No Need to be Afraid
Nineteenth Sunday of the Year. Fr David Rocks finds hope in the face of mortality.
W.H. Auden’s most quoted poetry includes among it the short poem often entitled Funeral Blues. I’ve lost count of the number of funeral services during which it has been read. Thoughtfully crafted, the poet describes the funeral ritual about to take place before describing in stark tones the experience of grief being endured.
For me, this poem often didn’t sit well in the context of a liturgy for Christian burial or cremation. Faced with the grief that is inevitable on the death of those we love, should not our funeral liturgy emphasise and celebrate our Christian hope? There has been much reflection on hope as we have moved through this Jubilee Year 2025, and so I was moved to reflect on Auden’s poem once again, particularly in the context of the scripture proclaimed this Sunday.
Auden’s first two stanzas lay out succinctly the rubrics: ‘Stop all the clocks’, ‘Silence the pianos’, ‘let the mourners come’. Everything is meticulously placed to allow for this ritual. But when the poet reflects on his experience of what is being expressed in this funeral liturgy, hope seems to vanish: ‘I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.’ ‘For nothing now can ever come to any good.’ While it would seem that hope is absent, might this honest expression of human experience, framed by ritual, be a space in which hope can emerge?
The scriptures that are proclaimed today all speak of ritual. In Wisdom, it is recalled that the Fathers had ‘sure knowledge’, faith and courage, as they awaited the salvation of the just and offered sacrifice. Hebrews recalls this inheritance also, telling us that ‘Faith is the realisation of what is hoped for, and evidence of things not seen.’ Reflecting on the experience of Abraham, Hebrews tells us that ‘He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead.’
The parables used by Jesus describe the rubrics for banqueting, preparing his disciples for the eternal banquet that follows from his supreme sacrifice on the Cross. ‘Stop all the clocks’? They stopped on Good Friday when Jesus bore all our infirmity on his body on the tree – mine and yours. In rubric and ritual, we ‘do this in memory’. He comes to us in every moment but we waste time fretting about so many things – is it because we are afraid to hope in case we are disappointed?
Sorrow, grief, worry? Not necessary but perhaps inevitable. Jesus bears these things on the cross for us. Let’s try to deepen our understanding of his love for us – love that lasts for ever.
Readings: Wisdom 18:6-9 | Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19 | Luke 12:32-48
