Funeral of John Michael O’Shea - Homily of Fr Morty O’Shea, SOLT.

every time that we go to a funeral it is an opportunity to have what I would call a reality check because within a few years or within a few tens of Years it'll be our funeral that will come around and that is a certainty none of us here are going to be alive in 110 years time and the certainty of mortality should prompt us to maybe look at what the big picture might be what am I about me myself where have I come from where am I going and how do I get there now back when John was in school there was a wonderful catechism that was used in schools called the Baltimore catechism and it really answered those big picture questions in the first two questions that it asked uh my own grandfather was able to Rattle all of this off um in his dreams the first question of the old catechism was who made me and the answer was God made me so we're not some sort of a freak accident in a big meaningless Universe we were created in Love by God just as all of us here are the the fruit of our parents love so each and every person who has ever been conceived and who has ever lived in this world is the fruit of the love of the ultimate family which is the Blessed Trinity if we get this aspect of the big picture right that we were made in Love by God we will be off to a great start if we get this wrong we will be off to a poor start the second question of the wonderful Baltimore catechism asked the question why did God make me and the answer to that was God made me to know him to love him and serve him in this life and be happy with him forever in the next so the really big Revelation about all of this is that our last end is in God and this was beautifully um put before us in the gospel that we just heard it's from the account of the Last Supper by St John and Jesus told us that he would go before us that was on Good Friday and Easter Sunday to prepare a place for each and every one of us in the Father's House John Paul summed that up beautifully again in his last words I will go to my father's house I have come from God I'm on a journey and again I return to the God who made me for himself so the way that we reach this last end with God is to know God love God and serve God now we could ask ourselves what is the single most important thing that we do in our life to be able to know love and serve God and uh take up our last end with God in eternal life that's a very easy uh answer to come up with and the answer is prayer prayer creates friendship with God like the conversations that we all have in our lives builds friendship and communion with family friends and the whole of the community here before the altar hopefully you'll get a chance to look at it is a beautiful picture which represents what prayer is it is God's outstretched hand actually Jesus's outstretched hand we can see that there is uh a wound in the Palm that reminds us of the crucifixion and prayer is that way in which we engage in friendship with God padrio is probably one of the greatest Mystics and miracle workers of the last 2,000 years of our history and he said that prayer is the oxygen of the Soul we all know that with regard to our bodies if if we don't have oxygen we die and if we have oxygen we're alive and prayer is that vital to our spiritual life and our relationship with God now John Michael was very lucky uh because he belonged to an age where the practice of prayer was very much a natural part of life when I was young we used to um mil the cows come in kneel down on the kitchen floor take the rosary beads off the corner of the Sacred Heart picture and we would all uh kneel on the kitchen floor and say the rosary um my sister Meen was down with John Michael in the nursing home on Tuesday evening he was Simeon conscious but she was holding his hand and the TV was on and the Angelus BT came at 6:00 and maren asked John would you like to say the Angelus now he wasn't able to respond verbally but he squeezed Marin's hand as his saying yes I would like to say the Angelus Marin let the Angelus and John wasn't able to speak but his lips were moving showing that he wanted to be a part of the prayer um and that would have represented John's life um being schooled in this beautiful practice of prayer now um it's it's it's very possible that the last prayer that John said in his life was that Angelus which includes of course three invocations uh three sayings of the heal Mary each time that we say the heal Mary we ask our mother Mary to pray for us now and at the hour of our death they weren't the only three heal mares that John would have said he would have said thousands and thousands uh tens of thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands uh during his life and if we ask a mother as good as our lady to be with us now and at the hour of our death we have every expectation that she will honor that request and that's a great consolation to us that as we leave this world and we enter into the final judgment that we will have married there with us all of the way to accompany us on that Journey now I've been a priest for 27 years I celebrated my 27th anniversary yesterday thanks be to God and I really come to believe over that 27 years and even more than that that if people can be disciplined enough to have their prayers every morning and every evening that the other key aspects of the Christian Life will naturally follow namely that we will go to mass every Sunday and holy day uh like John did and live by the ten commandments so another question to think about is who who would have introduced John Michael to this uh practice of prayer so that it became a natural part of his life now a large part of that answer again is easy to come up with h it would have been his mother Hannah in the Turner household we were just the next door neighbors old Hannah as we called her to distinguish her from Young Hannah was someone who had a legendary reputation for being a holy person she was completely devoted to prayer she was devoted to the foreign missions she read the Bible from cover to cover which I I must admit haven't done I've read lots of it but I haven't read it all from cover to cover and the other thing that really impressed me about old Hannah was that every first Friday she would get up early get on her bicycle and hail r or Sunshine she would cycle down to town for mass and for her first Friday uh Holy Communion which was a very much loved Sacred Heart devotion perhaps in a uh Past Times and in those days um you had to fast from Midnight in order to be able to receive Holy [Music] Communion so prayer and being formed as Christians doesn't happen by accident it happens primarily in families so the final thing I'd like to talk about today is when I heard that John Michael had passed away I found myself reflecting on the many years over which I knew him and the kind of person that he was and I just like to share with you all especially his immediate family these three points firstly John was a good in fact he was a very good neighbor secondly he was honest and hardworking and thirdly he had a very admirable peaceful nature about him I never saw him once getting flustered and very much like my own de grandfather Morty uh who would have been his uncle and that was very much borne out as well too in the testimony of Margaret she was saying that in spite of missing uh his wife Hannah he kept the bright side out when his health declined he accepted it all and never once complained and I believe that if we can see the big picture for what it is that we have come from God and we're on a journey back to God then it'll be so much easier to be at peace with ourselves and at peace with those we live with and the rest of the world so to sum up I would like to offer this Prayer of St John Henry Newman as our hopes today for John Michael and indeed our own hope for the outcome of our own lives may the Lord support us all the day long till the shades lengthen and evening comes and The Busy World is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done then in his Mercy may he give us a safe lodging and holy rest and Peace at Last amen