Given Agatha’s albeit tenuous connection with Stalin, I’d better be very careful of what I say here! But, in truth, it would be hard for anyone to improve on the lovely eulogy which Caitlin delivered. And while it’s impossible to fit someone’s life – all 97 years of it – into a few words, she excelled herself in trying.

Agatha is one of those people I wish I had known a long time ago to benefit from that legacy of strength, elegance and independence which graced her in this life. She sounds like a remarkable character in many ways. I especially admire her strong convictions rooted in the storehouse of wisdom which she had accumulated through many decades and experiences. The loss of her husband Gerald in 2005 must have been a real blow after more than fifty years of marriage. But the inner strength she had proved itself in the fact that she survived him by just over twenty more years. It’s also evident from the eulogy how deeply loving and beloved Agatha was, the beating heart of her family for nearly ten decades.

That heart continues to beat for all of you, her loved ones. Though temporarily absent in the flesh, we can most certainly trust and hope in the Lord that Agatha is even more spiritually present to you now than she could ever be in this life. Heaven is not some far away place but beats deeply at the heart of our every here and now. All things, our very selves and our beautiful world, are held in existence by the glorified Son of God. No-one whom He loves, living or dead, is far from Him but is united to Him. So, in Jesus, we remain united with Agatha and with all who have died in His love. She rests from the labours of this side of eternity, but she continues to love in and through Jesus from the other side. This doesn’t at all remove our grief and loss, but it tempers them and it will eventually overcome them. In the Resurrection of the dead, Jesus will reunite us again, face to face, freed from death and sin, able to rejoice again and for ever in a love which is now eternal. You have not seen the last of Agatha, nor has she of you.

The key to this truth is quite simply our union in Jesus Christ. There is no human being who does not yearn for total union in love with a beloved. Falling in love, being in love, means falling into and being in union with the beloved. People who have never known love, whatever the reason, undergo the terrible experience of a living death. Love alone gives life its true substance and meaning, a love which demands one’s whole being, a love which leads to the total sacrifice of self for the beloved’s sake. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) once wrote that love will kill the one who loves unless it brings about union with the beloved. For love can never be detached or hands-off. It drives us to immersion in the beloved. What’s more, our union yearns for permanence. Is that not why the pain of grief is so keen, because we experience that love should never die and the bonds of union should never be broken? The keener the grief, the deeper the love – and the deeper the anger at what dares to break the bonds of love.

The Lord Jesus is the greatest Lover of all. His love did kill Him, but it was to reinstate His union with us, His beloved. Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful because His love for us means that He experiences all our grief and sense of loss more than we do ourselves. His death on the Cross occurred because His love could not tolerate that we would die for ever. His death turns our death from permanent separation into the promise of permanent reunion. He changes the pattern of death from being death-burial-eternal loss-and-separation to being death- burial-eternal life-and-communion with God and with all the blessed. That’s what St. Paul is saying in the second reading when he teaches that baptism immerses us spiritually in Christ’s own death and in His burial, but also in His resurrection from the dead. The life of Baptism is the life of God in us and, provided we live our lives on earth with Christ and for Him, then our death is no longer catastrophic failure but the beginning of eternal victory. As our body lies in death, our spirit soars to Christ until, at the end of time, He will raise us up in the flesh, too, to be forever with God. As He puts it in the Gospel: I have gone to prepare you a place and I will come and take you to myself so that where I am, you may be, too. Through Christ, death is the doorway to life, not a barricaded cul-de-sac.

Agatha, and all our loved ones who have died in the love of God, are now experiencing the sublime realities of God’s grace and eternity. At times, we can become so absorbed and even discouraged or jaded by the experience of this life, that we have no ears to hear about the truth and promises of Christ. Disappointments and other experiences of being let down or of feeling alone and aimless can render us cynical and even dismissive of any talk of God let alone resurrection from the dead. Pope Benedict XVI would say from time to time that people today often live as if God did not exist, even if with their lips they say He does. His challenge to contemporary man was that we try the opposite, that we try to live as if God did exist; that we take seriously the person and the word of Christ; that we own His great deeds of salvation for our sake in destroying death and restoring life as the true endgame of all human beings. What we need is a spiritual rebellion which refuses to accept that life on this earth is its own fulfilment, a rejection of the dogmatic lie that self, money, possessions, power and position are what life is about. Instead, life is about Christ; life is Christ; so, my life is about Christ; my life is Christ.

I have the distinct impression that the life of Agatha McAllister was deeply rooted in her faith in Christ. Her self-sacrificing love for so many, not least her own family, her strength of character and values and so much more – these are eloquent signs of someone who was conscious that the higher qualities of the human spirit far surpass in importance the fleeting nature of so much of our life today. The grace of her own Baptism was definitely at work in her, and her family was the beneficiary of that grace at work. Agatha portrayed the love of Christ to you both in who she was and in how she lived. It is our fervent hope and prayer that He will now reward her richly above for her labours of love here below. Let’s not let Agatha’s legacy simply become a memory, however inspiring or beautiful, but try to embody in our own lives her virtue and most especially her faith in Jesus Christ.