comes the sun.” He assumed I was referring to the lyrics of the Beatles’ George Harrison. I didn’t correct him. I was actually referring to the words of the prophet Malachi (Chapter Four, Verse Two).
Righteousness
“The Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.” This living word carries the promise of spiritual and physical restoration.
It is the hope of Easter. In Chapter 24, we learn of two men, angels actually, who tell the frightened women, at the empty tomb in Jerusalem: “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here, he has risen.” The women were told to “remember” what Christ told them when he was still in Galilee, “that the Son of Man had to be handed over into the power of sinful men and be crucified and rise on the third day. And they remembered his words.”
This Hebrew word used for ‘remember’ is actually ‘Zakar’, and it means to focus and then act in trust and transformation.
In other words, we are called to remember the empty tomb, to live as people of hope, to witness to hope, just like our patron, St Patrick. “It is certain,” he wrote in his Confessio, “that we shall rise some day in the brightness of the sun – that is the glory of Christ Jesus, our redeemer as children of God, as joint heirs with Christ.”
***
‘There’s peace in here’
An IRA Easter commemoration in Ardoyne almost twenty years ago shook me to the core. I knew the flames of faith were waning in Belfast, but I had no idea how cold it had become in some hearts. A priest had come to pray, and as he began the ‘Our Father’, there was a near stony silence and many folded arms. I was only there to witness and report the event for the BBC, and it was hard to bear. By the time the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising rolled around in 2016, I was in the Adoration convent on the Falls Road, now closed, in full Carmelite habit as family, Sinn Féin leaders and followers marched by.
The congregation took Pope Francis’ advice to have the smell of the sheep on us. As the republicans walked by, I wished them a Happy Easter and told them ‘the real rising’ was inside our chapel. A few days later, still in the Easter Octave, a republican veteran came into our chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Jesus, was perpetually adored. As he left, he spoke to the Superior, and his words have remained with me. “Sister,” he said, “I would rather rob a bank than go into a chapel. But there is great peace in there.” A peace the world cannot give.
***
A man came rushing out of his house the other day, moments after I delivered a postcard through his door. It was an invitation to Holy Week celebrations at my parish, St Michael the Archangel. More than a thousand, in fact, were distributed. As he called after me in the rain, I braced myself for a complaint. Instead, he pressed a handful of Divine Mercy prayer cards into my palm and asked me to share them.
This Divine Mercy Sunday is a wonderful occasion to remember the dead and the dying. Let us, in our charity, remember Noelia Castillo Ramos, the first person to die in Spain through euthanasia. She had suffered the indignity of being raped by multiple men and had sought solace in drugs. She attempted suicide by jumping out of a window while high on cocaine. It left her a quadriplegic. Days ago, aged twenty-five, Noelia rejected the pleas of family and friends not to give up. “How sad,” my friend remarked, “that a girl whose name bears witness to the joy of Christ’s birth should die so tragically.” This is the ugly consequence of a vile law passed by politicians.
The grace of Divine Mercy gives us hope of redemption in a world where politicians no longer wash their hands of innocent blood with water, but with indifference.
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