BRIDGEPORT—“If we wish to be ready to die, we need to learn how to live as Christians every day,” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano said in his homily following the Gospel of Matthew,(22;1-13) “13 Therefore, stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
In his online Mass from the Catholic Center chapel on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, the bishop said that Christian vigilance in the face of the uncertainty of life is an invitation to live more joyfully, knowing that our final destination as baptized Catholics is in the fullness of God’s love.
He said the awareness that death could come any time should not lead to “morbid preoccupation with dying, but a reminder that death is part of our life and the way we find passage to a new and greater life. It is the promise of our destiny as baptized members of the Mystical Body of Christ.”
The bishop began his homily by remembering an April afternoon he and his mother returned from his family’s country home in Pennsylvania. His father was at the table playing his usual game of solitaire, and the bishop, who needed to get back to the parish, asked him to drop his clothes off at the dry cleaner.
“It was a day like any other, except it was a day like no other,” the bishop recalled. Shortly after arriving at the parish he received a phone call urging him and his mother to go to Coney island Hospital, where they learned that his father had died suddenly coming out of the dry cleaners.
“I’ve never read these lines of the Gospel the same way since that day,” said the bishop, emphasizing that none of us knows the time or place of our own passing.
“That was my father’s day. I pray he was prepared and ready. All of us have similar stories when death, the great mystery, appears in in an unexpected way– at a time not of our own choosing–to friends, neighbors and someone dear to us. The Church asks us to give it consideration; that you and I have a destination which takes us before the Lord, the moment when we offer back to him the great gift of the life he has given us.”
The bishop said that last week’s Gospel of the beatitudes offer a road map for how to live in the fullness of life during our journey on earth.
“We will be prepared for death and should have no fear of the hour, if we are about the work of faith to make love real, live hope in concrete ways, and proclaim the truth in and out of season. if we are willing to live what we believe as best we can each today to use the time before us,” he said.
“Our eyes should not be fixed on the moment or the place where death comes, but fixed on living every moment of living life well in the grace of the Holy Spirit, and else falls into place.”
The bishop issued his weekly spiritual challenge to those who prayed with him by noting that St. Francis of Assisi, his patron, admonished his followers “to live each day before the sun sets as if it were your last without another one to follow.”
“If you and I did that, how many grudges would we no longer carry? How many times would we say the words we were meant to say? How many times would we find time to reach out to those we’ve been meaning to see?” he asked.
“St. Francis’s insight prepares us not only for our death but for life in the mind and heart of Jesus,” he said.
Before the final blessing the bishop invited all to join in the Sunday Family Rosary “particularly at this time that continues to be challenging. We hope the Lord will hear and answer our prayers.” To participate in the Sunday Family Rosary at 7:30 p.m. visit: https://formationreimagined.org/sundayfamilyrosary/
The Bishop’s Sunday Mass is released online every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. and available for replay throughout the day. To view the Bishop’s Sunday Mass, recorded and published weekly, click this link or visit the YouTube Mass Playlist.
