Now for something a bit different

I was asked to preside at a Memorial Service this morning for a gentleman who has ties to this city but who died this past week in another place.

As I sat with his family yesterday to review some of the details of this gathering, I couldn't help thinking that the world is indeed a very small place. Although they have travelled from a small town in Eastern Ontario to be here today, it turns out that I too know someone who lives in their hometown, even though there are not more than about 1100 souls in that place. What's more, there are people living here in this city who have connections with that particular part of the province and as it turns out they too have heard of this passing.

It's never easy to accompany someone on their final journey home, but it can be (and often is) a very healing journey for all who are privileged to walk it. In this case, the first sign of the impending journey was made known only a few months ago, so the time for preparation was not in abundance. This forced his family and friends to ask themselves some serious questions at a very serious and deep level ... in very quick succession.

Words of wisdom once offered me by one of my predecessors advise that in cases of celebrating baptism, we should always attempt to be welcoming. Whenever celebrating the sacraments of life, we should give ourselves the liberty to be challenging, and when it comes to celebrating funerals, we should try our best to be accommodating.

At first, I was a bit unsure about how this celebration would work. It is not the usual procession of events, but knowing that the family had also celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection prior to their arrival here, I knew that we had a certain leeway to incorporate other aspects of prayer. As it turns out, we followed the prescriptions of the Funeral Liturgy outside Mass, and followed the prayers of commendation with a procession to the place of committal and the prayers proper to that moment. There was music, there were people, stories were recounted, and all left that place with the assurance that somehow this liturgy - some of it improvised, some of it prescribed - somehow managed to speak to our hearts.