Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
At 10:00 am I was called and asked to do a communion service at St. Joseph's Hospital in Kirkwood, MO. There is normally a mass at 11:30, but the priest's father passed away this morning. Here is my short-notice homily.
Good morning! My name is Mike Buckley. I’m a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and a volunteer pastoral visitor here at St. Joseph’s. I have some sad news to report. Your usual celebrant, Father Jim Krings lost his father, Arthur Krings
For those of you who haven’t run into a deacon before, let me briefly explain who we are and what we do. There are three orders of clergy in the Catholic Church: bishops, priests, and deacons. Deacons receive the sacrament of Holy Orders, just like the other two. The difference is that our ministry is one of service. We can’t say mass, hear confessions, or administer the sacrament of the sick. We can do weddings, baptisms, and funerals.
Most of us minister in hospitals like St. Joseph’s, or in prisons, or in nursing homes, or in some other service capacity. Deacons minister on college campuses and in airports. With deacons doing a lot of this service work, priests are freed up to do the things that only they can do. Since I can’t say mass, this morning we will have a communion service. A communion service is like a mass with no consecration. We will distribute the Body of Christ reserved in the tabernacle. Since there’s no consecration, the homily can be longer.
As we prepare to receive the Body of Christ, I know you’ll join me in prayer for Fr. Krings and his family, and of course, for the soul of his dad.
It’s always a sad time when we lose someone we love. If Fr. Jim were here, I know he would tell us not to grieve his father’s death, but to rejoice for his life. That’s what our faith teaches us: That when we leave this world, it’s a beginning, and not an end. That death isn’t moving from light into darkness, but that it’s moving from a dim light into a light that’s so bright, we can’t even imagine what it must be like.
Picture yourself moving from a dark room, illuminated by a single candle, into the brightest sunlight you’ve ever seen. The light is so bright that you have to cover your eyes with your hands until they can get accustomed to the intensity of the light. If you can imagine that, well that’s just a tiny fraction of what lies ahead for us when we enter into God’s kingdom.
St. Joseph’s Hospital is a place of beginnings. Every day we experience the miracle of new human life. When you hear the lullaby play over the PA system, you know that God has blessed someone with the gift of a child. Where there were two, now there are three (sometimes even four or five or more). On two different occasions, my wife and I walked in through the front door of this building alone, and walked out holding our new son.
It’s likely that sometime today, two people will enter the hospital, either through the front door, or through the Emergency Room. It may be a husband and wife. It may be a child and a parent. But, one of them will walk out of here alone. There won’t be any music. There will be silence and sadness.
Maybe there should be music. If entering this life, with its disappointments, it’s illnesses, it’s poverty, and it’s sadness inspires song, how much more should moving into eternal life make us want to sing?
While it seems like this world is often heading in the wrong direction, I’ve noticed in the last few years that funerals have taken a much more positive tone. We seem to spend a lot more time thanking God for our loved-one’s life than being angry at having that person taken away. There are exceptions, of course. But it does seem to be a trend. It’s unusual to attend a funeral where people don’t actually laugh out loud at some happy memory of the deceased.
So, we pray that Fr. Jim and his family will be filled with happy memories of Arthur and with the joyful hope that someday they will meet again in God’s heavenly kingdom.
But, that’s not what I came to talk about. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the partroness of the Americas. Our Lady’s appearance to Juan Diego near Mexico City, in 1531 is the only time that the Blessed Mother has appeared in this part of the world. To put that in perspective, it was just 39 years after Christopher Columbus landed here for the first time. It was 89 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was 245 years before the Colonies declared their independence from England. And she hasn’t been back since. I wonder why not?
Either Jesus is so happy with us that He doesn’t see a reason for sending her back, or else He thinks we won’t listen to her anyway. It’s something to think about as we prepare for His birth in just under two weeks.
Good morning! My name is Mike Buckley. I’m a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and a volunteer pastoral visitor here at St. Joseph’s. I have some sad news to report. Your usual celebrant, Father Jim Krings lost his father, Arthur Krings
For those of you who haven’t run into a deacon before, let me briefly explain who we are and what we do. There are three orders of clergy in the Catholic Church: bishops, priests, and deacons. Deacons receive the sacrament of Holy Orders, just like the other two. The difference is that our ministry is one of service. We can’t say mass, hear confessions, or administer the sacrament of the sick. We can do weddings, baptisms, and funerals.
Most of us minister in hospitals like St. Joseph’s, or in prisons, or in nursing homes, or in some other service capacity. Deacons minister on college campuses and in airports. With deacons doing a lot of this service work, priests are freed up to do the things that only they can do. Since I can’t say mass, this morning we will have a communion service. A communion service is like a mass with no consecration. We will distribute the Body of Christ reserved in the tabernacle. Since there’s no consecration, the homily can be longer.
As we prepare to receive the Body of Christ, I know you’ll join me in prayer for Fr. Krings and his family, and of course, for the soul of his dad.
It’s always a sad time when we lose someone we love. If Fr. Jim were here, I know he would tell us not to grieve his father’s death, but to rejoice for his life. That’s what our faith teaches us: That when we leave this world, it’s a beginning, and not an end. That death isn’t moving from light into darkness, but that it’s moving from a dim light into a light that’s so bright, we can’t even imagine what it must be like.
Picture yourself moving from a dark room, illuminated by a single candle, into the brightest sunlight you’ve ever seen. The light is so bright that you have to cover your eyes with your hands until they can get accustomed to the intensity of the light. If you can imagine that, well that’s just a tiny fraction of what lies ahead for us when we enter into God’s kingdom.
St. Joseph’s Hospital is a place of beginnings. Every day we experience the miracle of new human life. When you hear the lullaby play over the PA system, you know that God has blessed someone with the gift of a child. Where there were two, now there are three (sometimes even four or five or more). On two different occasions, my wife and I walked in through the front door of this building alone, and walked out holding our new son.
It’s likely that sometime today, two people will enter the hospital, either through the front door, or through the Emergency Room. It may be a husband and wife. It may be a child and a parent. But, one of them will walk out of here alone. There won’t be any music. There will be silence and sadness.
Maybe there should be music. If entering this life, with its disappointments, it’s illnesses, it’s poverty, and it’s sadness inspires song, how much more should moving into eternal life make us want to sing?
While it seems like this world is often heading in the wrong direction, I’ve noticed in the last few years that funerals have taken a much more positive tone. We seem to spend a lot more time thanking God for our loved-one’s life than being angry at having that person taken away. There are exceptions, of course. But it does seem to be a trend. It’s unusual to attend a funeral where people don’t actually laugh out loud at some happy memory of the deceased.
So, we pray that Fr. Jim and his family will be filled with happy memories of Arthur and with the joyful hope that someday they will meet again in God’s heavenly kingdom.
But, that’s not what I came to talk about. Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the partroness of the Americas. Our Lady’s appearance to Juan Diego near Mexico City, in 1531 is the only time that the Blessed Mother has appeared in this part of the world. To put that in perspective, it was just 39 years after Christopher Columbus landed here for the first time. It was 89 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. It was 245 years before the Colonies declared their independence from England. And she hasn’t been back since. I wonder why not?
Either Jesus is so happy with us that He doesn’t see a reason for sending her back, or else He thinks we won’t listen to her anyway. It’s something to think about as we prepare for His birth in just under two weeks.
posted by Mike at 1:23 PM
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