A few months ago a very close friend, nearly a quarter of a century younger than I, died of cancer after a very long and challenging spiral into death.  I visited her often and noticed that in the last several months she had ascertained that short of a spectacular miracle she was on the short path into eternity.  She experienced what I like to think of as a long good-bye with her family and friends even as she was opening day by day into a joy-filled entry into God’s loving presence, letting go of the things of this world in reality and in desire and looking to what union with God meant according to the promises of her baptism. 

Shortly after her funeral, I participate in the funeral of another friend who died suddenly at his work-place – simply sat down from an overwhelming fatigue and was dead in moments.  Little or no good-bye with family and friends, other than telling his wife that morning that he loved her, as he did every morning as he left their home for work.

Good-bye is a difficult thing to say, but the Irish cousins used to tell me and my family when we went to visit them in “the old country” that unless you said good-bye now you can’t say hello when you return soon.  I think it is important to realize that saying farewell is a way of practicing for that final long farewell, and we intuit that, if we don’t acknowledge it directly.

In today’s readings we first hear Saint Paul’s valedictory to his beloved community of Ephesus, through their leaders that he had gathered together as he departed for Jerusalem on what was to be his last long journey into full union with the Lord he first met on the road to Damascus.  The community loved him deeply and wept as they clung to him with what we would recognize as hugs and kisses, because words fail at such deep moments of transition.  Paul was strengthened by their love as he reminds them of what they must do to remain faithful to Jesus’s call to each of them into companionship.  It is the equivalent of the father telling his children to care for their mother as he did, and to care for each other as they have been taught.  They must remain faithful to who they are, and what they have been asked to do, in difficult as well as easy times.  Even if someone in the family is unfaithful all the others must remember who they are and remain steadfast.

In the Gospel we hear the Johannine version of Jesus’s leave-taking.  A segment of His “priestly prayer” Jesus addresses the Father in the manner he wants all of his disciples to address the Father with great love and confidence.  Jesus also expresses his warning about those who would try to destroy the work of God that He began by praying for each of us that we will be preserved from such serious sin that separates us from our true selves.  The generosity of Jesus in offering this prayer for us, as he is preparing for his very humiliating and painful death demonstrates once again both the depth of His great Love us each of us, but also the seriousness of our task to be faithful to him in the face of great suffering on our part.

I asked Mary, the Mother of our Church how she heard this prayer, and I was granted the consolation of an intense pain and tears as I considered this scene.  How human this loss!  But how divine is the reward!

 Even though we are liturgically past Good Friday, every day is both Good Friday and Easter Sunday on this side of the Eternal Light.  Great joy at being called forward into deeper love means leaving loved ones behind and being left behind by those going to their eternal home.  We are invited to live in both forms of consolation as they together guide us into the ultimate truth of Finding God in all things, including and especially, death and departures.

We pray today for those departing from schools as graduates, from those moving to new homes as brides and grooms, for those leaving home to begin new work, and for those going home to God, may the long Good-bye be a blessing that enables them to remain faithful in their call to unity and service.