Homily given for the Requiem Mass for Deceased Clergy at Westminster Cathedral on 19 November 2024
This evening we pray for the eight priests and two deacons of this Diocese who have died in the last twelve months. As we do so we hear the words of the Gospel: 'Come, you whom my Father has blessed, take for your heritage the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world' (Matthew 25:34).
Yes, since the beginning of time, their names have been written in heaven, or, more intimately, written on the heart of Jesus (Dilexit Nos, paragraph 115). In the wonder of God's unfailing love, these ten servants of the Lord who were blessed, not least by the grace of Holy Orders, have now arrived home.
This, of course, is the great hope which we entertain in our inmost being. Day by day we strive to recognise that not only is the name of each of us written on the heart of Jesus, but that his name is deeply inscribed on our hearts, too. Thus we live by the hope that in the Father's good time, we too will be drawn, at last, to our home with him.
Hope of this final fulfilment is what we are called to renew, as Pilgrims of Hope, during this coming Holy Year, guided through all the uncertainties of life by that sure and certain hope of heaven.
It is sure and certain, as St Paul reminds us, because Christ has conquered sin and death. We who have died with him in baptism ‘shall imitate him in his resurrection' (Romans 6:8).
And St Paul presents another truth too, in these words: 'As Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glory, we too might live a new life' (Romans 6:4). Here he implies that the new life we are to live starts here and now. Today, and every day, we are to live the hope that we have received. We are to be its signs, its workers, its protagonists.
Living in the hope of heaven opens for us the joy of putting that vision into practice in so many ways. And, to return to the Gospel, Jesus makes clear the measure of that practice: the service of our brothers and sisters, especially the least of them. It is, above all else, service freely given, in love of the Lord to those he holds to be his brothers and sisters. This service is not sophisticated. It is not self-conscious and certainly not self-promoting. It is the work of hope, a work to be enhanced and celebrated in this Holy Year.
I have been pondering on the lives of those for whom, today, we pray. In their lives there is testimony in plenty of this service and hope which we seek to render and make real.
I think, first, of the two deacons, Anthony Clark and Stephen Pickard. The diaconate is indeed focused on service, both for those in need and in our liturgy, too. I recall Stephen's loving kindness to so many and Anthony's dedication to education as well as parish ministry.
Then, I think of Fr Gullan-Steel and the years he spent, in Broadfields, looking after his widowed and ailing mother. I remember saying to him: 'Stuart, this is the best sermon you will ever preach.' And the care he gave was a sign of hope to many and led to him being held in such affection by his parishioners.
I think of Fr Michael Daley and the skills as a nurse he brought to his ministry, to Caritas St Joseph's, to the sick and retired priests, to the sick members of his own family. I recall his care of seminarians, faithful and truthful, full of practical guidance and honesty, and his care for the liturgy that its beauty might proclaim the loveliness of God.
And who can fail to remember and reflect, in this perspective, on the life of Fr Frankie Wahle, especially his 20 years of active 'retirement'? He personified the virtue of hope in adversity, from his childhood to his dying days, reaching out to those ‘orphaned' by their experience of our Church, those arriving here with nothing but a desperate hope of help. 'If someone is drowning', he wrote, 'you don’t give them advice.' I salute him for the compassion he showed on behalf of us all, with a never-failing joy. A protagonist of hope indeed!
Fr David Williamson, I remember from Liverpool and his time with the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, from 1975-1982. His focus on Eucharistic adoration seems to me to have stayed constant. He combined it with a love of pilgrimages, early ones taking him from London to Glastonbury and from York to Whitby and later on embracing the HCPT Lourdes pilgrimage too. What better witness to hope could there be than the experience of pilgrimage, with a focus on the presence of the Lord, our companion and our destiny?
In most of these priests for whom we pray, hospital ministry has featured strongly. There, we know, the presence of a priest is indeed a heralding of hope. This is certainly true of Fr Cedric Stanley, who opened his home to those carrying the anxieties and fears of their sick family members. In offering that hospitality to those far and near, he gave a brief foreshadowing of our heavenly home. And how he was loved for his hospitality!
Fr Terry McGuckin's work of hope was of a different order. His vocational uncertainties were always less important than his call to bring together the faith of the heart and the reasoning of the intellect. And these, of course, are the two wings on which the human spirit soars. So whether it was in his original research, or working with candidates for confirmation, he longed to draw us into the conviction that the promises of faith are convincing and its hope robust.
But I am running out of time and must include Fr John Warnaby. In him, in a special way, we have seen the breadth of God's love and the free flow of His Holy Spirit. At John's funeral Mass there were bankers, academics, actors, cricketers, associates from Oxford, from the Royal Shakespeare Company and many other walks of life, too. The Spirit of God flows where it wills and plants the seeds of eternal hope in so many unexpected places. Our ministry, just like that of Fr John, can be nothing more than helping that seed to grow or to survive a period of drought, because of our gentle touch.
And now I must add Fr James Mallon. A mischievous Scot, with a big heart and ready riposte, never short of generosity even if it needed unpacking sometimes. He is now really under new management!
Enough! The Holy Year gives us a powerful invitation to explore and express the great virtue of hope. Our prayer today reawakens in us, through these lives, the richness of the witness to that hope which we give and can renew.
The words from the Letter to the Hebrews declare what is in my heart just now for they express the hope of our faith and the hope of this evening's prayer. To paraphrase:
'What they, we pray, have come to, and what we strive forward to reach, is the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the festival of the whole Church in which everyone is at last first-born in the Son and has reached their true destiny, as a citizen of heaven' (Hebrews 12:23).
May our priests and deacons rest in peace and rise into that glory.
Amen.