Editorial - Known and trusted friends
02.07.2010
I was asked by a school friend whom I hadn’t seen for years to officiate at his funeral when he died because he wanted to be buried by someone who knew him. He said he had been to funerals where the minister/priest had not known the deceased and it jarred on him.
I know what he means because I have been in that role many times, struggling to say something meaningful about a person who was a stranger to me. But one of our Columban priests in Chile, Fr Chris Saenz gave me a clue to my friend’s desire for me to be there at his funeral.
In an article, he wrote that the Mapuche Indians, the indigenous people with whom he worked in southern Chile, wanted the priest to bury them but the funeral rite was not the important issue; the important issue was that the family member would be buried by a known and trusted friend.
One of the benefits of age is that bonds of friendship can deepen by virtue of the years or friendships of previous times can be remembered, re-invoked and renewed. It is wonderful to meet someone after years and pick up where your last conversation ended.
The scriptures are clear that God is first and foremost a God of relationships. Dare I say a known and trusted friend?
Fr Gary Walker
TFE@columban.org.au
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