Below is the text of my Homily at the Mass of Remembrance for the Road Safety Authority, St. Teresa's Church, Clarendon St, Dublin 2. Sunday, November 16th, 2014.
For all, grief at the loss of someone we love, especially
those who have died tragically is dreadfully painful, and only those who have
felt it can properly understand this. For Christians, our grief is equally
painful but it is not a hopeless grief because we will meet our loved ones
again. We will all be together again.
It is fitting that we remember our loved ones in this month
of November, the month of the souls. Yet the truth is, for those we’ve loved
and lost, we never forget them. They are always with us. From the moment we
wake up and begin the day, sometimes by the skin of our teeth, until we lie
down and when we are asleep and when we can’t sleep, they are with us in our
thoughts and prayers.
And they think of us too, they remember us in the presence of
God. The first reading today tells us that the souls of the virtuous are in the
hands of God. And the hands of God are a very safe place to be and surely we
can be confident that they are in good hands.
The second reading is all about hope. St. Paul was reminding
the people of Thessalonica that we’re different to those who don’t believe. Our
faith, which was given to us by our parents and grandparents, brings the dead
to life in Jesus Christ, by the power of His resurrection. The challenge
therefore according to St. Paul, is to encourage one another. And I give thanks
to God for the Road Safety Authority and to those who have organised this Mass. These are
tangible ways of solidarity, support and encouragement, and this lights up the
darkness.
There is a thin skin between our world here and the next
world. And there is a constant movement of prayers going between earth and
heaven. We connect with our loved ones in Jesus Christ because He is the way.
They connect with us, and they know we are with them too. Whenever we become
quiet, light a candle, or say a prayer, we connect. And in modern language,
this connection is always strong, and the signal never drops. It’s a kind of a
celestial broadband that is always on and is always free.
In speaking about our faith in life after death, Pope Francis tells us that
Jesus affirms that our pilgrimage, our journey, goes from death towards a fuller
life. So, the Holy Father points out that death is in a sense behind us, not in front
of us. In front of us is the God of the living, the definitive defeat of sin
and death, the start of a new time of joy and endless light. But already on
this earth – in prayers, in Sacraments, in the Mass – we encounter Jesus and
his love, and so we can get a small taste of the risen life.
I was chaplain in a school in west Dublin after my ordination
in 1997. In my second year there, we lost a lovely girl, a sixth-year pupil,
following a road traffic accident. Two of her siblings were also pupils and the
whole school was shocked and numb with grief. During the subsequent days, I
witnessed such love and solidarity that I will never forget how the whole
community came out to pray for the family left behind. One of the things I
began to do then after Communion at every Mass was to pray the prayer to the
Guardian Angel. This was reinforced when I later worked in the Chaplaincy Department of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. There I saw the great care and skills of the emergency services, the nursing staff, the surgeons and medics, and the care staff, and other professionals. For me, the prayer to the Guardian Angel is just a small way of praying for safety on the roads and
of supporting the great work of the Road Safety Authority. It is also to pray for all those who
are left behind following the death or serious injury of someone involved in a
road traffic accident.
O Angel of God, my
guardian dear,
To whom God’s love,
commits me here,
Ever this day, be at my
side,
To light and guard, to
rule and guide. Amen.
