'He is God not of the dead, but of the living.' Sunday Reflections, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Moses Before the Burning Bush

Domenico Fetti [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 20:27-38 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’

Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Fr William Spicer (1949 - 2009)

Ten years ago a Columban colleague of mine, Fr Willie Spicer, died suddenly in Ireland at the age of 59. And in a very real sense he preached at his own funeral. The homilist, Columban Fr Michael Scully, a very close friend of Father Willie because of their many years in Japan, told a remarkable story of how central the Resurrection was in the late priest's preaching at funerals and of how a man was led to the faith by this. Here is part of the homily of Father Scully, who died on 29 September this year. I have highlighted  some passages. 

Over that period of eight or nine years Willie and I enjoyed a game of golf together on a regular basis even though we lived quite far apart. Willie was pastor at the Church in Chigasaki City in the Diocese of Yokohama; I was assigned to a church in the Archdiocese of Tokyo about 80 miles away from where Willie lived. Sometimes before our game of golf I would stay overnight at Willie’s house.

On one of those occasions I noticed a painting which I had not seen before on the wall of his living-room. So, I asked him where he got the painting. ‘There is a story behind that’ was his answer. I would like to tell that story as Willie told it to me. These are his words: ‘About a year ago I did a funeral Mass here in Chigasaki Church. And, as usual, during the homily I emphasized that death was not the end of everything; and then went on to talk of Christian hope in the resurrection of the dead’. At this point, Willie paused and turned towards me: ‘I think it is meaningless’ he said, ‘to preach a homily at a wake or funeral Mass if we don’t make some mention of the resurrection of Christ and our own hope in the resurrection. Isn’t that what our Christian faith is all about? It’s because of that faith that we are on mission!’

Those words of Willie were for my benefit, but, needless to say, I was in complete agreement with what he said. However, Willie’s story did not end there. ‘You know’, he said ‘after that funeral Mass an elderly man approached me and said to me “Today was the first time I ever heard a talk like the talk you gave at the Mass. Until now, I had never heard of the resurrection of the dead – and somehow, it makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to hear that homily. If I had a chance I’d like to study the Catholic faith. Do you know if there’s a Catholic Church close to where I live?” And Willie continued, ‘That was about a year ago – something that I did not know at that time was that that man was an artist who lived about a hundred miles away. That painting came from him to me as an expression of thanks – thanks for my homily at the funeral Mass, but also as an expression of profound gratitude for the fact that he was studying the Catholic faith, and in hoping to be baptized in the not too distant future in a church close to where he lives’.

I have told this story because I believe that if Willie Spicer had a chance to speak to us today, he would say to us: ‘It’s all right to feel sad and to grieve on this occasion. I would feel the same way if I were in your place. But, don’t be carried away by sadness and grief. Today’s sadness and grief cannot compare with the joy and the happiness and the glory that will be ours if we but believe that the God who loves us, loves us so much that He gave His only Son for us’.

The Resurrection

Glass painting behind the altar in Mariukirkjan (St Mary’s Catholic Church) Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

by Faroese artist, Tróndur Patursson.

Today's First Reading and the Gospel - they are always related by a common theme - look at the Resurrection. In the story of the martyrdom of the seven brothers in the Second Book of Maccabees the fourth brother When he was near death, he said, ‘One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life! (2 Maccabees 7:14). 

The Gospel also has a story of seven brothers, in a situation put to Jesus by some Sadducees, a group that didn't believe in the resurrection, that strains credulity. This gives Jesus the opportunity to teach about the resurrection: And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

St Columban's Cemetery, Dalgan Park, Ireland

I don't go along with the idea that seems to have crept in in recent years of a funeral Mass being 'a celebration of the life' of the deceased. There certainly is a place for celebrating a person's life during the wake or, in the Philippines, during the novena held  in the home of the one who has died or when the family and other mourners gather to eat after the burial. Rather I see the funeral Mass as an occasion above all to pray that the one who has died will share fully in the life that God desires for everyone.

Preface I in Masses for the Dead puts it this way:

In him [Christ] the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, 
that those saddened by the certainty of dying 
might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. 
Indeed for your faithful, Lord, 
life is changed not ended, 
and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, 
an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.

