Funeral homily for Yvonne McCarthy

Whoever listens to my words, and believes in the One who sent me, has eternal life.  These words of Jesus, spoken to his disciples, testify to his belief, or perhaps better his conviction - that the Father had sent him and confided to him a very special mission: to announce the good news of the Kingdom to humanity.  Having heard this good news, ours is the task of believing it, or coming to believe it, and to believe in the One who sent Jesus to proclaim it to us.

Some of Jesus’ words were written down so that we could remember them.  These words are confided to us so that we might come to cherish them, so that we might rely on them to give us strength in our weakness, so that we might find solace in them when life sends us challenges.  These words are given to us also as a pledge of fidelity, a promise that even as we live our lives here on earth, we can look forward to eternal life promised by God who has loved us from the moment of our conception within the womb of our mothers.

Together with Gerry, her beloved husband, her precious children, their spouses and children, and other members of Yvonne’s extended family, this family of faith gathers today as a sign of our faith to pray her into eternal life for throughout the life she lived here on earth, she was always a woman of faith, who believed in the One who has loved us from the moment of our birth, and who accompanies us on every step of life’s journey.

A few days ago when I met with some of the members of Yvonne’s family, they shared with me some of the characteristics that they recognized in her.  They spoke of a woman who loved the outdoors, a woman who was in many ways very private, but who never complained except if she didn’t catch enough fish.  She possessed the extraordinary gift of unconditional love and was able to put everyone else’s needs before her own, but I get the impression that she was not the kind of person who you’d want to cross.  Sometimes it’s good to be able to call a spade a spade.  Some aspects of life necessitate such honesty.  We should never be afraid to challenge people, especially when we love them enough to want only the best for them.

This kind of challenge was also modeled for the Christian community in Rome when Saint Paul reminded them that With God on our side, who can be against us?  These are the words of one who has already come to believe in the power of God’s love, because he has first put them to the test and found them to be true.  Paul had also discovered that nothing can come between us and the love of Christ … made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.  The life we live here on earth presents its fair share of challenges.  At times we might even feel persecuted or attacked, but if we are people of faith and if we truly believe that God is on our side, then we will never give up.  We will continue to look for solutions until we find a way to make things work, and in the end we will fall on our knees and thank God that He has accompanied us through days of challenge as well as days of great joy and celebration.

Gerry, Yvonne loved you very much.  Together you shared 57 years of married life.  These years should always be cherished, and the memories you created together are gifts which are yours to treasure.  There were also days of challenge, I’m sure.  No life worth living is free of challenge, but it’s by learning how to accept the challenges, at times to turn them into opportunities, and certainly by learning lessons from these challenges that we grow into the people we are meant to become.  There never seems to be enough time to learn these lessons and to cherish them as they should be cherished, for virtuous persons are often taken from us long before their time, but today as we gather in this place, our faith tells us that Yvonne’s soul has been found pleasing to God; now that her suffering is over, he has taken her to live with him in the place where grace and mercy await all of us, the chosen of the Lord.