The other day I was driving down Savannah Street in Mobile. Wonderful memories came back to me. When I was a small child, my uncle lived in on Savannah Street. He worked for the United Fruit Company when it had a substantial presence in Mobile which served as the port through which loads of Central American bananas arrived.
I recall the excitement of taking the train from New Orleans to Mobile to visit my uncle. Many people travelled by train in those pre-interstate highway days of the early 1950s. The train ride was quite the adventure for a little kid. Mobile was always an exciting place for me to visit. I loved my uncle very much and he loved Mobile and his Irish heritage. He enjoyed belonging to the Mobile chapter of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and living in the Azalea City. I think I developed my long-standing love of Mobile and Alabama in large part because of my uncle.
My family has lived in the northern Gulf Coast area since the 1700s. I was born in New Orleans where most of my family still lives. As a child my father lived in Bay St. Louis and attended St. Stanislaus. Because of family ties, my mother’s parents were married in 1910 at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Biloxi which now serves as the cathedral for the Diocese of Biloxi. I have been blessed to serve as a priest and a bishop in the three states where my family has lived for generations. My family loves to share family stories and these stories come alive as I drive past sites where family events have taken place. I can visualize my ancestors in those locations. They remain real people to me.
Getting back to my drive down Savannah Street, except for one sister, all the people who were a part of those wonderful memories of train rides to Mobile and visiting my uncle have gone to the Lord. There is a twinge of sorrow as I remember them. Our heart never fully heals from the loss of a loved one. We handle the loss better with time and with God’s help, but the place they held in our lives cannot be filled by anyone else. There remains a hole in our heart, despite all the love we continue to encounter and share, as we go on living the life God has blessed us with.
At the same time, however, my loved ones remain real to me because they are real. They continue to exist in a way in which I cannot begin to imagine. We believe, as it is written in the Book of Genesis, that we are created in the image and likeness of God. God, who is eternal, has created us to be eternal. There is not a moment from now into all of eternity that we will cease to exist. All the memories of family and friends who have gone before me are treasured by me because these great memories are of people who continue to live and with whom I pray to be reunited with one day. As one special person once told me just before death: “I am not leaving you, I’m just taking an earlier bus.”
Our belief in eternal life is central to our Christian faith. On the cross Jesus has won for us the gift of eternal life. His resurrection has proven that not even death is more powerful than the love of God. Every Sunday in the Creed we profess our faith in the “resurrection of the body.” The tomb of Jesus is empty and one day ours will be as well. Our challenge is to keep in mind the fact of our own death and that we will one day stand before God. If we do, it changes how we live. It teaches us the wisdom of God. As the psalmist wrote: “Teach us to realize the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom (Ps 90:12).
Although family and friends may surround the bed of a dying loved one and bring comfort, the truth is that death is a journey which each one of us must make alone. Loved ones cannot go with the person who is dying. But I do believe that there are those on the other side of death who will greet us. We will not be alone at that moment of death.
I have entrusted my deceased to the merciful embrace of God. I pray that, when I am entrusted to the mercy of God, my loved ones will greet me as I move into eternal life on a journey that will be even greater than the train ride from New Orleans to Mobile.