Memorial Day Homily
On Memorial Day we celebrate two realities: our faith in God and our love and respect for the men and women we remember and honor today, all of our beloved dead, but especially those who have died in the armed services. Those two realities are closely connected. Our faith in God is based in his faithfulness to us, his loving, life-giving plan of salvation for us in Jesus Christ, his Son. In his Gospel, Saint John tells us what Jesus promised: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” Jesus is the fulfillment in the flesh of the powerful faith statement in our first reading, where the author of the Book of the Maccabees praises the prayers offered for the dead after a battle, saying that the Jewish general “did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness; it was a holy and pious thought . . . he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.” In the gospel reading today Jesus shows his compassion as well as his power over life and death when he raises back to life the son of the widow of Nain.
In another gospel passage, Jesus teaches us about his essential role in the Father’s plan of salvation: “All the Father has given me will come to me. I reject no one. The Father’s will is that I lose none of what he has given me; I will raise it up on the last day. Everyone who looks upon the Son and believes I will raise up on the last day.”
St. Paul, in our second reading, tells us that “our citizenship is in heaven.” We need to take that statement very seriously. We vote and pay taxes in a republic, but we Christians are ultimately monarchists, that is, our ultimate allegiance is to a king, not to a wordly king, but to Jesus Christ the King, because we live here for a while, but we hope to live with him forever, as he has promised us in calling us to follow him. That’s what St. Paul means by saying, “we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” St. Paul says of Jesus, “He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified Body by the power hat enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself.” That is our faith in Jesus our Savior—that he raises up each of his followers just as surely as he raised up the son of the widow in that small town in Israel. Between Christ and the one who loves him there is a relationship nothing can break, even death.
Just yesterday our Church celebrated the feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Next Sunday we will celebrate the feast of Pentecost. At the Last Supper Jesus taught the apostles, and us, what it meant for him to die, to be raised from the dead, and to ascend to the Father. It meant that he and the Father would send upon the Church, and upon each baptized and confirmed disciple, the Holy Spirit of their life and love, so that we could be one with Christ and with one another in a bond of faith and hope and love.
Some will say, “God seems so far away, so remote. And Jesus lived so long ago.” That’s not the way Jesus saw it, and it is not the way he taught it. In his description of the Last Judgment, Jesus says that he will say to us that we gave him something to eat or drink or wear, that we welcomed him as a stranger or visited him when he was sick or in prison, and we will say, “Jesus, when did we ever see you like that?” He will respond: “If you did for one of my least sisters or brothers, you did it for me.”
Jesus means us to take him literally. Tell a racist joke, and you tell it about Jesus. Sell drugs and you sell them to Jesus. Cheat or lie or gossip and you do it to the Nazarene. Truly, Jesus is not distant after his ascension; actually, often enough he is too close for comfort!
Our faith then is in Jesus Christ, who has conquered sin and death, and lives forever at the Father’s right hand and in us, the assembly of those who believe in him. That is why St. Paul tells us that we must not grieve “like those who have no hope.” Grief is natural at the death of our loved ones, but, as a people of faith, we hope in a loving Savior who shares his life with us forever.
In ancient Rome there was an inscription on a tomb that expressed the hopelessness of a life lived without faith: “I was not. I became. I am not. I care not.” Contrast that sentiment with the story of John Hottell III, who is buried in the military cemetery at West Point. He graduated from the United States Military Academy with the class of 1964. He was a Rhodes scholar, and received the Silver Star twice. He was killed in Vietnam in 1970. The year before he died, he wrote his own obituary and sent it to his wife, to be opened only if he died in the war. This is what he wrote: “I deny that I died for anything—not my country, not my Army, not my fellow men. I lived for those things, and the manner in which I chose to do it involved the very real chance that I could die . . . . My love for West Point and for the Army was great enough for me to accept this possibility as part of a price which must be paid for things of great value.”
Jesus Christ, who died on Calvary that we might conquer sin and death with him, certainly understands John Hottell’s words very well. We keep faith with those who have died and been raised if we live for things of great value and do not forget their sacrifice and their example.
By Most Rev. George H. Niederauer
May 25, 2009
