Thirteenth of Year C
June 2007
A priest friend of mine, who is confined to a wheelchair, wrote a short article recently about an experience he had whilst waiting in the church for the funeral of a friend of his to commence. I read you some extracts.
'I was early and I was alone at the altar, sitting in my wheelchair dressed in my alb and a beautiful stole. As often happens, I was alone because I couldn't join the priests in their procession to the altar because of the number of steps leading up to it. I had to be there early. But I was used to that and was just happy that I was well enough to be there. There was practically nobody in the church at that point, so I had plenty of time to muse about the whole situation. It was not long before I had a vision. The people were beginning to fill up the church. Watching them, I suddenly saw crowns of Angels and Saints and of the dead coming in the doors and through the walls, taking their places alongside the rest of us until the church was full of the living and the dead. And then I realised that this was an assembly of the whole court of Heaven, all God's people, living and dead.'
'Later I would feel like dancing to some of the music that was played in honour of John. It was a great feeling and a living celebration where Almighty God with his saints and angels had come to honour John, whose remains lay there in a wooden coffin while his spirit was with them.'
'Mass and prayer are massive events, and every church is God's visible home on earth. We have only to realise, and not merely believe, that when we pray we pass into another form of existence, where we meet God face to face while apparently pinned down to the actual place we are in, awaiting death. We meet God today, and after we die. One meeting is as real as the other, only different. '
He goes on to say that this experience brought home to him the mystery of priesthood and I quote again.
'What am I? I don't just have a vision, which pierces right through to the heart of reality. I make it happen. I bring bread and wine to an altar and turn them into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I call a vast assembly of the living and the dead and it happens. How does one describe such a person?'
Just a reminder that our faith is not built on such experiences be they real or imagined. If we do experience them it is a gift from God helping us to grow in humility.