I decided not to blog about the cold, as it's on every news bulletin and in everybody's conversation! Rather I thought I'd share something of the Requiem Mass we celebrated this afternoon. Pat, the deceased, had been married to Terry over 50 years, but they knew each other since he was 10 and she was 8. Pat had suffered from several serious ailments during that long period, and had lived in a Home these last three years, where Terry seemed to spend every waking hour...
What a beautiful couple - and what a wonderful example of devoted living out of the great sacrament of matrimony in our time. "In sickness and in health..." as the wedding vows say. It's so important to affirm the faithful living out of our various callings, isn't it - whether marriage, religious life, priesthood, single life, whatever. I know for sure that some of my greatest inspiration in the living out of my vocation of priesthood has come from observing lovely couples like Pat and Terry living out theirs.
Lord, grant eternal rest to Pat, be with Terry in his empty moments, and help us all to put flesh on the vocation to which you call us.
The picture is of one of my favourite sculptures, an Etruscan sarcophagus of a married couple from the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome.
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