Canonizing Uncle Fred
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Who the new saint was I do not now recall, but some years ago I was watching a canonization Mass on television—I suppose it was one of the new American saints. Two commentators were explaining the proceedings. One of them remarked that the Holy Father was anxious to expand the numbers of canonized laity from different walks of life, and the other noted that, yes, clergy and religious are over-represented in the ranks of the canonized, but after all they often have a natural constituency in the members of their religious orders who keep the prospective saint's cause alive in the memories of Catholics, and have the financial resources to print up prayer cards, leaflets etc. promoting devotion to the saint.
Financial resources, I thought. Hmm. Canonization does not have to be an expensive proposition. And it needn't take hundreds of years. Just arrange a funeral Mass for the beatus in any American parish today.
Some weeks ago I presided at the funeral of a parishioner who died in the odor of sanctity. I know that he died in the odor of sanctity because the deacon who preached the homily told us so. "Was Uncle Fred devoted to his family? I can tell you that he was," he assured us. "Was he a man of great Faith? Indeed he was. Is he happy today, is he one with God? Oh, assuredly, he is!" The deacon showed some restraint in refraining from assuming the papal tiara for this pronouncement, but it was clear that he felt quite certain that Uncle Fred could fittingly be interred under the altar, perhaps, I thought apprehensively, after a postcommunion extraction of some relics.
This is not the first time I have run across this sort of thing. I knew a priest who concluded every funeral homily he ever preached by expressing the thought that "From now on, we can pray, not for Aunt Gert, but to her." I have with difficulty restrained myself as main celebrant at funeral Masses during which a concelebrant deftly inserted the deceased into the commemoration of the saints—"With Mary the Virgin Mother of God, the apostles, the martyrs, Butch and all the saints. . . ." No, gentle reader, I am not making this up. As a matter of fact, I have taken to using the first Eucharistic Prayer when I have concelebrants I do not know join me for funerals, in the hope that I never run into one who would think "Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Butch and Chrysogonus . . ." was appropriate.
Within my first year of ordination, I had a conversation with a priest ordained about twenty-five years which has stuck in my mind ever since. I had expressed the opinion that some of our liturgical customs at funerals amount to the canonization of the deceased, and obscure the primary purpose of the funeral Mass.
"The primary purpose of the funeral Mass is the consolation of the family and friends," he said.
I was taken aback by this. He was a pretty sane, orthodox priest. "The primary purpose of the funeral Mass," I said, "is to offer the Holy Sacrifice for the deceased."
'No," he said. "People can arrange other Masses for that later on. The funeral Mass is there for the consolation of the survivors."
Now, this is very fuzzy thinking, and it is very incorrect. The primary purpose of the funeral Mass is to offer the Holy Sacrifice for the repose of the soul of the departed. To say that the consolation of the family and friends is the primary purpose is to lose a Catholic perspective: yes, the funeral Mass is consoling, but why? Precisely because of its primary end—we can still express our love for the deceased and do something for him, in the offering of the Holy Mass, in our prayers and sacrifices. That is why the funeral rites are consoling—they preach the hope of the Resurrection and emphasize that we are still bound by deep ties to our deceased loved ones, and that we can still help them. But if we are approaching the celebration of the funeral Mass with a view to doing everything possible to comfort the survivors by canonizing the deceased, we are trivializing the occasion, and robbing the worshippers of what might be a powerful incentive to reflection and conversion. Indeed, we may also be misleading them into thinking that their loved ones are certainly in heaven, robbing them of the opportunity to help their departed by Masses and prayers and penances and depriving the souls of the departed of graces which could speed their way to heaven.
I remember a wake at which I was standing by the casket of the deceased. The family member in charge of the arrangements was standing next to me, and she said, "Oscar was a very good person. He didn't get to church much, but that's not the most important thing, is it?" And she said this in such a way that she clearly expected a response.
She was a very nice person, but she was a lapsed Catholic. Over the ten years I was in my first parish I dealt with her at three or four funerals, and the encounters followed a predictable pattern: there was always some comment dismissing as trivial the fact that the deceased neglected the sacraments, then the request "Could you hear my confession," because she herself wanted to receive Communion . . . then it was Sayonara until the next family funeral (the reader will understand that I have fictionalized all of the details of this scenario).
I am afraid that as priests we often foster this kind of confused thinking. We try to be sensitive, to be pastoral, and so we should— but all too often we make the mistake, the cardinal error, of thinking that if someone is upset with us, we have done something wrong.