Father Willie Spicer emphasised that belief in the Resurrection and the hope it gives when preaching at funerals. In Japan probably at every funeral Mass he celebrated there were people present who weren't Christians. To them he was proclaiming the central truth of our Christian faith. In the case of the artist he spoke about that proclamation of our faith and of the hope of the resurrection spoke to his heart and led him to Jesus the Risen Lord.

In November we remember and pray for the dead in a special way. The readings in this Sunday's Mass can lead us to reflect on the reality that one day each of us will be remembered and prayed for by others. May the Collect for the first of the three Masses on The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, 2 November, help us in this:

Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord, 
and, as our faith in your Son, 
raised from the dead, is deepened, 
so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants 
also find new strength.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, for ever and ever.

Jesu, joy of man's desiring, Johann Sebastian Bach

Sung in Chigasaki Catholic Church where Fr Willie Spicer served.

'And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.' Sunday Reflections, Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

Last Supper, Lorenzo Ghiberti [Web Gallery of Art]

For Readings and Reflections click on the following: 

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A

'For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.' Sunday Reflections, Easter Sunday

Resurrection, Léonard Limo Sin [Web Gallery of Art]

The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

At the Mass during the Day

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

             

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Note that the above links also give alternative gospels that may be read on Easter Sunday.

Gospel John 20:1-9 (New Revised  Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition) 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

John 20:1-9 from The Gospel of John

I remember as a young priest, maybe in the summer of 1968 about six months after my ordination, celebrating Sunday Mass in the chapel of the Irish Sisters of Charity (now the Religious Sisters of Charity) in Stanhope Street, Dublin, where I had made my First Holy Communion on 20 May 1950. The beautiful chapel is no longer there.

I remember clearly that my mother was at the Mass and that I preached about the Resurrection, probably quite eloquently and certainly with conviction.

However, it was only when my mother died suddenly less that two years later that I got any real grasp of what the Resurrection is. Within hours of receiving the news at breakfast time in New York, where I was studying, I felt its truth in my very being.

I preached again about the Resurrection in the presence of my mother's remains at her funeral Mass, again with conviction and maybe with some eloquence as before. But my conviction, my faith in the Resurrection, was now rooted in my heart, not just in my head.

After the Mass my father, a man of deep quiet faith who went to Mass every day of his life right up to the day of his own sudden death in 1987, told me that he had felt utterly desolate going into the church but now felt at peace. A cousin's husband thanked me for speaking about what really matters. Nearly 40 years later a fellow Columban, who had been present while a seminarian, told me that he still preaches in his funeral homilies in Japan whatever I had said at my mother's funeral Mass. I really have no idea what I said but I remember vividly the change in my understanding of the Resurrection during those days.

Anniversary of 1994 genocide in Rwanda

But the hope that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is not only for us as individuals. It can bring hope and reconciliation to a whole nation. In 1994 in Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian nation, more than half of its then between seven and eight million people Catholics, between 500,000 and 1,000,000, mostly members of the minority Tutsi people, were slaughtered between 7 April and the middle of July.

In the video above a man who lived through it, probably as a child, says outside a church in Kigali, the country's capital, Today's Mass was about Resurrection. And I believe that one day the souls of the people we lost will resurrect. Sister Mujawayezu Marie Anastasie, a survivor of the genocide,  says, I think now that things are like before, even better than before. People are good to each other, talking. People trust each other. For what I see it seems OK but I do not know what's inside a person's heart.

Sister Mujawayezu's words express some uncertainty but trust and hope win out. This is a fruit of the Resurrection, that God's love has conquered evil and death. And the Rwandan Genocide was the result mainly of neighbour killing neighbour. There have been reports and photos in the media in recent years of individuals who had killed other individuals not only asking forgiveness of someone they had widowed but working with that widow to enable her to have a livelihood.

It is acts such as these that remind us of the truth of the Resurrection, of the presence of the Risen Lord among us, still carrying the scars of his Crucifixion, as the people of Rwanda who have asked for forgiveness or who have forgiven their former enemies still carry the scars of 1994.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon [Wikipedia]

The civil war in Rwanda was short and brutal. That in Lebanon lasted from 1975 to 1990 with an estimated 120,000 deaths and about a million leaving the country. Today it is affected by the ongoing civil war in neighbouring Syria.

