Facing up

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 2, 4 June 1985, Page 8

Facing up

You may have been one of those present at the Requiem Mass for Mrs Alma Reid in St. Patrick's Church, Ohakune in the May holidays. On such occasions, the bereaved family is deeply aware of your sympathy and greatly helped by the reverential attitude adopted by you, the congregation. I might add it is a great help also to the minister in his task of conducting the service, if every person present, such as yourself, is there because they are concerned, and this in turn draws on the pastoral task of the celebrating minister. At such a funeral, we might observe how deeply religious we all are at heart. Here we are, gathered again to farewell a loved one, stunned and reduced against by the riddle of death to a sense of our own insufficiency, and we "no longer entertain our own

imperfect thoughts and vain opinions," as Longfellow put it. With the bereaved, we all feel somewhat broken up too. You may not be very 'churched', or practising, but don't tell me you are not very religious, when I see you at funerals where you are so silent and serious and humble. There is not one of you there who is not obviously thinking, pondering and wondering — about your own life, its purpose and destiny. This is religion, or at least part of it. Your faith may not be much to you, but I put it; each of us is deeply religious. As St. Augustine put it long ago: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee." Fr. Bernie Vella Ohakune