West Park Memorial 2007 Homily

REMARKS FOR WEST PARK MEMORIAL MASS SEPTEMBER 2007

We gather here each fall in West Park to do together that we do naturally every day. We mourn our beloved dead. We each know someone buried here. Some of us know many of these men. And we know many others who once were Christian Brothers and have died and whom we remember this day. So whether we are Christian Brothers or Associates or members of our extended family of Edmundians– all of us have some valued connection to those we came here to remember.

Many threads bind us living with those departed:
We are all members of Christ;
We are all connected to the charism of Edmund;
We are all united around the special graces of this place here on the Hudson River in one of God’s sweetest designs of water and woods and sky.
And so we have to be grateful today. We have the blessings of nature, the blessings of our shared charism and the blessings of each other in this prayerful company.

One way we might reflect today would be to contemplate for a moment the gentle music of these lives we commemorate--- to ponder the ways they contributed their lives down the years – each one a note of a great symphony being played still to this moment.

The theme of the piece can begin with Edmund. His sense of justice was aroused by what he saw in the streets of Waterford and he responded to the impulse and inspiration to do something to change things, and the theme developed in the gradual movement to vowed living in community. For his followers the music grew more varied as other places called out to the brothers and other nations and continents beckoned. The music swelled with the growth of membership and was enriched by new cultures. We may now be hearing music never contemplated by Edmund but still faithful to the gospel anthem he first responded to.

In all these years every note counted; every note made some contribution to the larger work; every note grew from a life given over to the greater thing, the symphony, if you will, of a charism. And today those notes, those melodies mean no less for having come earlier in the piece. Our efforts here on behalf of justice and the evangelizing of young people especially, add new measures and fresh melodies to the one composition. None that went before mean less; all contribute and make the music whole.

And still the symphony will have more movements, and the music will live on.

So this September afternoon we add we hope further grace notes to the larger work begun by Edmund but going on still. We know that others will be here in the coming years to celebrate and mourn but they also will be part of the same music. Nothing is lost to God’s ears.

Thank you and God bless you.
---Br. Kevin Cawley