The people of Lebanon are Arabs, nearly 40 percent of them Christian. Most of those are Maronite Catholics who have always been in full communion with Rome. The vast majority of Christians in the Middle East are Arabs, in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria. They are descended from the very earliest Christians. Islam originated nearly six centuries after the death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Like the people of Rwanda, the people of Lebanon carry the scars of their civil war. But the Christians there also carry the living grace of the Resurrection of Jesus. I have used the video below a number of times before but I know of no more joyful proclamation of the Resurrection than Jesus is Risen, sung here in Arabic in a shopping mall in Beirut three years ago at Eastertime.

No translation is necessary, though you can switch on the English captions. You can see the look of surprise on the face of a Filipina taking caring of a child and the look of delight on the face of a young Muslim woman.

The truth and joy of the Resurrection being proclaimed in Arabic by professional singers in a mall in Beirut, Lebanon

Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia!

He is risen as he said, Alleluia!

Happy Easter!

'And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush . . .' Sunday Reflections, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Moses before the Burning Bush, Domenico Fetti, 1613-14

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 20:27-38 [or 20:27, 34-38] (NewRevised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition) 

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus(.) [and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man  shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless;  then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.  Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’]

Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’

Fr William Spicer (1949 - 2009)

Seven years ago a Columban colleague of mine, Fr Willie Spicer, died suddenly in Ireland at the age of 59. And in a very real sense he preached at his own funeral. The homilist, Columban Fr Michael Scully, a very close friend of Father Willie because of their many years in Japan, told a remarkable story of how central the Resurrection was in the late priest's preaching at funerals and of how a man was led to the faith by this. Here is part of the homily of Father Scully. I have highlighted some passages.

Over that period of eight or nine years Willie and I enjoyed a game of golf together on a regular basis even though we lived quite far apart. Willie was pastor at the Church in Chigasaki City in the Diocese of Yokohama; I was assigned to a church in the Archdiocese of Tokyo about 80 miles away from where Willie lived. Sometimes before our game of golf I would stay overnight at Willie’s house.

On one of those occasions I noticed a painting which I had not seen before on the wall of his living-room. So, I asked him where he got the painting. ‘There is a story behind that’ was his answer. I would like to tell that story as Willie told it to me. These are his words: ‘About a year ago I did a funeral Mass here in Chigasaki Church. And, as usual, during the homily I emphasized that death was not the end of everything; and then went on to talk of Christian hope in the resurrection of the dead’. At this point, Willie paused and turned towards me: ‘I think it is meaningless’ he said, ‘to preach a homily at a wake or funeral Mass if we don’t make some mention of the resurrection of Christ and our own hope in the resurrection. Isn’t that what our Christian faith is all about? It’s because of that faith that we are on mission!’

Those words of Willie were for my benefit, but, needless to say, I was in complete agreement with what he said. However, Willie’s story did not end there. ‘You know’, he said ‘after that funeral Mass an elderly man approached me and said to me “Today was the first time I ever heard a talk like the talk you gave at the Mass. Until now, I had never heard of the resurrection of the dead – and somehow, it makes a lot of sense to me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to hear that homily. If I had a chance I’d like to study the Catholic faith. Do you know if there’s a Catholic Church close to where I live?” And Willie continued, ‘That was about a year ago – something that I did not know at that time was that that man was an artist who lived about a hundred miles away. That painting came from him to me as an expression of thanks – thanks for my homily at the funeral Mass, but also as an expression of profound gratitude for the fact that he was studying the Catholic faith, and in hoping to be baptized in the not too distant future in a church close to where he lives’.

I have told this story because I believe that if Willie Spicer had a chance to speak to us today, he would say to us: ‘It’s all right to feel sad and to grieve on this occasion. I would feel the same way if I were in your place. But, don’t be carried away by sadness and grief. Today’s sadness and grief cannot compare with the joy and the happiness and the glory that will be ours if we but believe that the God who loves us, loves us so much that He gave His only Son for us’.

