Reflections for the Funeral Mass for Sister Pierre Marie Moore, O.S.B.
Saturday, June 25, 2011

Wisdom 9: 1-3, 9-11
Revelations21: 1-5a, 6b –7
John 14:  1-3, 18-21

The texts and the music and the responses for today were all chosen by Sister Pierre Marie herself at the time of Sister Roberta’s death.  In fact, they are what we used to celebrate Roberta’s life.  And how fitting is that for someone who was always a faithful sister to her siblings!

Another fitting thing today is that we celebrate this funeral Mass on the eve of the great feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.  For a woman who had a very special devotion to the Eucharist, what day could be more apt?

Sister Pierre Marie made the planning of this liturgy rather simple and at the same time she gave us rich food for thought.

The readings we just heard speak of hope, of trust in God, and of love.

The gospel, part of John’s long last Supper discourse, is a message of comfort as John recalled the anxiety among Jesus’ friends in those last days as they became more and  more aware that Jesus’ life was not going to end the way they had imagined it would.  He speaks to them:

Do not let your hearts be troubled.

I will not leave you orphans.

Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

The message is one of encouragement to love genuinely.  If we do so, we will be loved and we will know the fullness of revelation.

The first reading with its magnificent feminine image of Wisdom, who has been there from the beginning, leads us to probe the amazing depths of the God we are called to know!

….send Wisdom to be with me
And work with me.
Wisdom knows and understands all things
And will guide and protect me in all that I do.

…and that beautiful passage read as our second reading from the book of Revelation expresses the amazing transformation of all reality in God:

A new heaven….
A new earth…….
A new Jerusalem…….
Behold I make all things new……

And the crux of these all is in the phrase:

Behold God’s dwelling is with the human race!

Walking with Merc through these weeks and days leading up to Sister Pierre Marie’s death, I know that these words are more than words for in the process of death into Life, the process we witnessed was one of utter trust in the reality of God.

These readings are a fitting backdrop for the woman whose life in God we celebrate today:

• A woman who prayed in community and lived each day, even in her last years and in her last days when she was not able to see or hear very well,

• A woman who loved to be with her three sisters and who waited to die until Merc was with her,
• A woman who was appreciated by her students

• Just recently she received a letter from one of her grammar school students at St. Michael’s in Canon City.  He had just discovered that the mother of one of his classmate’s had Sister’s address.  He said that Sister Pierre Marie was a very special lady to him and that he and his classmates remember her fondly.  Others remember the students here at the Academy who were close to her.  Some in community attribute their coming to community to her influence on them in high school,
• A woman who knew that she wanted to die before her younger sister did,

• A woman who longed to die,
• Sister Pierre Marie was a woman who knew when she was ready to die,

•  My experience this past week proves this…..when I asked several times if I could arrange for her to be anointed and she responded at least 3 times “No not yet” or “No not quite yet” and once she knew that the time had come, it was not even 48 hours later that she died and very peacefully at that! 

One phrase in the second reading stands out for me:

I will give a gift from the spring of life-giving water.

Now we know that reference foreshadows the waters of baptism that give us new life in God…but I cannot help but reflect on the magical touch Sister Pierre Marie had with plants as I hear these words. 

The plants on her window sill seemed to have been a bit neglected in the last week or so. There was a small Christmas cactus that looked very thirsty to me. And on the morning of her death, I looked over and saw a small healthy blossom of bright pink.  That life-giving water of her touch worked amazingly.  It was a sign to me of the life she now enjoyed as she moved from death into Life.

The readings today give us the imagery and the assurances of life after death which, as Christians, we hold dearly.

They give us food for thought that will nourish us and encourage us to relish the wonder of the God whose dwelling is with the human race.

So, on this eve of the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, we celebrate our own reality as that Body and Blood in our world today and we hear the challenges therein –

To love genuinely throughout our lives and into our death, that is the way to the fullness of God!