We are Blessed

Homily for Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time

It is difficult to keep a positive attitude given the many sources of division and disappointment that one can single out in any discussion of our current culture and society. Sadness and grief surround us as family relationships unravel, as loved ones pass away, as so many young people take their own lives, as war and violence seem to grow every day, and as our political conversation is exacerbated by bias and prejudice.

Yet the Church opens the wake service in the Order of Christian Funerals with these words: “Brothers and sisters, we believe that all the ties of friendship and affection which knit us as one throughout our lives do not unravel with death.” Those words were written and published in 1987 when I was an active knitter, a hobby that I have since had to lay down because of arthritis. But imagine my surprise when I read these words for the very first time and realized that the Church was using this imagery to describe our human relationships in the presence of death. The Church follows up that statement with these words: “Confident that God always remembers the good we have done and forgives us our sins, we ask God to gather our deceased brothers and sisters to himself.”

The first reading for today’s liturgy is the basis for this confidence, for our faith in God. We have been richly blessed by our faith in Jesus Christ, blessed with the gift of being chosen, blessed with the gift of redemption, and blessed with the gift of forgiveness.

Each of us was clothed in a garment at the time of our baptism, a garment of resplendent white, a garment that was knit together by the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Symbolically, we cover the body of our beloved dead with a white garment to remind us of our blessings which are ours through baptism.

It is because of our Savior, who gave His life for us, that we can have hope and see beyond the tragedies that haunt our lives, that we can hang onto our positive attitude and not give way to the many sources of division and disappointment. As we receive Jesus in the Eucharist today, we are reminded that his life and death is the yarn that has connected all of us and which will never unravel if we but place our faith in the blessings we have received.