Funeral Mass — Homily by Fr. Ermatinger

Pinned Post

Translation of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians.

Brethren, we would not have you ignorant concerning those who are asleep, lest you should grieve as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so with him God will bring those who also have fallen asleep through Jesus. For this, we say to you in the word of the Lord, that we who live, who survive until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with cry of command, with the voice of archangel, and with trumpet of God, shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise up first. Then we who live, who survive, shall be caught up together with them in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall ever be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to Saint John

At that time, Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died; but even now I know that whatever you will ask of God, God will give it to thee.” Jesus said to her, ‘Thy brother shall rise.’ Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise at the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even if he die, shall live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Dost thou believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art to come into this world.”

The Saving Words of the Gospel

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

My condolences to the Mazza family, and all of the friends and the clergy and seminarians who’ve come here to pray for Carrie’s soul. Saint Augustine said, “There is more grace available to humanity than humanity has the ability with which to respond.” This is in part owing to our choices for temporal things over eternal, thus leaving those graces unused. But it also alludes to the superabundance of goodness on Our Lord’s part.

When Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Labouré and mentioned to her that many graces that are shed upon the world from the Godhead are not corresponded with and are left, she said, “Then I’ll take them.” This is something I could imagine Carrie saying. And when she wanted something from me, she would say, “Chop, chop.”

Contemplating his own mother’s passing, St. Augustine recounts her great virtues, and, yet, recognizes that even the holiest of lives must be submitted to divine scrutiny, highlighting the disproportion between our own efforts, even under the inspiration of grace, and the immensity of divine goodness. So, rather than appeal to God by reminding Him of her good works, he first appealed to the Wounds of Christ, which were the price of her redemption, a price no human could ever pay. He then reminds Our Lord that she not only received His mercy but extended it to anyone who had offended her. He recalls how fervently she worshipped at the altar and partook of the divine mysteries with such love and devotion. In his final entreaty, he reminds Our Lord of her only desire at the end of her life, which was to be remembered at the Altar of the Sacrifice where she had worshipped and received the Eucharist. Aware of his own mother’s holiness, many years after her death, the great Doctor of Grace invited his readers to continue praying for her soul.

Through the sacraments, Our Lord fits us for His mansions, altering our already capax dei soul substantially so that we can be prepared for His immensity. If any of us were to enter Heaven with the slightest stain on our souls, it would be a torture for us, a torture for eternity, and God’s mercy provides a way out for us, and the solution is Purgatory. Our Lord, in His mercy, spares the soul that pain by granting a pain that heals, a pain that sanctifies. Paul calls Our Lord, in his Letter to the Hebrews, and also in Deuteronomy 4, Our Lord is referred to as a consuming fire; He is a fire of divine love, and this fire represents His utter holiness, His purity, His righteousness, and even His jealousy; it’s a sort of jealousy that does not say “I love you just the way you are” but it’s a jealousy that comes from charity and we know from St. Thomas Aquinas that charity is to seek the good of the other.

And so, when it’s charity from Our Lord, He loves us so much not to leave us as we are. He seeks our true good and that not only includes rescuing us from sin through His Passion, and our sacramental participation in the Passion, but also rescuing us from our own mediocrity, our own petty sense of goodness, from our less than Godhead sized idols that we give inordinate attachments and attention to – so disproportionate to him and falling short of his goodness – and in rescuing us from that, it comes with some suffering in this life and some, perhaps, in the next, for many of us.

And for the generous soul who knows how to accept His charitable purifications, and it may take the form of a long, drawn-out illness, interior trials, those things are turned into something glorious and eternal.

When Thomas Aquinas talks about the resurrected body, he speaks of certain preternatural gifts, one of which is called claritas, it’s where, through it, the resurrected body reveals the virtues the person lived in this life, that were, perhaps, invisible to everyone here, are made manifest in the body in the Resurrection, much like a soldier who wears medals on his chest to reveal past valor. But to get there, Malachi tells us in Chapter 3, when he compares God to two forms of purification: Fuller’s soap and a refining fire. Fuller’s soap was a harsh alkaline detergent used to clean clothing, and the clothing would be soaked in it, and then trampled on, and beaten on rocks next to the river, soaked again, and, then, it looked new. When the refiner takes his silver, or gold, he submits it to fire. Malachi says following,  “For He is like a refiner’s fire, a fuller’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purify the silver, and he will purify the Sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver till they present right offerings to the Lord.”

When the gold or the silver is submitted to this purifying fire, certain things are burnt away, impurities are burnt away, others float to the top, and the refiner takes them out, and once there are no more left in the gold, or the silver, he takes it out and it’s a mirror; he can see his own reflection in it perfectly with no obstruction. Every speck has been removed.

And then, Malachi ends this verse with “till they present right offerings to the Lord.” Our Lord wants to prepare us through life’s crosses, and even through our death, in this world for the eternal liturgy in Heaven. That’s why we exist. A worldly, or a sensual mind, might think of an eternal liturgy as boring, but a lover of Christ wants nothing less. And so long as a soul is in a state of grace, he can meritoriously cooperate with this purifying process through Adoration, through mental prayer, through accepting life’s crosses that providence affords, and above all through longing for Christ. The more we long for Christ, the more He reorders our hearts and our disordered affections, and we submit ourselves willfully to the refiner’s fire. 

St. Thomas says bonum est diffusivum sui, goodness is expansive, it shares itself, and Our Lord shares His own mission with us through the ministries and sacraments of the Church, but also His mission of mercy to pray for the faithful departed, and today in particular for Carrie, and, insofar as we are united to Christ through sacramental grace, our prayer has merit. Insofar as we are united to Christ through sacramental grace, we become extensions of Christ. 

What St. Augustine calls the totus Christus; the whole Christ, the entire Christ. In his sermon on Psalm 85, he says that through grace we form this totus Christus, the whole Christ, thanks to this union, and as a result, we not only pray to Christ, but He prays with us, He prays for us, he goes further still, saying that He prays in us. And so, this union with Christ then elevates our prayer to become something perfect. We unite our wills and our intentions to His prayer, and He knows what to do with them, as imperfect as we may make them. 

Thus, this immutable consuming fire increases extrinsically, thanks to our charitable prayers and sacrifices. Should Carrie, or any other soul in Purgatory that we pray for, pass from Purgatory to the Beatific Vision, our prayers are still not fruitless. When we pray for somebody who is already beholding the Godhead in the Beatific vision, it increases that person’s extrinsic joy in Heaven. But also, for those who pray for that soul who has already made it to heaven, it makes their prayer of intercession for us all the more efficacious.

And so, if the amount of God’s grace supersedes our ability to correspond with, let us be like St. Catherine Labouré and try to take them all and, if the amount of God’s grace supersedes our ability to correspond with them all, let us imitate the Giver of those graces. May our prayers, masses, fasting for Carrie supersede her time in Purgatory, lest we hear from her those words, ”Chop Chop.”

~Fr. Ermatinger