What came across to me about Tom from Ronnie’s eulogy was that he was a man of inner strength. He had strong values and principles, a strong work ethic and a strong sense of commitment to his wife and family. He sounds like a man who was at peace with himself. He was able to appreciate the good things in life and had a lighter side which, though occasionally groanworthy, clearly brought much joy to others and to himself. It would been good to have known him and had some good conversations with him, though I’m not sure about hearing him sing or depending on him to order my drinks!

When I first spoke with Moira on the phone after I got the sad news of Tom’s death, I could tell that his sudden departure had been a great shock to her and, I’m sure, to all who knew and loved him. And our hearts go out to you Moira all the more for that. However, in God’s own inscrutable plans, it was time for him to pass over to the Father’s house and, some fine day, we will all understand why that was so. As St. Paul tells us in the reading we heard from Romans, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s, and so the day of our passing is not on the day we think we are ready but on the day the Lord knows we are.

The experience of death escapes our imagination. Those who have had near-death experiences, so-called, may indeed tell us something, but near-death is not death. The Lord Himself, though, does give us a beautiful understanding of death in the Gospel of John which we have just heard. His apostles are sorrowful because Jesus is telling them that He is leaving them, and they all surmise that He means death. But he describes His own death as returning to His Father, and He returns there for a reason: to prepare a place for those He loves. And then He says that He will come back and take them to Himself so that they may be where He is. For Tom, this would mean that as he left this world, he did not evaporate into the ether, he did not find himself catapulted into some vast and empty expanse. No, he will have experienced, not even so much that his spirit was leaving his body of its own accord, but rather that Jesus was there, taking him to Himself, to the Father’s house. For the one who believes in Jesus, this is the reality of death.

We know that death was never God’s plan for us. Along with sin, it’s the only thing He did not create. We weep when we lose our loved ones in death. Well, God wept copious divine tears when our first parents sinned and ushered in death for humanity. But such is His love for all human beings that He decided to rescue usfrom death: not rescue us from dying but rescue us out of death. We must die, because we have sinned. Sin gave access to death to defile our humanity, body and soul, and so it must be flushed out of us if we are to live for ever. But to do this, the Son of God did something spectacularly wonderful. He came in our mortal flesh and, by Himself dying, took control over death away from the Devil, so that death would no longer mean the definitive failure of man and woman. By His resurrection from the dead in a body which is now immortal, Jesus both made it possible for us and promised us that the same would be true for us, if we believe in Him. As a pledge of that promise, He gives us the Holy Eucharist, His own risen Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, telling us that anyone with faith in Him who eats His flesh and drinks His blood will live eternally.

This is our hope. This is Tom’s hope. His soul, once purified of any sin, is kept by Christ along with all the just who have died until the Last Day when we will rise again in our flesh to behold one another in God, and God in one another. On that day, as the prophet Isaiah says in our first reading, the Lord will swallow up death for ever and wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Surely, if this is truly our hope. Surely, if we look to Christ to come and take us to Himself in the hour of our death. Surely, if we want Him to deliver us out of death and raise us glorious and immortal in our bodies on the Last Day of human history: then we must do all we can here and now to respond to Him, to trust and believe in Him, to hope in Him, to love Him. There simply is no-one and nothing else to deliver us from the despair of total annihilation when we die. We did not come from ourselves nor from our parents, but only from the creative will of God. Our parents, knowingly or unknowingly, worked with God to provide the carnal side of our humanity, but only the Spirit of God can create the soul, the spiritual side of our humanity. If God is our origin, He is also our destiny, but a destiny we must choose positively, actively, with dedication and determination. Our world today gives more credence to the narrative of atheism and materialism than to the Gospel of life and salvation. People no longer seem to want what God wants, but only what each one wants, and we see the growing chaos in society which results from that. Yet, the human heart knows deep down that we were made for a life that endures, a love that endures, a joy that endures. In this life, we experience these things in a fragile and incipient form. But, if we want to, through a living faith we can already experience before death the life and the love of God also in an incipient yet real form.

Tom’s life shows that he sought in his own way to favour the higher values of his humanity. The Lord will have seen that and will have made that the doorway into Tom’s heart. From that noble core of his heart the Lord will have taken him to Himself and with the exquisite skills of divine love will have worked on that heart to bring it to its fullest potential for love, life and joy eternal. Such we dare to hope. Such we dare to pray. And such we dare to promise to ourselves if we open our hearts to the Divine Lover of our humanity. I doubt that Tom’s salesman skills will have carried much weight at the pearly gates, but his good heart and his sincere love will surely have received an open and joyful welcome from Christ. So, in peace, in serenity of heart, let us let Tom go to his God. He will not return to us, but, please God, we shall go to him and to all whom we have known and loved in this life and be with them and with our beautiful and wonderful God, forever.