Let me go

One week after we celebrated the funeral for one of Temagami's most beloved residents, another holy woman from that place has also completed her journey Home.  These two were friends and relatives in this life.  Now they are joined together for all eternity.

Funeral homily for Kathleen (Kay) Morrison

Less than a week ago, we were gathered in this very church to bid farewell to one of the pillars of this community.  Today, we have come once again, this time to commend our sister Kay into the loving embrace of our God, and to support her children, their spouses and their extended families with our love and our prayer.

It is never easy to bid farewell to someone we have known and loved, but it is possible for us to seek comfort in the arms of our God this day, for he is the one who has planted the gift of hope in our hearts, and this hope is not deceptive (Rom 5:5) because each one of us has been loved by our God from the very moment of our conception.  Think about it: some of us who are here today are mothers and fathers.  You know what it’s like to love your children.  You know that at any moment, you would do anything you could for your children.  There has never been a moment when you did not love your children, ever since the first moment that you were aware of your children’s existence.  Kay loved each one of her children with this kind of unfailing love – even the adopted ones.  God loves each one of us with the same everlasting love.

Trying to describe the love that God has for us, Saint Paul says that it is not easy to die, even for a good person, though of course, for someone really worthy – like a child of ours – we might be prepared to die (Rom 5:7) but even before any of us knew one another, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8) to show us how much he loves us, how much God loves us.

A few months ago, we almost lost Kay.  Having knocked at heaven’s door, she came back to live among us for a time.  At first, she wasn’t sure why God hadn’t taken her home.  I went to visit with her at her home one day, and she told me about the out-of-body experience she had had.  She described seeing her own lifeless body, the doctors working frantically to bring her back to life, and she spoke of a wonderful warmth, a desire she had to continue that last leg of the journey, but before she could pass from death to the fullness of life (cf Jn 5:24), she was brought back to earth, to the confines of her mortal body.  I told her then that perhaps God needed her to share this wisdom with all of us, to tell us about how wonderful it will be when we are called Home to the Father’s house.  I told her that it was up to her to tell this story so that people who get too caught up with surrounding ourselves with all the good things this life has to offer might have an opportunity to question our human wisdom, and perhaps entertain the thought that there might just be such a thing as life after death, a place called heaven.

So at last, the hour is here when our sister Kay, who has fallen asleep and completed her journey to that place of wonder, warmth and light, can hear the voice of the Son of God speaking (cf Jn 5:25), a place where she is reunited with her husband Gordon and all her beloved relatives and friends who have gone before us.

Her soul is in the hands of God, in a place where no torment can ever touch her again (cf Wis 3:1).  Life in heaven is the reward that awaits all of us, the reward that we look forward to when our earthly life has come to an end.  This gift of hope is rich with the promise of immortality (Wis 3:4) and every pain we suffer in this life will be dwarfed by the joy that we will one day experience when we too are reunited with her to live forever in heaven.

Let us therefore join our voices in prayer this day, thanking God for the many years he granted us to live with Kay at our side, for the wisdom she imparted to us, for the privilege of having known her and having been known by her, for the great joy of having loved her, and having been loved by her.  Today, we commend her immortal soul into the loving arms of Jesus who is the source of our hope.  May she rest now in peace, and know at last the certain joy of life in all its fullness.