Daniel 12:2-3
2 Timothy 4:1-8
John 19:16b-17;23-24;28-30
This morning, the Word of God is addressed to us who have gathered here and who remember Vincent, as the friars knew him, or Uncle Harry, as his family did.
We’ve just heard a short segment of Passion story of Jesus. In the gospel story of Jesus there is a significant contrast between the first part – the active life and ministry of Jesus and then the latter part, when the Passion of Jesus begins. In the first part of Jesus’ life, we see how active he is. He is the subject of the verbs, the doer of the action. Jesus calls, Jesus teaches, Jesus heals, Jesus ministers, Jesus serves, Jesus forgives, Jesus preaches, Jesus blesses. Jesus is the active one and the verbs are active verbs.
But once the Passion starts and the countdown to his death begins, the verbs regarding Jesus are now in the passive voice. Jesus is no longer the subject of the verbs, the doer of the action. Jesus is now the object of the verbs, the one to whom the action is done. Jesus is led away. Jesus is sentenced. Jesus is handed over to the soldiers. Jesus undergoes suffering at the hands of others. Jesus is stripped and nailed to the cross. The Gospel description of the Passion of Jesus brings this out so clearly and powerfully. He is physically beaten down and he no longer has the energy or the capability to do what he actively did. Jesus is laid on the bed of suffering, his cross, on which he finally dies.
The verbs in the gospel show the once active Jesus – is now the passive one, weak and vulnerable. In this way, Jesus enters into an even deeper solidarity with those who are poor and oppressed, the weak and vulnerable, those subject to pain and death. And here we must remember something important in the life of Jesus and how he brings about salvation. Jesus brings about redemption not just when he is active, in the first phase of his life. In fact, Jesus brings about redemption, particularly in the latter phase of his life – his Passion and death.
And what I’ve just described about Jesus is what happens to each one of us as we grow old, get sick and move towards death. In our earlier years, we are active, we are able, we are in control, we can do and achieve a lot. But as we grow older, as we become frail, we find that we cannot do the things we once used to do, especially when we are sick and dying. The doctors and nurses and aides care for us and do things for us. Our friends and family hold us close to their hearts.
How do we respond to this decline? As disciples of Jesus, we are called to be his followers not only in the active phase of our life, but we are followers of Jesus even when we have been rendered old and feeble, sick and dying. Even in our frailty and brokenness, God is working out our salvation. It is one thing to proclaim God’s love from the pulpit, it is another to proclaim the love of God in the throes of death from your sick bed. And those of us who were graced to spend time with Vincent in his last weeks and days were given a glimpse of that. Throughout the final phase of his life, Vince continued to witness to faith, and hope, and love by showing that even dying, however painful, can be an experience of God’s presence.
In our lives, what do we seek? What do we dare to hope for? A life of success or quick wealth or notable achievement? There are no promises of these to be found in our faith. A life without suffering? The reality of pain and grief are all too evident to hope for that. Perhaps a life without death? The loss of Vincent is a stark reminder of death. What then can we hope for? According to St. Paul, in the second reading we heard this morning, one thing only: that God will be faithful to those who are faithful to the Lord. That is the great hope: God’s love is faithful. When other things fail – God’s love remains. Not even death is more powerful than God’s fidelity to those he loves.
Vincent’s death is not the end of God’s love for we can rightly hope that the experience of death has ushered Vince into a whole new way of knowing God’s presence. We can hope that Vincent knows a life with God that we can neither imagine nor explain. That is our hope today – Uncle Harry lives now in the presence of God. As Paul expresses it, having fought the good fight and run the race, and having kept faith, God has prepared a crown for all who have looked to him.
Years ago, when Vincent was active in the leadership of the Association of Theological Schools, he was the first Catholic to serve as president of that group, he was part of a team on an accreditation visit to a school run by the Quakers. He was quite taken by the people he met on his visit and was fascinated by their approach to church and community. He told me about two roles that Quakers held up as central to being church, being faithful to the church’s mission. The first was the keeper of the vision, a trusted and admired person in the group was charged with the ministry of standing up in the community and reminding its members whenever they began to lose sight of the gospel message. When people got caught up in ego trips, or self-pity, or anxiety and worry about their lives, or lost hope for the future – whatever took people’s eyes away from the prize – it was the role of the keeper of the vision to remind the community of who they were and to what they were committed: the gospel of their Lord Jesus.
Vincent was a keeper of the vision for many of us. As an administrator in our Franciscan fraternity who served for eighteen years as a member of the Provincial Leadership, he articulated the vision of a renewed church that had been promoted at Vatican II and that gave life and energy to his fellow friars. As a preacher in many local communities, including St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Crofton, MD, the NOVA community in Arlington, VA, and the Pax Community in McLean, VA, Vincent persistently proclaimed the gospel’s vision, whether it was convenient or inconvenient.
Vincent was not only a preacher for the contemporary church, he was an educator for the future church. My early experience of Vincent was as my teacher in ecclesiology back in the fall of 1973; but my foremost experience of Vincent was not as a classroom teacher but as an educator who led the way in theological education for more than two decades as President at the Washington Theological Union. Vincent put up with hardship in that role but he fulfilled his ministry through administration of an institution that formed thousands of men and women who went on to serve in church ministry, both ordained and lay. Vincent helped to shape what ministry in the Catholic church looked like in the decades after Vatican II. He was truly a keeper of the vision.
There is a second role in the Quaker church that Vincent also spoke of with appreciation and that was, the keeper of the joy. It is the task of that person to remind the community of the hope that it shares, reminding one’s fellow believers not to lose sight of the deep-down joy in life that comes from knowing one is right with God and our brothers and sisters.
I lived in community with Vincent for 28 years; I lived under the same roof with Vincent longer than I have lived with any other person in my life. I can say with confidence that he was a keeper of the joy. I do not refer just to his wit and delight in a bon mot or funny anecdote, but more to his serenity amid hard times, his perseverance in climbing up a steep path to attain his goal, his refusal to become negative or carping when confronted with failure. Vincent was persistent; he stayed the course when others might give up. He was not immune to anger or frustration, but those times would pass as he would turn his mind to the work that needed to be done and he would set about doing it. But as a keeper of the joy, Vincent did not just settle for being dogged in his work. He believed in the value, the dignity, the pleasure, of good work and he sought to do it well. His joy came from being of use to others, of being able to assist those who needed a hand or a word of assurance or a bit of guidance.
Throughout his life, Vincent was a keeper of the vision and keeper of the joy; he served his God both in active ministry and, more recently, in illness and suffering. He has indeed fought the good fight and run the good race, and we now pray that he comes into the loving embrace of God. That is our hope for Uncle Harry – that he is with Christ, and Christ is God, and God is love through and through.