Homily

Last Sunday Bob and Jane Salter were driving back to Corvallis on Hwy 99. Ahead of them, down the road, coming toward them, they noticed an SUV starting to swerve into the road. It crossed the yellow line and hit a motorcycle that was not far ahead. The man on the motorcycle was thrown into the air by the force of the impact. While Jane dialed 911, Bob ran over to the man to see if he could offer first aid, but sadly it appeared that he was already dead, and when the paramedics arrived there was nothing that could bring him back to life. So I was thinking about what an awful scene that must have been to watch, the last thing you would expect to see on the highway on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I prayed for Jane and Bob and also for the soul of the poor man who lost his life suddenly and unexpectedly a week ago today.

Then, just 24 hours later, Heather Olson was driving to Junction City with Felicity in the car, and suddenly another car pulls out of a driveway right in front of them. There's no way to avoid an accident and I'm sure it was a horrible moment when Heather realized that no matter how hard she applied her foot to the brake there was no chance she would not hit the other car. And then bam! A T-bone collision. Thank God that despite a neck injury for Heather there were no greater injuries for her or Felicity. The girls in the other car, even though not wearing seat belts were not hurt. The Olson car was totaled.

Two accidents involving parishioners in such a short period of time makes me think once again how fragile our lives are, and how true it is that we can never be sure when the moment of our own death will happen as it says in our funeral service, "in a moment death comes for us all." That's always a very sobering thought and it can be a great tool for us to use for ourselves, because if we remember our own mortality we will, or we ought to, focus ourselves on how we want to live in the time we have left to us. There has been a long, long tradition in the Church of a spiritual lifestyle that keeps the thought of our mortality always close to mind. Many years ago, I went into the crypt chapel of a certain Franciscan church in Rome, and throughout the place, section after section, the walls and ceilings are covered with elaborate artwork and designs, all made out of the bones of dead Franciscans. It is an artwork, and very well constructed, that is meant to serve as a reminder, for those who see it, about the fleeting time of life in this world. Such a display would have been appreciated by people living 100 or 200 or 300 years ago, as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of our short lives and on the mercy of God that we hope we may see at the hour of our own death. These bones were displayed in reverence for the benefit of living Christians. But, of course, in modern times when so many have little or no active faith, these bones often provoke no thoughts of conscience, or contrition, or of any kind of good resolution in faith, or any hint of a belief in Christ who offers the gift of everlasting life to those who faithfully follow. I could see that some people were reflective and thoughtful while passing through each section of the bone-covered walls of that chapel. But for others it was simply a chamber of horrors, a kind of spiritual funhouse, a Halloween display from the Middle Ages meant not to provoke thought, not to inspire faith, but instead to entertain us. What could be better for us or serve a more important function than to entertain us? I could not tell you what my fellow visitors to that chapel were saying if they didn't speak English, but I could observe how they seemed to react. But of all the nationalities present in the Chapel of the Bones, when I was there which people were the worst? Of course, the Americans. They had no clue why this display existed except to serve as a kind of fun house for the amusement of people like them. How American! Nothing beats entertainment.

Our culture has created an ever wider distance from the thought, from the experience of being in touch with death. We see it in funeral services, which are rarely done these days, having been replaced by "Celebrations of Life" and I do think the reasons people are celebrating is that they are the ones who are still alive. Let no corpse present defile this joyous gathering. Instead, only photos, videos and funny stories are permitted to suggest, almost that the dead aren't really that dead. They're just kind of "away." Much better that! Otherwise we might have to think about our own mortality.

You may have noticed that on so many TV shows that deal with police, crime, serious drama and such, over the years there has been an increasingly amazing number of corpses shown on the screen—not only corpses, but gruesome images of dead people and terribly graphic autopsy scenes. Great for entertainment, but in real life most people no longer want that close of a connection to the dead. It's not only disturbing but it's not even entertaining.

If we contemplate our own death, it can truly help us to contemplate our present life: how we think, how we act, what we value, how much we are invested in our faith in Jesus Christ. When I think of the Gospel today, the tragedy of a young man's death, the tragedy of his widowed mother who has lost her only child, and all the emotion and sense of loss that must have accompanied that funeral procession—when I think of all that, the most important thing is not that the son dies, not even that he was brought back from the dead, the most important thing is that Jesus was there with them.

And for Saints Sergius and Bacchus, whom we remember today, the most important thing for them as they knew their tortures and executions were ahead of them was not the fact that they faced death, but that Christ was with them. And for us, who find it very difficult to keep remembering that we do not know when our day will come, even so may we live until that day with a keen awareness of and a continuing conversation in prayer with Our Lord, Who is loving us all as the Crucified Savior, because if we live truly in Him, we shall enter into life to rejoice with Him and in Him. And if we live in Him, that joy is not just far off—we can have a taste of it even today.