Today I have a funeral for someone who was born when I was already almost in high school. In fact, it's my first funeral for someone younger than me. His siblings are younger than me, and his parents younger than mine. It's all so unnatural and out of place for someone so young to be dead. He was murdered.
Preparing for the funeral over the last couple of days has helped me to appreciate the tragedy of people killing each other more than ever before. We hear of murders every day in the news, but don't always see the intense hurt and meaninglessness that radiates out into the family, friends, and communities that held the victim in life.
We must all work and pray that a culture of the sanctity of life might well up anew in our world.
2 comments:
Friar Charles,
That must have been an incredibly emotional, draining, and wrenching experience. I hope that you, with the help of God's grace, were able to comfort the family somewhat. It doesn't take long after ordination, does it, for you to be confronted with the most difficult of circumstances that the human condition has to offer. My prayers go out to them and to you.
I hear that the Pope will be visiting Yonkers. Will you and your brothers see him when he comes?
Thanks as always for your prayers and support, Jeff. Benedict's visit to Yonkers is going to center around the seminary, which is only down the hill and around the corner from here. Unfortunately, because of the way they seem to be doing security, even folks around here have to pay a pile of money for a fancy bus to take them to Yonkers Raceway, where they will then be taken to the seminary.
As for me, I signed up for the Mass at St. Patrick's cathedral. The Mass at Yankee Stadium is just too much. I have a job to go to on Sundays! We get tickets for 3.7% of our parish for that one. As one priest put it at a meeting, "Are you telling us that we should go to the Stadium at leave 96.3% of our parishioners with no Eucharist?"
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