With my wife’s knee replacement surgery and rehab, work commitments and other extra surprises in my life, I haven’t contributed much to this blog as of late. Below is the homily I gave for this weekend at St. Wenceslaus Church. The only inaccuracy is that in the homily I said that my sister, Mary Ruth, died 17 years ago. It has actually been 20 years ago … hard to believe it has been that long.
The gospel for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time is both positive and somber. As we approach the end of this liturgical year, and hear these “end-times” scripture readings, we are reminded of something that St. Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians. All things of earth, including us, are transitory and not quite real. That which is eternal and real, eternal life, lies just beyond the veil that separates this life from the next.
HOMILY FOR THE 33RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A, 2017
I was visiting my sister, Mary, in Intensive Care several days before her death. She knew she was dying. She turned to me and asked me, “Will I be remembered?” She was 42 years of age, not married, had no real significant person in her life other than her family. She asked me again, “Will I be remembered?” I pulled a chair up alongside her hospital bed, sat down and took her hand. Then I began to do a review of her life.
I recalled how she had valiantly battled her chronic disease for 25 years. How, in spite of her chronic illness, she received a degree as an Occupational Therapist from the College of St. Catherine. I reminded her of the great number of cardiac patients she helped during her career as a cardiac occupational therapist. I recalled how proud I was of her when she received her Master of Arts degree in Education from the University of St. Thomas, and how she was working toward receiving a PhD. I reminded her of the many places she traveled with her doctor friends throughout Northern Europe, Hawaii, and the South Pacific, even camping with them in the Boundary Waters. I talked to her about the children’s book she wrote and illustrated to help children suffering from chronic illness, and, when her illness forced her to go on permanent medical leave, how she began to produce and publish greetings cards that were sold in the gift shops around Roseville.
I reminded her as to how important she was to Ruthie and I and our kids. She especially loved my kids taking them to movies, the Christmas display at Daytons in downtown Minneapolis, the many family picnics and pictures she planned. I reminded her of how important she was to her friends and how much they loved and supported her throughout her life. I concluded, “Mary, you wonder if you will be remembered. How can you not be remembered?” She died three days later, her head cradled in the lap of her dear friend, Dr. Bob Conlin, and all of us standing around her bed.
She has now been dead 17 years. If you go to Navy Island in St. Paul, her name is memorialized in the paved stones along the walkway. Every year on her birthday, June 14th, Flag Day, her friends gather at her grave and sing all the songs she loved. My mother still receives cards from my sister’s friends on her birthday. On Thanksgiving, we will all remember how she hogged all the mushrooms in the turkey gravy, and recall stories of how the bees pestered us at those family picnics. We talk about the Santa Bears she bought for Meg and Beth when they were little. “Will I be remembered?” Mary, how could we ever forget you?
The Gospel for today is really about the importance of doing a review of our lives. It makes no difference whether we have many years ahead in our lives, for very few years left of our lives. Jesus reminds us in this parable of the talents, that when we were born, God blessed us with many gifts. How have we used the gifts God has given us in service to God and in service to others? To go back to the Great Commandment of Jesus, have we used the “talents” we have received by God in our lives in loving God and in loving others? Or, have we hoarded the “talents” we have received from God and buried them by using them only to benefit ourselves and no one else, not even our God?
It is important for us to do this review of our lives for ourselves now, before our lives are reviewed by God when we die. As St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians in the second reading, “For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, ‘Peace and security, ‘ then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman,
and they will not escape. … Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.”
While my sister’s question, “Will I be remembered?” was important to her, in all honesty, the answer to that question is, “No.” Unless someone does something notable like Abraham Lincoln, or something notorious like Adolf Hitler, not a one of us will be memorialized for all time. All of us who remember my sister, Mary, Ruthie and I, our immediate family, will die. The friends who gather at her gravesite year after year will eventually dwindle, as they grow more frail in mind and body, and, then die. After the death of my own children, the memory of my sister will be remembered only in faded photographs and in government birth records and death records. The wind, snow, rain, and sun will eventually erode and erase her name from the paved stones of that walkway on Navy Island.
The question we must make a point to ask while we are alive, today, is “How will God remember me?” When we die, will we hear God say to us, “’Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.”? Or, will we hear God say, “Throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”? The answer will be determined by how we have used the talents, the gifts, God has given us in service to our God and in service to our neighbor.