Homily at the
Requiem Mass for Kevin O'Brien
by Martin Moors
Dear Jo and Caitlin,
dear Parents of Kevin, brothers and sisters in Christ, friends of Kevin,
May I invite you all, in common faith and love, to meditate for a while – though in need of words – on Kevin, on his life and death, in loving memory of him, mourning over him. Let us open our hearts to Jesus and His words and let Him be our consolation, for now and for all days that come.
I met Kevin several times, many years ago, on the cobblestones of the Higher Institute of Philosophy where he was promoted to the degree of Doctor in Philosophy. It was – as far as I remember – the late professor Van de Wiele, who was both his and my Ph.D. promoter, who brought us together at that beautiful place. Today, so many years later, we are suddenly brought together again. But now, being entangled in the poverty of human words, I let Jesus Sirach, the wise man from the Book of Wisdom, utter his words over Kevin’s life, over his life of wisdom and love, over his life as a father, husband, and friend. To these words of praise and consolation we will listen in this moment of grief and sorrow.
Kevin was a philosopher, searching to live a life of truth, a life of goodness– a beautiful life too– with plenty of divine meanings that essentially belong to the God of his faith. “Wisdom – we heard this in the first reading – will take firm hold of the man who fears the Lord and who lives an upright life. She will take firm hold of him so that he never wavers, restrain him so that he is never disgraced.” What I find so magnificently applicable to Kevin – who was ‘never disgraced’ – is this: “his wisdom will raise him to high repute among his neighbours, it will move him to speak before the assembled people, filling him with the spirit of wisdom and discernment, clothing him in a magnificent array.” Oh yes, his philosophical mind did make him search for the truth. It did indeed inspire him to live a life in the ways of goodness, which is called love. His philosophical mind gave him the delicate power of judgment and of taste. What Kevin searched for in his philosophy – human, all too human – he gratefully cherished as a treasure in his Christian faith in which he was baptised.
Truth, goodness and joy: these heavenly things which he enjoyed in communion with so many friends in his life here on earth, became – too suddenly – his heritage forever when he passed away from here.
What words can comfort us in this hour of grief? What light can enlighten our hearts full of sorrow? Is there Anybody who listens to our mourning and who sees the tears in our eyes? What can we, fragile human beings, depressed as we are, do? What can we do faced with death and fate? No, this is not a moment for doing something. Rather, let faith do something with us! Let Kevin’s faith speak the simple words which can comfort us at this moment. Let his faith shine in our hearts. Let him communicate to us that mystery that made his life a life of truth and goodness, a life pleasing to God.
What Jesus told us in the gospel … isn’t it not exactly that which was formed in the depth of his existence, of Kevin’s personality, namely his commitment to be a branch on the Jesus Vine? Our connectedness with the suffering Jesus in our present moment of suffering, our communion with the risen Christ in this moment of hope. As branches on the Jesus Vine, we need to make common prayer and song, to hear and reflect on the Scriptures, to intercede for all the needs of the whole world – even reaching beyond the door of death – and then to come to his holy table in thanks for the presence that nourishes our questioning and perplexed spirits as food and drink. Vine and branches: Jesus’ parables are not religious information, but open-ended clues that seduce us into looking into the life deep within our life.
Abiding in Jesus means that the presence of awareness, a connectedness of thought and communication with Jesus, flows beneath the surface of our lives, to energize our activities at sunshine as well as to enlighten our hearts when these are full of darkness, to wipe our tears away. The risen Christ is not up in the clouds or “out there”, someone at a distance to whom we ‘say prayers’. No! The risen Christ is the life-giving, the life-restoring Spirit, diffused within, pulsing through our lives, and binding all humanity – the living and the dead – into that vine planted and tended by God.
From where did Kevin take his meanings, values and decisions? From where did he take his strength? From his isolated minimal self? Or was his existence based on the communal life of the Vine and its branches?
Jesus says to us: “When you become my disciples, you must bear fruit. Barren branches will be pruned away!” These words are about the pain and the sacrifice of self, demanded by growing and abiding in the Jesus Vine. Even the fruitful branches must be pruned to increase their yield. These words are Jesus’ comment on his own life and sacrifice, spoken on the very night he was divested of friends, accomplishments and dreams. Kevin’s faith has the strength to bring us over from our Good Friday of tears and weeping, to the daybreak of Easter Sunday. Kevin’s belief in Jesus’ Parable of the Vine is about this assembly to which he still belongs among his family, friends and associates. Our gathering in this Eucharist is our acting out together of the inner, invisible reality by which we are bound with one another. This Eucharist in Jesus’ memory, which assumes all our memory of Kevin, is about offering what we are and what we have, so that we can be taken, broken open, poured out and consumed. In that way, the Jesus Vine that we are part of, is – through the power of His death and resurrection – trimmed and cleaned of our selfishness so that we may be able to resurrect with Him.
Dear Jo and Caitlin, dear parents of Kevin, brothers and sisters, the Eucharist is about offering all that we have and are. Kevin’s life: we cannot but offer it to the God of his faith, to His mercy and love. Together with Kevin himself we become one with Jesus Himself, never diminished, but changed, transfigured without limit.
“Wisdom has enriched him with a name that shall never be forgotten.”
Martin Moors
Professor of Philosophy
Higher Institute of Philosophy
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven