Deacon Cornell’s Homily

We have been here before.
And we will be here again, although some of us will be sitting in different places.

Those two statements contain a wonderful testimony to this family as well as to Dom. As true as it is that everyone here has been shaped in some (good) way by Dom, Dom was shaped in some (good) way by everyone here.

Mother Teresa often said of herself, “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.” I cannot think of a better way to describe Dom. He was faithful. Dom never married so he never pledged to be faithful to any one person; this left him free to choose to be faithful to many. He was faithful to his country, fighting for our freedom at a very young age. He was faithful to his teaching. In this very church, despite aching legs and a relentless bladder, he was faithful to the choir. And in these many ways, he was faithful to his call to be a part of the Body of Christ, making God's love real here and now.

The beatitudes from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel are some of the most familiar Gospel passages. Like so many scripture passages we can look at them from different angles and see different meaning and importance. Today we are gathered for a number of different reasons. On the one hand we gather this morning to celebrate Dom's life, to see in that life the fulfillment of his baptismal promises, and to give thanks to God for the time that he was with his family and friends. For this we look back in time. But we are also here to commend Dom's soul to God for eternal life, and to console one another as we look forward to life here this side of death. For this we look forward.

Most of us would understand the blessing part of the beatitudes as looking back. Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the peacemakers. We think of these statements as Jesus telling those who have lived their life in a way that developed poverty of spirit, or meekness, or mercy, or who have experienced a lack of righteousness that because of where they come from, they are blessed. Of course even thinking about the beatitudes this way is a challenge to our normal way of thinking about what it means to be blessed. Normally when we hear someone say they are blessed it means that life is treating them pretty well: they are well fed and well clothed and well housed and they are in good health. In fact the Greek word that the author of Matthew’s gospel uses is makaroi, which in the vernacular of ancient Greek meant the ability of the rich to avoid the normal cares and worries of life. A macarism is taking pleasure at someone’s good fortune. So the irony of Jesus language is that he is turning the normal way of looking at things upside down. Luke’s version of the beatitudes is even starker: Blessed are the poor. How are the poor blessed? The in-breaking of the Kingdom of God turns our idea of how things are on its ear. The poor are blessed; the leaders serve; the king offers himself as sacrifice; to win everything, we must lose our selves. These are not just ideals that Jesus does not expect the normal person to achieve. They are very accurate descriptions of Jesus’ approach to life. And they are very accurate descriptions of Dom's life.

Dom lived out his faith in a way that shows that real, ordinary people can live the beatitudes; it is not just for plaster saints nor does it require superhuman effort. We see examples all around us that the life Jesus describes is reality, and that wealth and power and aggression and running away always fail. Always. But we somehow still don’t get it. As G. K. Chesterton said, “It is not that the Christian way of life has been tried and found wanting; it is that the Christian life has been found hard and has been left untried.” In his own small way, Dom tried the Christian life, the way these beatitudes describe it, and he more than succeeded.

We also look forward, as we commend Dom to God's loving mercy. But in celebrating Dom's life and commending him to God's loving mercy we are challenged. It is not enough to gather this morning and nod our heads in remembrance at how wonderful a man Dom was. In everything that he did, whether it was teaching you to play tennis, or to drive, or introducing you to big band music, or making coffee, Dom always invited a response, an action on your part. If we really understand Dom's life, then we realize that we are called to respond to it, to follow his lead and be faithful ourselves. We need to turn our remembrance of Dom into action in our lives. Just as Dom was there for every brother or sister, niece or nephew, grandniece or grandnephew or friend who turned to him, we are called to be there for those in need in our lives.

For those of us who are Catholic, that includes practicing our faith, going to Mass regularly, being active in our communities as singers, or lectors, or extraordinary ministers of communion or teachers, or ushers, using our talents and time to build up our parish communities. We are able to gather here this morning to mourn and to celebrate because faithful people like Dom and Msgr. Mazza and others come here week in and week out to keep this parish alive. When we come forward to receive Communion, as Catholics we are formed more fully into the Body of Christ so that we might bring the kingdom of God to reality here and now. Our faith calls us to action, not just to get to heaven, but to bring heaven here, make God's kingdom come and God's will be done here, as it already is in heaven. Now that Dom is gone, who will do this?

Back in the late 80’s a French Jewish bible scholar by the name of Andre Chouraqui produced a translation of the bible that tried to be as close to the original Aramaic that Jesus actually spoke. Chouraqui claims that the original word the author of Matthew’s gospel translated as makaroi had a meaning much closer to “en marche” in French: get up or walk on in English, than it did “blessed”. Read with this sense, the beatitudes have a very different meaning and very much look forward to where we are going. Walk on you who are poor in spirit and you will have the kingdom of God. Walk on you who hunger and thirst for righteousness and you will be satisfied. Walk on you who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness and you will have the kingdom of heaven. Walk on you who are peacemakers, and you will truly be children of God. Faith is not a state of mind; it is a practiced way of life. Let us honor Dom's faithfulness by living faithfully ourselves. And then with Dom, we will rejoice and be glad for our reward will be great, not just in heaven, but here and now.

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