The Funeral of Richard P. Vaggione, OHC - November 9, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Br. Richard Vaggione's Funeral - Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Br. Richard P. Vaggione, OHC

Our brother Richard Paul Vaggione, having entered the land of light and joy, is now, with the saints, our witness in the great cloud.  He is in the nearer presence of the One who made him and loves him fully, whose compassion is endless, and whose eyes pierce into and illuminate every secret place, every sorrow and joy, every act done and left undone.  Death reveals the fullness of the union that is already ours by grace. And though his response to that union was imperfect as is ours, ever in need of the light of Christ’s presence, that union prevails, it triumphs, it overcomes the isolation within and around us and plunges us into the abyss of love.

For we who continue our course on earth and await eagerly the hour when we will graduate and pass through the gate of eternal life, our work in this liturgical work of the people is to be done, as the Prayer Book says, with “quiet confidence” until “we are united with those who have gone before…”. In that spirit of quiet confidence we give thanks for Richard’s life. We give thanks for his priestly and monastic vocations, his pastoral and academic gifts and contributions, his mind that sought understanding and offered original scholarly contributions to the life of the early church. We offer to God’s mercy our brother Richard as a sinner of your own redeeming.  

May we inter him into his resting place in the sure and certain knowledge that as his sins are put away and remembered no more, so may we, with Christ, rejoice with him in his redeemed and forgiven life. We lament the ways in which Richard was abused and harmed, an innocent victim of acts that traumatized his body and impaired his capacity for the fullness of relational presence.  We share with Christ the pain and grief of the evil done to our brother. We trust in God’s righteous vindication to bring about the only perfect and ultimate judgment.  When we are reunited, we will know a glorified Richard whose arms and legs and whole self will be made new.  As we continue our earthly pilgrimage, taking St. Benedict’s imperative to heart, “remember every day that you are going to die”, we encounter afresh the beautiful vision of St. Paul in Romans 8. Of first interest are the verses, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…” Authentic human life is wonderfully realistic and hopeful.  The sufferings of this present time are real; the sufferings of the world, sufferings in our relationships, sufferings of our bodies. To be human is to face inevitable and unavoidable suffering.  But just as real is the glory about to be revealed, an apocalypse of eternal light and joy in resurrection.  Suffering is short and small compared with eternal rest.  St. Paul goes on to note that it isthis very creationthat is the stuff of the glory to come.  At the grave we remember that our bodies, like Richard’s body, are bound for death. But that very death is only a prelude to what is to come, a gate, not an end.  Our vocation at the grave, whose gate opens to us in our memory, is to wait with eager longing for the revealing.  When we were young, that longing was perhaps far from our minds. When we are strong and healthy and energetic, our bodies are a quite comfortable place to be.

As we age, the awareness of suffering and mortality increases, our bodies teach us how to long eagerly. As this flesh begins its long journey to the dust, bones and muscles and organs complete their earthly mission and anticipate resurrection, a new home comes into view. One of the great evils of trauma, among many, is the damage to the capacity and safety of being in our bodies.  If the body is violated, if our very physical matter is a cause of shame and abuse, how can it learn to long for its full life? Recent research in the science of mind-body connection explains how our nervous systems and thoughts and emotions and physical health all relate to each other. Consciousness is not limited to our brains.  Our stomachs have consciousness, our livers think, our hearts are aware of what is happening around us.  All of it, all of us, is alive at more than just a physiological level.  And this is, of course, what Saint Paul is getting at. It has been in the text all along.  He is assigning consciousness to matter that does not “think” in the way we imagine, yet has a knowing, a participation, in the world of creation. This longing is not about escaping creation, but about being more present in it, perceiving its full beauty which includes the physical and which is beyond a this-worldly perspective. What we see with our eyes - growth, decay, death - the cycles of nature, which, even in all their beauty, are just stuff, is not all that is there.  Glory lives in potential, it sits secretly and invisibly at the center of every living thing.  

The way home is to perceive this secret presence, even as creatures who are mortal and suffer and die. This hope - as invisible and unbelievable as it sounds - is home.  Love and compassion are the antidote to trauma. Entering our vocation to wait with eager longing heals our whole selves, restores what was harmed.  The divine image, present at creation, which plants within us a desire for connection, for discovery, for love, for home, casts us out into a world where sin and evil seem to thwart and mock that desire. So we are caught between the inescapable quest for a true home and the temptations of false ones.  The danger of separation looms large. So the second note in Romans 8: “Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”  

The source of our eager longing is Christ himself, who fills all things with himself. We find quiet confidence in the midst of affliction when we remember that the One who descends into every human hell we create or imagine, every human hell done to us or by us, is the very One who sits at the right hand of the Father in glory, thus filling even the place of pain and suffering with himself.  Separation can seem so very real at times, but it is an illusion.  It appears when we forget our vocation of eager longing, taking our eyes off the glory to be revealed. WIthout that grounding in our true identity our bodies will become coffins used to move our heads from place to place. Or we will succumb to the body’s every impulse and craving, becoming subservient to it rather than its steward.  The memory of our own death is all about the present moment, all about living here in these bodies with other bodies as we watch for glimpses of the glory appearing.  “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  May our watch at the gate of death awaken us to the truth of our identity and quicken us to finish our course so that we may pass that gate to receive its light and joy. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Amen