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Funeral
for Maria Marshall Williams
Church
of the Immaculate Conception
Wisdom 3:1-9,
Ephesians 2:4-10: John 6:51-58
June
21, 2017
The
Eucharist: Its Power and Potential
By
(Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato
Condolences
and Introduction
[If I’m the principle
celebrant] To Buck, Helen, Mary Pitt, and Jenkins, to her 11
grandchildren and her great granddaughter, Isabelle, to her brother, Jenkins
and sister Anne, on behalf of Fr. Joe Barr, Fr. Mike Schleupner, and myself, I
want to offer our heartfelt condolences over the passing of your mother.
I knew her as Lady
Maria, not because she was of noble birth, but she was for me the consummate
lady — always proper, always tastefully attired, always having an air of
gentility.
For the Maria
part of her name, she wasn’t the blessed mother, though she was a blest mother
because of her 4 children, a devoted grandmother, and a great grandmother in
every sense of the term “great.”
I first met “Lady
Maria” as the pastor of The Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Mt. Washington in
September 1989. Always present at daily Mass, that stunning Tudor Gothic church
— a copy of the original church in Northumberland, England — seemed to enhance
her title of “Lady.”
Over my years at The Shrine, Maria began volunteering in
the parish, first along with her dear cousin, Nan Pinkard, also a parishioner, by
redecorating the rectory and then as a faithful money counter.
I was honored to celebrate her wedding to Beau Williams,
whom she always referred to as “my beau.”
Over the almost 30 years, our friendship deepened and we gathered
often with Fr. Mike for dinner. We became known as the 3 Musketeers.
Maria was a woman of great faith and for whom the daily
celebration of the Eucharist was essential. She was clearly shaped by the
Lord’s Body and Blood. The Maria Williams we all knew and loved had become in
many ways the Lord on whom she fed so frequently.
Gospel
The Gospel
that was just proclaimed has a great lesson to teach us, and it is a lesson
that we can better understand from the life Maria lived among us.
Jesus is
clear that in giving his disciples the bread and wine at the Last Supper, that (1)
he is giving them his very own flesh and blood and that (2) this flesh and
blood will be life for the world.
He further
assures them that his flesh is real food and his blood real drink and when
these are eaten and drunk, we are able to abide in him and he in us. Again, from
his own mouth, “Whoever eats and drinks
will live because of me.”
Gold Rings and Bread and Wine
Father Scott
Detisch, a theologian I heard recently, speaks of how Jesus is (1) “in” the
bread and wine and (2) how in our eating and drinking we become one with him.
(1) Fr. Detisch used the analogy of a little mound of pure
gold. This gold (show left hand cupped)
is made into this gold wedding band (show
wedding band on right hand.) Thus the gold has become more than it was, but it
is still gold.
The “more”
I’m referring to is that it is now the reality of the love of husband and wife.
So, the two have elevated the value of the gold (grab and raise left hand with right hand.)
(2) In addition, when the two spouses wear their respective
bands, they live out their life of committed love (move right hand forward.)
In a similar
fashion Jesus (show right hand) takes
bread and wine (show left hand) to be
his body and blood (grab and raise left
hand with right hand) by elevating it in the very same way that the mound
of gold becomes the ring.
(3) Finally, he says that in our eating and drinking, we live
out our participation in this new reality, just as husband and wife live out
their committed love in their wearing of their rings.
Maria’s Daily Eucharist
All that
said, now we can better understand the qualities we experienced and so loved in
Maria: (1) her love of family and friends, (2) her concern for the disadvantaged,
(3) her sense of gracious hospitality, (4) her devotion to her parish and (5) the
making of literally thousands of rosary beads for people who still pray with
them around the world.
Maria, in
her commitment to daily Eucharist, wasn’t simply participating in a ritual. No,
in her “taking, eating, and drinking”
she was fulfilling the promise of Jesus, that “Whoever does so will abide in me and I will abide in them.”
And it is
her (1) love, (2) concern, (3) hospitality, and (4) devotion that we all know
firsthand that are the fulfillment of Jesus’ words regarding this Bread and
Wine he offers us, namely, that his flesh and blood will be life
for others.
Conclusion
What joy it
gives her today to know we are all here for her, but what greater joy, that you
have come to gather around the Eucharist, which was the source of her life.
What we
celebrate today is that Maria fed on the Eucharist, the very bread from heaven.
And that the
one who ate, from Jesus’ own lips, “now
lives forever.”
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