The Resurrection, Passignano, 1600-25

Pinacoteca, Vatican [Web Gallery of Art]

Today's First Reading and the Gospel - they are always related by a common theme - look at the Resurrection. In the story of the martyrdom of the seven brothers in the Second Book of Maccabees the fourth brother When he was near death, he said, ‘One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life! (2 Maccabees 7:14). 

The Gospel also has a story of seven brothers, in a situation put to Jesus by some Sadducees, a group that didn't believe in the resurrection, that strains credulity. This gives Jesus the opportunity to teach about the resurrection: And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.

St Columban's Cemetery, Dalgan Park, Ireland

I don't go along with the idea that seems to have crept in in recent years of a funeral Mass being 'a celebration of the life' of the deceased. There certainly is a place for celebrating a person's life during the wake or, in the Philippines, during the novena held  in the home of the one who has died or when the family and other mourners gather to eat after the burial. Rather I see the funeral Mass as an occasion above all to pray that the one who has died will share fully in the life that God desires for everyone,

Preface I for the Dead puts it this way:

In him [Christ] the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, 
that those saddened by the certainty of dying 
might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. 
Indeed for your faithful, Lord, 
life is changed not ended, 
and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, 
an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven.

Father Willie Spicer emphasised that belief in the Resurrection and the hope it gives when preaching at funerals. In Japan probably at every funeral Mass he celebrated there were people present who weren't Christians. To them he was proclaiming the central truth of our Christian faith. In the case of the artist he spoke about  that proclamation of our faith and of the hope of the resurrection spoke to his heart and led him to Jesus the Risen Lord.

In November we remember and pray for the dead in a special way. The readings in this Sunday's Mass can lead us to reflect on the reality that one day each of us will be remembered and prayed for by others. May the Collect for the first of the three Masses on The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, 2 November, help us in this:

Listen kindly to our prayers, O Lord, 
and, as our faith in your Son, 
raised from the dead, is deepened, 
so may our hope of resurrection for your departed servants 
also find new strength.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God, for ever and ever.

Antiphona ad Communionem        

Communion Antiphon Cf. Ps 22 [23]:1-2

Dóminus regit me, et nihil mihi déerit;

The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want

in loco páscuae ibi me collocávit,

Fresh and Green are the pastures where he gives me repose,

super aquam refectiónis educávit me.

near restful waters he leads me.

'Because I live, you also will live.' Sunday Reflections, 6th Sunday of Easter Year A

The Last Supper, Tintoretto, 1579-81

Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)                                  

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel John 14:15-21  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

 Jesus said to his disciples:

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

 “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (detail), Vermeer, 1657

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden [Web Gallery of Art]

In the summer of 1982 when I worked for a month or so in an American parish after a year's study in Toronto I went to visit a friend who had turned 29 earlier that year. I first met 'Gina', as I'll call my Italian-American friend, when she was a mixed-up 16-year-old with a generous and honest heart. Over the years I was a mentor in the faith to her, mostly by correspondence, as we met only every few years. Gina was a wonderful letter-writer, hence the painting by Vermeer above, though I used to gently tease her on occasion about misspellings - she was a teacher.

I had seen Gina grow strong in the faith over the years and when she graduated she chose to teach in a Catholic school, with a lower salary, than in the public school system, because of her commitment. She also took time out at one stage to spend a year working with a charismatic group.

When we met in 1982, shortly after she had spent some time in the ICU, Gina told me that she felt she didn't have long to live. It was the first time anyone had ever said that to me and I had the grace to take her at her word. I knew that she didn't enjoy robust health and I was also aware of two attempts to take her own life.

The first was when she was around 17. She slit her wrist. Fortunately, her parents found her and took her straight to hospital. During her recovery, which was a kind of 'resurrection' experience for her, she saw clearly that her parents loved her, despite the infidelity of her father that she had been aware of since she was about six, knowledge she had tried to protect her younger brother from.

