Joining Gladly in the Mourning

A reader writes:

Most have heard of G.K. Chesterton’s explanation for why he became a Catholic, a mischievous (and, of course, paradoxical) tale about a stolen umbrella whose punchline goes something like: ” I am a Catholic because the Catholic Church is a Church of sinners and I am a sinner.” I don’t have my own punchline yet, but here, at least, is the story I’ll tell.

Today, as occasionally happens, I missed morning Mass, or, as we say, “the Eight,” and went perforce to “the Noon.” And, as occasionally happens, I , like the other nooners, (regulars or defaulters) ended up attending a funeral. This efficient merger of funerals with its regular Mass schedule demonstrates the Church at its most pragmatic, but there is something highly mysterious going on too. On the one hand we regulars find ourselves in a funeral, which is so immediately apparent as a salutary experience that one wonders why it isn’t required, like the Eucharist, at least annually. On the other hand, the often mostly secular mourners find themselves in a Mass. All the kids and some adults rubberneck like I do when visiting Manhattan (Gee, look at that high ceiling; so that’s a stained glass window; and who is that on that cross thingy, anyway?).

We get to see Death and to be reminded of how that grim penultimate frames our faith. They get to see this most abrupt event within the Christian frame of faith, hope, and love; in a Mass, which is to say in a community of people, who don’t even know the person they are there to mourn, but join gladly in the mourning all the same.