A journey to life – ‘life is eternal and love is immortal’

November is a sombre month. The summer is done. The leaves are falling from the trees. The cycle of life and death is moving on. The dead lists lie at the foot of the altar in the chapel, and people remember and pray for all those who have gone. It can be a time of great sadness for so many – a time of ongoing shock and deep loss. Yet we can and do pray, for we do not believe that death is the end.

Pope Leo wrote recently of our faith that “Even today, there are many contexts in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, for weak and unintelligent people; contexts in which other forms of security are preferred, such as technology, money, success, power, and pleasure.”

There seem to be many in Ireland today who have decided that our Christian faith is absurd. For them death is the end and there is no more hope. How hard that must be.

Prayer

There is a prayer, attributed to William Penn, and quoted by the great Dominican, Fr Bede Jarrett, which expresses so clearly what we believe. It was given to me as a 13-year-old after the sudden, unexpected death of my father. I still have the handwritten copy given to me all those years ago. It read:

“We seem to give them back to thee, O Lord, who first gavest them to us;

Yet as thou dost not lose them in giving, so we have not lost them by their return.

Not as the world giveth, givest thou, O Lover of Souls.

What thou gavest, thou takest not away,

For what is thine is ours also if we are thine.

And Life is eternal and Love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we may see further;

Cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly;

Draw us closer to thyself so that we may know ourselves to be nearer to our loved ones who are with thee.

And while thou dost prepare a place for us, prepare us also for that happy place, that where thou art we may be also for evermore.”

In each soul there was goodness, and through that goodness each soul had the capacity to touch another”

I remember being astonished by the whole prayer, and especially by the words, “And Life is eternal and Love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” It meant that death really was not the end. And that is actually what November is really about.

It is about eternal life – something which is almost incomprehensible, but which we are graced to know is a reality. What comfort lies there for those who remember those who have gone before them, “marked with the sign of faith.”

As we think of those we loved, we may think also of their talents, their giftedness, their love, their caring and know that these, too, are not lost – their effect lives on in us. In thinking of the blessing which they were to us, it seems to me that we identify those things which we value most in life: love, generosity, courage, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, constancy, understanding: the things which made them truly good people.

We know that, like us, they were not perfect! Yet in each soul there was goodness, and through that goodness each soul had the capacity to touch another, maybe simply, yet profoundly, in a way which could bring great, often unacknowledged, help and healing to the other. We have all known such goodness.

In my professional life I have met so many people whom I have much admired for the way in which they have lived the most difficult of lives. I think of the widows of terrorist victims, who taught their children not to respond with violence or hatred, because that violence or hatred could ultimately have been so damaging to them. On so many occasions when I gently asked how they could be so strong, they would tell me something along the lines of “Mammy always said we must not let them destroy us too.”

I think of the relatives of Northern Ireland’s Disappeared who this week, for the twentieth time, made their annual walk up to our Assembly at Stormont, remembering all the Disappeared and asking yet again for the information which would enable the recovery of the bodies of Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh, Robert Nairac, Seamus Maguire and of Lisa Dorian. I think of the many families of so many bomb victims, who have sought justice and information with such dignity and grace.

I have been blessed by knowing these people.

Advent

As Advent comes we move from the solemnity of November into the joy of Christmas. We do not forget those who have crossed the horizon of death. November enables us to remember and to know again the one thing that really matters, that has touched each of our lives at different times: the experience of love.

This time of waiting for the celebration of the birth of the Christ child is a time when we focus on what God asks of each of us in our living – it seems so very simple – that we love God and that we love one another as He has loved us.

Yet it was not simple. The little baby Jesus who was born that day eventually gave everything he had for each one of us – and we know that that took great courage and faith and goodness. The challenge for each of us must be to do this too – to value every precious soul from conception to natural death, to live with love and faith and courage, to do and say what is right, and to do everything we can to help each other on the journey of life, no matter how tiring, or demanding or burdensome it may seem.

It seems to me that if we do so we will always receive so much more than we could ever give. It is a journey to life.