The Here, Not Here Sensation

When you have been a parishioner at one Church for nearly 36 years, you have seen a lot of congregants come and go. Many of the goings have been through death. I have known well, and less well, a great number of people who came to St. Victor, my parish, who have crossed the threshold--to eternity it is my belief, though I know many think that death is merely the end of the road. Often, I have had the honor of being among the servers assisting the priest in the funeral service. Always, it has been humbling and when I think about it, a little surreal.

I was at another funeral today. Jim had been a regular attendee. He generally sat in the same place when he attended Mass, on the right side set of pews, a few rows from the back. He was a tall, solid man. He had been a radio broadcaster in the years before I came to California, even perhaps while I was a new resident, but I had never heard him on the air. He did have a mellifluous baritone voice which greeted "hello". I ran into him at a couple of parish dinners. He was, as always my fellow parishioners seem to be, a fixture, for years. One can imagine that such a person will always be there. Certainly, I have acted as if there is all the time in the world to get to know people when they are there every week, or sometimes every day, for Mass. I often thought it would be nice to know him better.  But I waited too long.

He was well. Then he wasn't. The time between a final illness and death was incredibly short. He had had hip surgery around Easter.

When I saw him, a couple of weeks ago, at a Daily Mass, he was still tall, but now very thin, and drawn. He was with a care taker. And he sat, not in his usual place in the back, but in the front row.
He didn't look well. After Mass, several people went up to talk to him. I decided that I didn't want to intrude. I would not see him again until today, when his casket was wheeled to the front of the sanctuary and I served at his funeral Mass. 

We are here. Then we are not. That was the sensation I had today, as I have had many times before. The bell tolls as the soul is handed from the earth to God. That image sticks in my mind, for it repeats, and in time, mine will be the casket that rolls down the aisle I used to walk. Some friends will think, I know, that this is another of my eccentric preoccupations, and just purely unnecessary, even silly. In fact, every time I attend a funeral, and given my 36 years I have attended many, I am comforted.

I was recently watching an old interview with Carl Gustav Jung, when he was about 84, and a year from his own death. Jung, of course, was a protege of Freud, until they broke over psychoanalytic philosophy. Asked at some point whether he believed in God, he said something like, "I don't just believe. I know." 

I was startled by the affirmation of this so secularly known individual, although I knew he was, at least nominally, a Christian. But that is what I felt today, and I think I have felt at many another funeral, when I watched the incensing of the coffin and the sprinkling of the holy water recalling baptism. He was here. He is not here. But he is somewhere, and God is there.

At least that is how I look at it. It's how a lot of us look at it. I know. A lot of us think that the grave is the end. Well, I kind of go the way of Pascal. If I am wrong, if a lot of us are wrong, we'll never know about it. If we are right in our "knowing" the joy will be explosive. And I promise not to say "I told you so."