Transcript of Abbot Clement’s Homily at Oblate Br. Donald LaPlante's Funeral, Saturday, June 25, 2005

True prayer reaches depths. It makes us conscious of things that are not so evident. It also touches our will, changes our approach to things after seeing more deeply. It touches our feelings so that we are impacted by the truth of faith. So we see that the prophet Isaiah stands in the community as a man of great vision. A vision that is very real for him and it shows up in his life. If you read Isaiah you realize that the theme= s that come up again and again is judgment and condemnation but they are not the deepest level, they are there for the sake of awakening the people so that they would see something deeper. In this reading that I selected the deeper reality is that God= s intention is revealed to Isaiah, that death is not the last word. That God will take away death and give his people life. For Isaiah it= s a promise but a truth that he has that has impacted upon his life.

With Paul, in the second reading, we see also an insight. He is shocked by the fact that there are so many people who have been created by the Lord, who live this life, saw the beauty of nature, and their creation, and yet reject God. They will have no excuse when they stand before the Lord and realize that they have missed the meaning of their lives, to worship the one and only true God.

Then in the gospel we have the encounter of Martha with Jesus. Martha is a believer and so she says to Jesus: A You know if you were here my brother would not have died!@ She's convinced that he has that kind of power. Jesus says: A Do you believe?@ She says: A Yes, I believe that on the last day he will be raised.@ So she believes that. But Jesus is not satisfied with that. He says: A I am the Resurrection and the Life, who believes in me, even though he dies, shall never die!@ This is not just a little good news of words; this is reality that God had promised through Isaiah.

I chose these texts and in this sequence because if you look at Don you realize that he had moments of deep real prayer. One moment that Fr. Michael put in the obituary, was often described by him. That he saw all these faces outside the pearly gates, ashen and with their mouths agape that they were not entering in. When Don first experienced that it frightened him, so much so that he left the Franciscans because he didn't know what to do with this. But it never left him. So that it brought him back to the Lord and he began to understand its meaning.

So you see Don as a person, as a religious, someone who was focused because judgment, the judgment of God, was clear to him. So he was some what intense, even in his death burial in his face is serious and focused, he will smile now. Because he saw that it= s possible that we could not make it to eternal life. He saw its meaning and it began to penetrate his consciousness more and more so that he began to see it= s important to put God first in your life. Then he began to see something else. When he came to us he was already a person of suffering. He smoked in order to alleviate that suffering and he knew that if he was stronger and had loved God more he could get rid of it. He tried it at times with the medicine. It wasn't a wise thing to do but he did it because he wanted to suffer as much as possible because he now began to understand that there= s a connection between suffering and offering it up with Jesus for the salvation of souls that Paul tells us in the epistle to the Colossians. That we= re all called to make up what= s lacking in the passion of Jesus.

So it= s not amazing to me that Don was kind of very happy to hear the book The Kiss from the Cross by Chervin. He especially liked Lyd Wine, who was a Dutch girl who was very beautiful. At 15 the parents wanted to marry her off and she wanted very much to be a religious, so she prayed to the Lord to make her ugly so she wouldn't get married. The Lord answered her. She became sick and she turned green, gaunt, and ashen afterward so, forget her! Then worse yet, she was still lively, loved life, she went ice skating as Dutch people do a lot of, she fell and broke a rib that never healed. It was absolutely ugly. So ugly one time the doctors had a remedy to pull out the pus and they took out 200 black worms in her body. She could never sleep. Even if she sat, laid down, rolled around, etc., she couldn't sleep. I think that consoled Don because his pain would not allow him to sleep.

But he learned and kind of confirmed by that book that there was a connection between his suffering and the call to win graces for those people that are rejecting God. So he tried to offer that all up and he was very diligent, he was very generous, in terms of work he always tried to do it well, he not only had pride in it but he knew it was for the Lord. It wasn't for himself, it wasn't for his own glory, it was for the Lord. He did those things that way.

Yes, he had some rough edges but you can understand that when one receives this kind of insight the focus becomes quite clear and there can= t be compromise. Jesus told Conchita that to see the judgment and punishment on those people who reject the Lord, apostate priest, unfaithful priest or unfaithful religious or people who had the opportunity to really believe and never responded is an awful, terrible, fearful thing. And that= s what Don experienced. So it became a focus for him to see more clearly how important it is to respond to the Lord. It also is the occasion for a deeper appreciation of what Jesus does for us.

I= m sure if each of us heard what Don told me in the last couple days, he began to realize that his suffering was bearing fruit. He began to pick situations in which he prayed for a particular person= s conversion. And that person was beginning to show signs of conversion. He began to see how the Lord connected his suffering to the work of salvation. But he also began to see that God really is moving toward blessings towards people all the time. For us it should be even more forceful because when we= re baptized it= s Jesus through the power of the Spirit who begins to shape our heart like his. Then Confirmation more so, then if we are consecrated or married again the Lord take a step in this direction. Then if we= re priests then another step. So the Lord is constantly working, he= s the Good Shepherd shaping the sheep= s heart like his own.

That= s why I selected the gospel reading because Jesus is not satisfied with the general belief and the resurrection of the dead. He wants to make clear that those who believe in him and follow him will never die.