MASS FOR DECEASED RELIGIOUS
Tuesday 24 November 2009

I want to tell you about a wonderful Sister. She was called Rachel, and at the time
that I came across her she was in her late 40s. She had been a member of her religious community for 20 years. Her creativity and energy had been a welcome resource among her sisters and the work that they did. Sister Rachel worked as a co-ordinator of the kitchen for a women’s homeless shelter. She loved this job because it allowed her to be creative. She had enjoyed cooking since her college days, when she would often stay up half the night cooking elaborate meals. Cooking also kept her connected to the “folks with the jokes”, as she called the lively but often bedraggled crowd of women whom she served. Often, she would think nothing of staying beyond her normal working hours each week, talking and ministering to the women in the residence, cracking jokes with the folks, and listening to their tales of woe as well as their earthy humour. Although she enjoyed being with the women, she would come home “wired” and unable to get to sleep until long after midnight. Yet she would be up again for prayer at 5.30 a.m., with seemingly no ill effects.

Over the next few years, however, Sister Rachel’s schedule had become more hectic. With the deaths of some of the older community members, she, along with everyone else in this small community, had been asked to do more. She was called upon to manage the schedule of medical appointments for the older sisters, and co-ordinate the use and maintenance of the community’s 2 or 3 vehicles.  While Sister Rachel willingly accepted these additional responsibilities, she struggled with keeping track of logistics, timetables, and other people’s appointments.  She became stressed by these added roles. But she kept this distress to herself, because she knew that everyone else was feeling stretched.  The Sisters in her community didn’t really talk about feelings with one another; it just wasn’t their way.  Sister Rachel became overcome by dark moods and began to withdraw from the community.

When the homeless shelter fell on hard times due to a loss of local council funding, it had to reduce its bed capacity by 50%.  Sister Rachel felt crushed when she had to turn away women whom she had served for years. She felt that she was personally letting them down. She was angry and upset, but still did not feel able to talk about it with anyone. Tensions rose, and she had additional lapses of judgement. When one of the homeless women whom she had known for years could not get a bed for the night, Sister Rachel took money from the community to put her in a B&B for the night.  Her Sister Superior discovered the missing money and accused Rachel. She angrily denied it. Shortly afterwards, feeling deeply depressed, feeling everyone was against her, feeling frustrated and with a simmering anger, she stormed out of the community, never to return. In great sadness, the Sisters gathered to bury her a few months later. Her youthfulness and energy meant so little now.
When I was young, all the saints I knew were in picture-frames on walls. Judging by their forlorn expressions, that’s where they rightly belonged!   Some gazed mistily into the distance, lips slightly parted. Others, admittedly, did have faces strangely radiating the face of God. The remainder, mostly men, stared blindly out of deep sockets. They seemed to have been on hunger-strike for God.  They had never heard of Complan!  So, these saints seemed to me unreal, not particularly human. They looked like puppets let down on strings from heaven.

But now, as I have grown older, all the saints I know are on the ground. A saint is “somebody” – a person of flesh and blood, smiles and tears, joys and grumbles, who is close in prayer and submission to almighty God, and what’s more important, close in prayer and compassion to the likes of me. These everyday saints divide their time between God and people, and yet do nothing divisive at all. We have all met them, but perhaps not appreciated them fully at the time. Yet, they had their priorities right. Violence, pomp, greed, self – such things they abhorred.  Justice, mercy, peace – these things they actively loved.

Today, we remember all of them. This Mass is not celebrated as a commemoration of pious eccentricities, but as a great harvesting of humanity reaching its fulness. We remember those who have made it, who have broken through to God. Their faces are not like the ones in the frames of my youth, but shine with accomplishment and anticipation, a great happiness now realised and shared. It’s not that these “saints” were perfect here below. Dear God, perfect people are impossible to live with!  They had odd ways: some knew it all (we call them “battleaxes”!), and others sometimes blew their own trumpet (“Oh, there she goes again!”). But, all of us have to admit that these colleagues were mighty powerful in virtue, whatever we said behind their backs.  With age, they had to grow small. They had to disintegrate in death. And they had to recede into the distance, before we were able to see them in their full stature at all. Our fellow religious reared us in the faith and in the ways of religious life. If we didn’t think they were saints then, well they certainly are now.

This Mass is not just for the dead, but it is a celebration for us too. Not a celebration that others have passed on, and just a few memories remain. But, we have to acknowledge that we too are saints in the making – all ripening for the harvest. For, God has sealed us with his love. All he asks is that we take him seriously. Just as he shows mercy to us every day, so too he asks that we show pity and compassion to other souls like ourselves. We are all the saints-in-waiting. Waiting? Yes, waiting for that little push. This Mass today is that little push for those in waiting. It is our promise that our small offerings each day are to get others into heaven. And meanwhile, our prayers and memories are to ask God to get a little of heaven into us – now!