In response to the woman standing with me by that casket, who said, "Oscar was a very good person. He didn't get to church much, but that's not the most important thing, is it," I said, "Well, Jesus told us that if we don't eat his Flesh and drink his Blood, we have no life in us—we're dead. You don't expect me to tell you that he was wrong, do you?" And I softened the thought by telling her, "You know, I'm in sales, not management. We leave Oscar in the hands of our good Lord—but we certainly have to love our Lord with all our heart." And during the rest of the funeral—the wake, the Mass, the interment—I emphasized the mercy of God as demanding a whole-hearted response from us."
It saddens me to say this, but I think we have to face the fact that the way we celebrate funeral Masses often fosters a point of view which is simply not Catholic. The principle factor I would point to in this regard is the use of the white vestments at funeral Masses in our country. This custom is nearly universal. It is very, very foolish and pastorally shortsighted. White signifies joy, it signifies the Resurrection. When we celebrate the funeral Mass, we should always humbly bear in mind that as far as we know (except for the aforementioned deacon, who seemed to know quite a bit about the mind of God on the subject) we are still walking with our deceased brother or sister on the journey to the Resurrection.
As I said earlier, the reason we gather for the funeral Mass is to offer the Holy Sacrifice to speed the soul of the departed on its way to paradise. The funeral Mass has to do with the application of the Fruits of Calvary to the deceased in a particular way, for the remission of sin. We don't wear white for the hearing of confessions do we? Why not? Is not the remission of sin a joyous thing? Of course it is. But we wear purple to hear confessions to signify that this sacrament is our road to sanctity and we are not there yet; it signified in our tradition sorrow for sin.
For the same reason, we should return to the custom of purple for funeral Masses, and we should preach regularly on the meaning of that symbol, as of all the symbols the Church uses in her worship.
While we are on the subject of preaching, it must be said that the current neglect of the subject of Purgatory in many places is deplorable. Properly presented and explained, the doctrine of Purgatory emphasizes the fact that our existence in this mortal life is a pilgrimage to God. The Faithful who understand the teaching on Purgatory realize that when we sin, we wound ourselves; that venial sin slows our pilgrimage towards union with God and mortal sin stops it altogether as we set our hearts on an idol—something we decide we love more than God himself.
Purgatory emphasizes that in the mercy of God our journey to him continues even after death if we have not finished it in this life. It underlines the holiness of God in our minds, and the ultimate necessity of being freed from all sinful attachments if we would be one with him for ever.
As a matter of charity, we should be concerned that all of our people understand how important it is to pray for the faithful departed—instead of misleading good people by canonizing their relatives and thereby possibly depriving the dead of prayers they need in Purgatory. We should preach the doctrine without dissembling, offering people the consolation of knowing that they can probably still help the departed with prayers and sacrifices. As a matter of pastoral prudence we should not only be fostering filial piety among them by encouraging prayers for departed loved ones—we should be preaching the doctrine of Purgatory as an incentive to strive for holiness. And I sincerely believe that we should review all of our liturgical practices to be certain that they are not sources of confusion, catapulting Butch and Oscar and Uncle Fred into the company of Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy and Agnes before they've tuned their harps and learned all the verses to Jerusalem My Happy Home.
In my final two years of seminary, when I studied in Dallas, Texas, there was a superb Carmelite Father under whom I was fortunate to take two courses—one on Spiritual Theology, the other a Spiritual Direction course. Father Morello was a masterful condenser of wisdom: he took us through many different schools of spirituality and offered insights from many different authors.
One day he gave an inspired presentation on St. John of the Cross. He spoke of the active and passive nights of the senses and of the spirit, of how gradually the soul following the promptings of grace is weaned from sensible attachments and even from attachments of the spirit until she comes to rest in purest love of God alone. It was a cogent, coherent, inspired presentation—one felt as though one had been dragged up Mount Carmel step by step —and as the Father stopped, and we sat there silent and reflecting on how we had just caught a glimpse of something wonderful, one of the students leaned forward and asked, quite bluntly, "Why on earth would anyone want to go through all that?"
For a moment the professor looked stunned, the wind taken right out of his sails— then he chuckled, straightened up, pointed to his diagram on the chalk board and said, "Well, brother, if you don't finish up this journey HERE, you sure as heck had better hope you get it done LATER!"
You know, that's exactly what we all need to remember, and what our parishioners need to hear. We need to be reminded that this life is indeed a journey, and that it has a blessed end to which we cannot attain by our own effort, without the grace of God to which we must respond, whether we're Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus or Uncle Fred: that we might perfectly love our God, transformed by his grace, one with him for ever.
Reverend Joseph F. Wilson was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Brooklyn, N. Y. in 1986. At present he is a parochial vicar at St. Luke's Church in Whitestone, N. Y. Fr. Wilson is an occasional contributor to Culture Wars magazine. He wrote the homilies in the December 1998 issue.
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