But in the summer of 1981, before I went to Toronto, I spent a month in the parish where I found myself again the following year. Not long after going there I did something that I rarely did - make a phone call late at night. I normally don't phone someone unless there's some business to discuss and I don't call people when they might already be in bed. I was shocked when Gina answered. She sounded drunk. I discovered that she had taken an overdose of a high-risk medicine that the doctor had prescribed for her multiple sclerosis (MS). I told her I would come over immediately. She said that she would't let me in. She lived in an apartment on her own, not far from her parents' house. I asked another priest to come with me. And when we arrived she didn't carry out her threat not to let me in.

After a couple of hours we were satisfied that Gina hadn't taken enough to kill herself and that she wouldn't do anything drastic during the night. I promised to return in the morning and I was to spend most of the next two days with her. 

I knew that at that particular time I was the only person whom Gina could trust and open her heart to. The breakthrough came on the second morning. What had triggered off her attempted suicide was something her mother had said indicating that Gina wasn't living up to her expectations. Gina, who felt deep shame at the state she was in in my presence, asked me, What are your expectations of me? I answered, I don't have any, only hopes.

That was when Gina made a clear decision to live. St Peter tells us in today's Second Reading: Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15-16).

When I went back to the parish later I had no worries. A few days later Gina came to Mass there, as serene and happy as could be. For the second time in her life she had truly experienced a 'resurrection' but this time understanding it clearly from the vantage of her deep faith. 

And a day or two later I received a letter from Gina that I still treasure that was an expression of her Catholic Christian faith and of her reverence for the grace that the priesthood is for God's people and specifically for her. And she got her 'revenge' on me for my teasing about her occasional misspellings by deliberately misspelling almost every word in the opening paragraph and promising to say a Hail Mary for each misspelled word I might find in the rest of the letter - and binding me to say a certain number of Hail Marys for her if I didn't find any. (I found one - years later on one of the many occasions I have re-read Gina's letter!)

Supper at Emmaus, Hendrick Terbrugghen, c.1621

Scloss Sanssouci, Berlin [Web Gallery of Art]

One thing I learned from the experience in 1982 was that a person may have a deep and strong faith and yet be very fragile. I also learned, as I've learned from many other situation down the years, that you don't have to have experienced the specific pain of the person you are listening to in order to understand or for that person to know that he or she is truly heard and understood.

When Gina then told me the following summer that she thought she didn't have long to live I took her seriously and knew that she was probably right. When I had heard after arriving in her area that  she was in the ICU I didn't want to face the possible consequences of that.

We spoke to each other for maybe two hours about what her death would mean to her and to me. There was nothing morbid about this. Gina truly believed in the reality of the Resurrection. And she had discovered that God is a loving and merciful God, particularly the previous summer.

During these Sundays and weekdays the Gospel is from the Last Supper Discourse in St John's Gospel (John 14-17). Jesus knows he is to suffer an ignominious and utterly painful death. Yet there is nothing morbid about his words. He is calling his closest companions into the intimacy of the Holy Trinity. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. And telling them of the Holy Spirit whom he will send Jesus says, You know him, because he will abide with you, and he will be in you. Gina and I at that moment shared in the intimacy of the Holy Trinity through the presence of Jesus the Risen Lord, the kind of intimacy captured by Terbrugghen in his painting above, Supper at Emmaus.

After talking through all of this Gina and I went to a restaurant for lunch where we were joking and laughing, deep in our hearts something of what Jesus promised the Twelve - and us - at the Last Supper: So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you (John 16:22).

I never saw Gina again. She died a few months later, very peacefully. And I know that her parish priest celebrated Mass in her apartment, with her family and some friends present, a day or two before her death.

Because I live, you also will live.

If ye love me, Thomas Tallis

Antiphona ad Communionem  Communion Antiphon John 14:15-16

Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate, dicit Dominus.

If you love me, keep my commandments, says the Lord,

Et ego rogabo Patrem et alium Paraclitmum dabit vobis,

and I will ask the Father and he will send you another Paraclete,

ut maneat vobiscum in aeternum, alleluia.

to abide with you for ever, alleluia.

Translation used by Tallis

If  ye love me, keep my commandments,
and I will pray the Father,and he shall give you another comforter,
that he may 'bide with you forever, e'en the spirit of truth.