Mary Reynolds, OP
Memorial Mass
November 2, 2008
Once again we celebrate the annual remembrance of our departed Sparkill Dominicans and Associates, particularly those who have died in the past year. These are our friends who are also friends of God, women who have walked the path with us and are now with the God who delights in their company.
Through the Book of Remembrance, which was carried in procession, we remember each on her own anniversary as well, in the liturgy of that day.
This year our celebration of our sisters falls on All Souls Day – the Church’s remembrance of those who were baptized into Christ and who now live with him. We recall especially those of our families and friends whose deaths have left a space in our lives. We find consolation in the belief that they continue to be alive in another way.
We might just as fittingly have celebrated this liturgy yesterday, the Feast of All Saints.
And we can’t help but notice the seasonal transition, the dying that is happening around us, the glorious farewell symphony of creation. Autumn is the time of harvesting, of contentment, of letting the ground lie fallow to restore itself until it rises in glory once again in the spring.
The readings today give us comfort and hope in the face of the mystery of death. They are ones we have heard over and over again. They are filled with reassurances. We have the promise that our sisters are dwelling in God’s house; that they are experiencing God’s goodness and mercy. We have the image of the abundant table spread on the mountaintop, of the overflowing cup. There is the shepherd caring for the flock. And there is Jesus telling us not to be fearful for he has come among us to do God’s will, which is that all of us who see and believe in Jesus may have eternal life and be raised up on the last day.
We share a common loss and a common hope. We are a community of mourners and a community of believers, people on a pilgrimage remembering those whose pilgrimage has brought them – sooner than we may have wished – to journey’s end, to the fulfillment of the promise.
As I looked at the names of those whose lives we especially hold in gratitude today, I remember them as participating in chapters, assemblies and other gatherings helping us discern God’s desire for our congregation. They came to these meetings with their experiences of teaching and administration in elementary and secondary schools; of caring for young children without families to raise them; of being ministers of hospitality who prepared many a feast; of a secretary par excellence; of a pastoral care person whose suffering became a lesson to others. Women whose lives made a difference to us and to the countless others they served over the years.
They were women who in their retirement moved into service of another kind: compassionate reaching out to persons learning the English language and to students who needed special one-to-one tutoring to assist them in their education. I remember them, too, as persons doing very ordinary things: giving out the mail, volunteering at switchboard; setting the table; lending their clerical skills in various ways; preparing this chapel.
Isaiah speaks of a God who “wipes away the tears from all faces.” In many ways this could be said of our sisters both in their active living out of our ministry for justice and in the ministry of prayer and presence that became the focus of their later years.
These were women whose faith in the Resurrection gave meaning to their lives; women whose belief that the God who walked with them through their dyings and losses would sustain them. They understood that their suffering was a participation in Jesus’ suffering and that because Jesus suffering was transformed, so would theirs.
Pierre de Chardin said, “Death is the sum and consummation of all our diminishment. We must overcome death by finding God in it. And by the same token, we shall find the divine established in our innermost hearts, in the last stronghold which might have seemed able to escape his reach.”
I believe that our sisters gained this special wisdom. They knew the paradox of the diminishment of the body and the growth of the spirit; they knew that the place of empting out, of hallowing, becomes the opening, the way to union with Christ.
Our sisters have helped us accept the reality of death, just as Jesus did. And they have helped us to trust that the presence of God will guide us, as it did them, through the mystery and into God’s heart of love.