Sacred Intersections

Dear Friend,

Prayer of all kinds has filled our Mission church for over two hundred years - lament, plea, thanksgiving, silent adoration. This is the work of a priestly people communing with God, shaping invisible dimensions of a shared habitat of faith, which – let’s be honest – has also included what seems like faith’s opposite: despair, doubt, paralysis. We’re at an intersection of so many conflicting lines. At funerals all this is more real. The threshold between the known and the unknown is right in front of us.  

This week two funerals stand out for me, one for David Mendoza, celebrated last Monday, and the other, still in preparation as I write this, for Lorenzo Capovilla. David was a man “larger than life,” and his death at age 49 was a stunning and tragic loss. Lorenzo, by contrast, could not have been more reserved, and his death too came suddenly - and too soon - at age 76. Their obituaries paint such contrasting portraits, but for those grieving them – especially for the women who with the greatest of care prepared their memorials – the words of W.S. Merwin, which introduce David’s tribute in the Independent, surely apply to both: “Your absence has gone through me / Like thread through a needle / Everything I do is stitched with its color.” 

It so happens that the readings proclaimed this weekend will highlight three significant stitches of sacred history, that is, sacred intersections where the present and the absent, the known and the unknown converge: the night of the Passover; Abraham’s obedient “going out”; the “coming” of the Son of Man. These are features of a sacred journey which is also an architecture visible only to those who trust. Together we move forward “not knowing” to “the city with foundations whose architect and maker is God.”

Gratefully,

Father Dan ofm, Pastor