In my professional life I have written on grief and the grieving process. A few months ago my younger brother lost his wife tragically. I see his grief circulating through him daily and I am amazed at his fortitude and his faith in the face of such a devastating turn of events. Of course, for all of us death is an eminent reality and thinking about our own demise can be burdensome. But perhaps the reality with the greater ongoing effect upon us is the death of others, especially those we love. Death is hard to live with. Grief is a cross.
I'm convinced there is a Catholic way of grieving, however, that extracts from our faith a different set of tools. It goes beyond "coping." It has to do with our connection to the universal Church in real and sensate terms. Today, it seems, either you are a believer and the spiritual world looms large or you are a non-believer and the physical is all there is. Only in Catholicism do I see a grand blend of the material at the service of the spiritual.
For Catholics it's a great big universal family deal. We see heaven and earth on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and in the parade of saints in the portraiture art of the centuries and in our churches and our sacraments and in the sensibilities thrust upon us as children.
For us, the Communion of Saints is a paramount notion infused in us early in childhood. As a kid, every time I got in real trouble (and that was often), I wound up talking to my Uncle Fred. He was my mother's brother and was on his deathbed as I was being born. My mother spoke often of him and I longed to know him. So at some point the conversations began, usually when I was in trouble and was afraid to talk to anybody else. Nobody had yet told me about the Communion of Saints, but somehow I knew this praying/talking/connection was what we did.
Now, years later, I have untold numbers of these relationships and I actually do feel the communion of those on earth and those in heaven and those working out their purgation in whatever way that is happening. I am connected to those not here in a very real way, and the spiritual borderlines between where I am and where Uncle Fred is are not as distinguishable as one might think.
I had a high school friend who was a popular guy, an "A" student and one of the best athletes I've ever known. In many ways he peaked during his senior year of high school. His was a tough, sad life. But we were boys together and I can see him scooting across a football field eluding tacklers right and left, as if his feet were wheels. I can feel his presence in the humility that never left him, as we tossed layups on a blacktop and spoke to each other in the coded language of boyhood even after his prowess waned and his body failed.
Our connection is Catholic and my grief is defined by it. We can touch each others' hearts just as my brother and his wife touch their hearts at the end of his day, with his journal in hand and the tears still fresh.
Bishop Emeritus William Curlin, one of my favorite people on this side of heaven, visited my brother's wife on her deathbed. He visited with my brother, too. The bishop told him that every time my brother attended Mass his wife was there with him in a very special way with all the angels and saints. That fact has brought much solace to my brother.
The emphasis on an unending family connection and our great, storied Catholic customs of remembrance and ritual truly do give us a leg up when we are grieving because the dead come alive in the subtle and moving tributaries of our spirits. The pain is deep and powerful, but so is the connection real and effecting. It's like we are given the opportunity to experience our loss in a manner consistent with the depth of our feeling and in a manner consistent with our ongoing connection to a loved one.
And the last very "Catholic" aspect of my grief that harkens back to that family connectivity is the undeniable fact of divine mercy in my life. My Catholic sensibility is such that, even in the depths of sorrow or doubt or anger or any of the myriad forms of sin, I know I am His. I know I belong to my Savior in a tangible way, taught to me by my parents, by the statues and stained glass of my church, by the actual absorption of the Real Presence throughout my life, by the ongoing trumpet call to attend to the poor and the hurting, by the feel of holy water and beads on my fingers, in the sweet aroma of incense rising to heaven, in the intonation of the words of the Consecration and in the syllables of prayer – and yes, in the simple but sacred words of a kid to his deceased uncle.
If we take everything we know about grief and throw into the mix an internalization of the notion of the Communion of Saints and an intuitive grasp of divine mercy, we have something very different in these confusing days – something most comforting and very Catholic.
Fred Gallagher is an author, book editor and former addictions counselor. He and his wife Kim are members of St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.
What we think is the right road
The goal of a homily is to entertain people, it should be brief, and it should be free from annoying or unsettling content. The best homilies today feature humor, props and ploys to ensure that people pay attention. Rather than "fire and brimstone" sermonizing, the homily should make people feel good. After all, the collection basket is passed soon after the homily, and the collection is thus a financial referendum on the homily's popularity.
But it's the wrong road
The Church exists for three paramount reasons: to glorify God, to save our souls, and to make us saints. Bland homilies are moral failures. The Old Testament Book of Lamentations excoriates such feckless preaching: "Their preaching deceived you by never exposing your sin. They made you think you did not need to repent" (2:14; also see Ez 33:7-9).
St. Paul tells us how vitally important it is for us to call out to Our Lord, but plaintively asks: "How can they call out to Him for help if they have not believed? And how can they believe if they have not heard the message? And how can they hear if the message is not proclaimed?" (Romans 10:14).
Of course, not every priest is a famous preacher like St. John Chrysostom or Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Still, homilies can be well prepared, practiced and effectively presented. There is a classic difference between a homily, normally based on the Scriptures proclaimed at a particular Mass, and a sermon, a moral message not necessarily specifically related to the Scripture readings of the day.
Whether delivering homily or sermon, the priest's first duty, after offering the Sacrifice of the Mass, is preaching. That means hours of preparation for what is often a 10-minute or less talk.
Preparation, practice and preparation are necessary but insufficient. They mean nothing if the preacher is unorthodox or even rude (see 2 Tim 2:24). In Brian J. Gail's novel "Fatherless," a good priest constantly "pulls his punches" in his, well, entertaining homilies – until it finally dawns on him that his key preaching responsibility lay in the hard sayings, precisely about those matters which may make us uncomfortable. After all, the prophets comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.
In Gail's novel, the priest comes to realize that he had not been preaching the difficult issues "because I was afraid my parishioners would turn against me." But he realized that if he continued to preach bland homilies, "God would hold me responsible for their sins ... He would also hold me accountable for every time one of my parishioners, after committing one of these serious sins, ate and drank unworthily – lacerating His Sacred Body all over again."
Some years ago when I was at Mass in another diocese, the first reading concerned the fire of Jeremiah: "My message is like a fire and like a hammer that breaks rocks in pieces" (23:29). The priest's homily that day concerned the next parish ice cream social. I whispered to my wife: "The fire of Jeremiah had been extinguished by ice cream."
The desire to be liked or appreciated is natural. There are times, though, to resist that desire. The good teacher makes academic demands on students; the good coach sets high goals for his athletes; and the good preacher shines the light of faith into areas we find uncomfortable or difficult. No preacher should ever love "the approval of men rather than the approval of God" (John 12:43; also see Gal 1:10, 1 Thess 2:4). This is exactly is what is done when the emphasis is on bland homilies which are full of entertainment but empty of "parrhesia," or boldness in speaking.
We live at a time and in a place of moral chaos. Too often our thoughts, words and deeds are influenced by confusion. Too often we slip into the darkness of what is wrong rather than live in the light of what is right. As Gail points out in his book, we all need fathers – and by "fathers" he means preachers who speak the truth. He means priests whose homilies are powerful witnesses to Christian truth in a society that too often rejects the Gospel.
In a brilliant 1917 encyclical, Pope Benedict XV write: "Therefore it is clear how unworthy of commendation are those preachers who are afraid to touch upon certain points of Christian doctrine lest they should give their hearers offense." The pope, even in the midst of World War I, blamed ineffective preaching by priests for the decline in morals and civilization's backsliding into paganism. Pope Benedict XV died in 1922; what would he say about today's triumphant paganism and the preaching which ought to combat it?
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.