17/5/26
I Believe in the Communion of Saints.
This homily has been given to me over the years by several people. They were unaware of this treasure, but this just makes their gift all the more generous. They did not seek any recompense or reward. This homily is about several people, and yet no one in particular.
Frequently, it has been my privilege to visit someone in supported care. They have been uncurious, or asleep, or somewhere in between. Certainly, a conversation was never going to happen.
I’ve never been completely relaxed about this type of visit. I’ve always gone with my heart way down at the bottom of my gum boots and my heart going pitta patter. It’s confronting to say the least, particularly if I have known the person for some time. The difference in how I once knew them and the image before me is brutally different. How did it come to this? Part of my squeamishness is that I know this might be me one day.
So I tiptoe in, I say my prayers, sometimes a hand is held, and often it is mine. I find myself speaking in hushed, reverential tones because instinctively I know that the veil between this life and the next is flimsy and almost transparent.
Around the walls and on the bedside table, there are photographs of family and friends. They are almost surrounding the person in the bed with their image, their love and prayers. All I can see, of course, is the photo and the person in the bed, but that is not all that is going on here.
The patient was and is clearly loved and held in high esteem. Even though I can’t see it or touch it, that love is not in any way diminished or shrunken. It somehow becomes more real, more potent and more ferocious because of the excruciating circumstances of this illness and nearing death.
The patient in the bed, who is comatose, asleep, unconscious or whatever it is, is blissfully unaware of all of this, although the staff and I will tell you that they somehow always know and that the sense of hearing is the last to leave a person.
So perhaps they are not as oblivious as the outward appearances seem to tell us. Perhaps in their altered state, they are actually more alert and more in tune with the invisible than they are with the visible. Perhaps that’s what's really going on here. Transitioning from the visible and tangible to the invisible and untouchable, moving from this dimension to the other, they become more aware of and begin to live in a different way as people of that quirky resurrection way. The life that is almost the same … but not quite.
So are my friends in bed, oblivious and ignorant to the people in the photos around them or is it, as I choose to believe, that they are somehow already lying in and enveloped in that dimension of love which is stronger than anything we know on this side of the grave?
I come close to this … I think… sometimes… in the chapel at morning or evening prayer. When it’s just me and maybe one other. Am I alone and muttering my questions in the early morning gloom… who will roll away the stone… or am I in fact already surrounded by Our Lady, St. Peter, St. Mark and Him who is always at table with me.
Perhaps this is what the authors of our creed meant when they gave us ‘I believe in the communion of saints’; that you and I are already surrounded by a countless host of saints and angels and martyrs. That we are not alone but continuously being loved, prayed for, encouraged and cheered along the way.
I’m pleased that the folk in care have these photos of the people who love them more and more each day. I’m pleased that we have our stained glass windows and icons to remind us not of people of the past but who are part of our very present existence here and now in May 2026.
Because of the timelessness of that other dimension, we are already living with those who have gone before us, and we are already living in the bright future of heaven.
It’s hard to see, it's hard to sense, it’s hard to believe, particularly when the husk of the person and a few glossy photos are all we have. But even so, I will continue to say.