By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
A neighbor died on Christmas Eve.
The very night on which we celebrate the birth of Life itself into this world a human existence found itself in most dire need of it. Such occurs countless times around the globe every day. This time it happened next door.
Some of us were decorating the church in preparation for the Nativity of the Lord when I first heard, and then saw, a sheriff’s deputy vehicle turn the corner and come into town on two wheels. An EMT vehicle followed, also with siren blaring. I followed the sights and sounds to a house two doors down and saw people coming and going. After walking to the location, I encountered a woman coming from the direction of the firehouse nearby, and asked if someone needed a priest. She responded, “He passed away.”
Sacraments were out of the question. And not for the reason that life had perhaps left the body more than an hour before.
In COVID world those who, Catholic or not, might have once entertained the idea of allowing a priest into the home to pray for the dead would not even consider it. They might even question the lucidity of an individual showing up at the door to suggest it.
I wanted to do something for the deceased as a priest. We can all pray, however, and I wouldn’t break any laws by simply walking on a public street and doing so. There aren’t any laws against going for a walk.
I pulled my rosary from my pocket and paced to and fro along the street in front of the house, praying the decades as EMT workers and family members came and went and, finally, a funeral home director with a hearse appeared and parked in the driveway. The two men who exited the vehicle wheeled a gurney into the house. I prayed as the body was brought out for the last journey.
Finally, at the moment the hearse turned into the street to head out of town, I was able to offer something, however small of grace, as a priest for the dead man. I blessed the body as the vehicle passed me, the men inside acknowledging me with somberly uplifted hands.
I shed a tear or two, considering the sorrows and sufferings the man had sustained in this life, as do we all. I certainly exercised Christian hope that his suffering would now end through the mercy of the Lord, whose natal anniversary that very night was the promise that gave birth to such yearning.
In my homilies of the Christmas Masses I shared with my people this sign of a dying world still in need of Eternal Life. I rued the fact that I did not know my deceased neighbor’s name until some inquiry days later revealed it. Surely in this small town it should be easy to come to know also those who do not show themselves in church.
Walls of our own making prevent the contact with the Lord He was born to break down. Those of us responsible for bringing Him sacramentally to a world bound by sin cooperate negatively when we affirm those boundaries by our silence, indifference or “respect for privacy.”
God continues to scandalize in this strange period of history, when many millions now consider it virtuous to stay locked in their homes, refusing any contact by going out to others or receiving others who come to them. Much worse are the consequences for those who refuse to practice their Faith merely for the fear of getting sick.
God scandalizes by His contact with this world by means of which He conquers the sin far worse than a physical virus which can kill only the body.
The darkness of our times is the shroud of deceit veiling minds laboring under the belief that the short existence in this vale of tears carries any weight at all in the balance in comparison with the eternal which lies beyond our senses, tangible as it is only by means of faith.
A great tragedy which afflicts our age is the ignorance of the many who have no idea that in danger of death the Church gives everything to anyone. All that is needed is Catholic faith in the sacraments.
Countless times every day, all over the world, family members, friends, many of those who blessedly accompany the dying to the threshold of the next world, fail to obtain for them the one thing of which they stand in most dire need at that moment: the ministrations of the Lord whose birth and life continues in the Church through the grace of the sacraments.
On Christmas Eve in a small village I was present to a deceased man I never met but whom I must have passed unseen countless times over the span of years on walks and bike rides to the post office and in visits to neighbors. His lifeless windows reflected the many processions, both those Eucharistic and those meant to ward off various evils, paced out with my parishioners. Did he see us pass, I wonder? Did he utter a small prayer of hope? Did he believe in the Lord and God, faith in Whom our witness was meant to inspire?
On the eve of Life’s Incarnation, a death in a small town was a sermon uttered by the God Who created the deceased and me, and every human life from the very beginning of man in the Garden, at His hands and with His breath. That life, and every life was, from the beginning, destined to return to Him who from all eternity intended each life and every life.
A man in my town died on Christmas Eve, just steps from the tabernacle in my small church where the Lord is present. He, whose birth it seems the whole world celebrates, and who really and truly remains with us still, is yet rarely sought even by those at death’s door.
It remains for the Lord to be born through faith in the hearts and minds of millions. He who truly came among us one night thousands of years ago has left a task for those who love Him: obedience to His command to teach all nations, that minds in darkness might truly see by means of the light which His love sheds.
In this new year of the Lord 2021 our mission remains urgent. Each of us is sent by the Lord, as always, that His birth might achieve the end for which the Father sent Him: we save our own souls by means of His love out of which, and for the sake of which, we seek to save others.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
Let’s continue the conversation on Parler, the new free speech social network, where you’ll find me @FatherKevinMCusick
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