Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity AD 2023

In America, the term “Celebration of Life” is increasingly used instead of “funeral”. “Funeral” comes from the Latin word funus for death and corpse, so unfortunately, it is understandable why people try to avoid this word: they don’t want to think about death because they fear it and live as if death doesn’t exist. Often, children do a great injustice to their parents, who would like to talk to them about their imminent death, but to whom the children dismissively reply: “Let’s not talk about it – you’re not going to die yet!”

Death has been an integral part of being human since the Fall, and therefore those who try to ignore the knowledge of it are not only foolish, but they are a danger to their own souls. To think about death, even to contemplate it, to be ready for it, is what gives human life its real value: to die a good death, we must first live a good life.

But here is something even more important and undoubtedly more encouraging: in Jesus Christ, death has been defeated. We are no longer the slaves of death, but death, which once ruled over mankind, has been degraded to the status of an errand boy: its job is to say to us at the appointed time of God, our Creator and Father, “Return, ye children of men.”

Thus, properly understood, a funeral should also be a Celebration of Life: a celebration of the life that lies before us, a celebration of the eternal life that Christ has won for us. If we live and die in faith in Christ, then we are like the maid in today’s Gospel whom Jesus raised from the dead. Then we can experience the Lord’s saving and renewing power like the woman who suffered from a serious illness for twelve years and was healed just by touching the hem of the garment of Jesus. And then our Lord says to each of us: “Thy faith hath made thee whole!”