KINDERGARTEN LESSON

     To be honest, I'm not looking forward to writing this post. In the past ten days or so I've been going to funerals and interments and memorial masses, and reading emails about people dying. These were all people whom I considered friends, some of them close friends, all of them age-mates and a couple of classmates from grammar school or high school. This number went way beyond the superstition that deaths come in threes. Maybe sevens? 

These days have been filled with bereaved spouses, weeping grandchildren, sad relatives, somber friends and bagpipers.  After I return from a funeral mass on Thursday my guardian angel guides me past the kindergarten classroom. I peek in and see that they're beginning a new activity. The teacher sees me and motions me to step in (as I do once or twice a week). 

"Good afternoon Father Albert. God bless you!"  

"Good afternoon, children! It's so good to see you!" I have to imagine their smiles, since all of us are wearing our masks.

On the SmartBoard is written "I want to go to ..." and each child has a sheet of wide-lined paper with those same words copied more or less legibly on the top line. 

The teacher asks, "Who would like to start? If you could go any place in the world, where would you go?" I immediately think of so many places I would love to go. I settle on New Zealand.

Hands go up in different corners of the socially distanced room. 

"Natasha? Where do you want to go?"

"The park."

"Okay! Very good! Let me write that up here on the board. Who's next? Marvin? 

"I want to go to my brother's house."

"Good! Remember, now, anywhere in the world. Kayla?"

I'm waiting for some choices that are a little more exotic. 

"Shop Rite." 

Then it dawns on me that the experiential world of a kindergartner from a poorer neighborhood starts out pretty narrow. The park, my brother's house, the supermarket. As I stand there with my visions of New Zealand and the rusty rocky surface of Mars, I start to see a connection between the narrow view of the world of many of these little kids and the funerals I've been attending: You might call it tunnel vision. 

What if you believe that what you see and experience in this present world is all that you get? What if there's nothing more after you die? This is tunnel vision, in which you miss the really important stuff, the whole meaning of your existence. And all you can see is the Shop Rite. 

All of the grieving spouses of the people whose deaths I've heard about in the past couple of weeks have something in common: They all believe in the resurrection. Even in the midst of the agony of grieving, there is that unspoken underlying faith that they will be reunited with their loved one someday, and that he or she is in fact present to us even now in a new and different way. 

The church's prayers for the ceremonies at wakes, funerals and burials express this faith beautifully, even if the mourners don't have the words themselves at the time. I'm thankful every time I hear these prayers, especially if I'm the one praying them aloud for the assembly.

The ceremony starts with the greeting of the body at the door of the church at the beginning of the funeral, when the celebrant sprinkles the casket with holy water and says: 

With this water we call to mind N’s baptism. As Christ went through the deep waters of death for us, so may he bring N to the fullness of resurrection and life with all the redeemed.

Then the ceremonies end when the funeral procession arrives at the cemetery and the minister prays: Our sister N. has gone to her rest in the peace of Christ. May the Lord now welcome her to the table of God’s children in heaven. With faith and hope in eternal life, let us assist her with our prayers. Let us pray to the Lord also for ourselves. May we who mourn be reunited one day with N.; together may we meet Christ Jesus when he who is our life appears in glory.

From beginning to end, then, the Catholic funeral rites encourage and console us with the infinitely wide vision of the resurrection that we will all one day share with the risen Lord. We need to rely on that hope, and not let our grief narrow our vision to this world and to our overwhelming grief and pain. 

"I lift up my eyes to the mountains" (Psalm 121)  -- way, way beyond the park or the Shop Rite.