Funeral sermon

In one Italian city, after the war, a new luxury district was established. The builders decided that there must be no church. The reason: ringing the death knell and looking at the funeral could upset citizens’ sensitivity. It is a general finding: the “last things” are hardly ever mentioned. Secular and lay culture chose a way to remove the idea of ​​death. She made her taboo. It must not be publicly spoken among decent people. Since this contemporary culture cannot give a positive answer to it, it has committed itself to silence and even to silent conspiracy. He insists that death is removed if the idea of ​​death is removed. We have come so far that even Christians confine themselves to death to have no other defense and answer other than to silence them. But, as Pater Raniero Cantalamessa writes in her book Sister Death: “Death laughs at all ways to tame it.” Death can only be talked about at funerals, and there is a very unpleasant topic.

Today’s Word of God reminds us: He who believes in the Son has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For an unbelieving man, death is an insurmountable wall between this world, life, and that world. For a believer, it’s basically something else. For a believer knows that there are three walls between him and God – nature, sin and death. The wall of nature was collapsed by the Incarnation of Jesus, when human and divine nature joined together in Christ’s person (Christmas). The wall of sin was destroyed on the cross (Easter). Finally, the wall of death was collapsed in the Resurrection.

Death is no longer a wall that shatters everything and tactfully remains silent about it. Death has become a gateway, a passage through which it enters the Promised Land. Because Jesus did not die just for Himself, He did not leave us just an example of heroic death as Socrates. He did something completely different. “One died for all, so all died” (2Cor 5:14) Death turned into victory (cf. 1Cor 15,55), because Christ was triumphantly destroying death by resurrection. Remember that even if death kills and kills natural life, in return it (natural death) kills her supernatural life.

Death is an incentive for us, as believers, to proclaim Christ, and thus our victory over death. Remember that even if death kills and kills life naturally, in retaliation, natural death kills supernatural life – which begins with baptism, continues with regular communion with God in the daily reception of the Eucharist, deepening maturity in faith by the sacrament of affirmation, in the sacrament of repentance, by strengthening the soul and body by the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, by deepening interpersonal love by the sacrament of marriage. Sacraments are a supernatural life that defeats bodily death. To this end, the kind and merciful God invites us daily.

The death of a neighbor is a challenge. It is an opportunity to reconsider its ranking of values ​​so that supernatural life plays a major role in it. The point is that death does not shock us, but that we see it as a transition to another quality of life in eternity. It is our task of believers to turn against the tacit conspiracy of death, to proclaim the joyful message of victory over death. This is our mission in this world, in our ecclesial as well as secular community. Amen.