I always feel hugely disappointed when, after hearing a splendid eulogy about someone like Sharon, I never actually got to know them in this life. The Sharon whose eulogy only someone like her husband Stuart could produce strikes you as a remarkable human being, as someone you just ought to have known. Then again, as Stuart’s words suggest so perceptively, it’s not given to us to know the “memories that belong only to the two people who lived them.” There is a sacredness to our personal dignity which no-one has a right to fathom, but only to honour and respect. The depths of the marriage bond are likewise sacred, a sacredness expressed in deep and faithful love, a love and a sacredness which take on flesh in the children it generates. What a wonderful and glorious reality is marriage and family! It’s no wonder that the Sacred One Himself has made it the foundation of humanity.

That’s why death is such a desecration of our humanity. It is the ugly and violent cynicism of the Evil One who detests the beauty of true love, who hates the communion of life between us human beings and who abhors God’s love for us. When he tempted our first parents with the fake promise that they would be like gods if they listened to him and sinned, his purpose was only ever to inflict death on humanity. Do what you want, not what God wants, was like a Trojan horse entering the human heart. It looks and sounds good, but it becomes like a parasite in the heart, poisoning it with selfish illusion and the relentless free fall into nothingness. For without God, we return to nothing; without God, our sacredness devolves into profanity; without God, as one of the psalms says, “our thoughts are no more than a breath” and “like grass we spring up in the morning and by evening we wither and fade.”

And so, what is the way out of this nightmare? Are we but a few decades of boom and bust with the likely prospect of being forgotten as if we never had existed? What, then, can secure our life even in death? How can our fleeting existence gain a permanence whereby our life matters, we matter, collectively and individually and personally?

The only answer that has ever been given to this in human history is the only man who has ever died and risen from death never to die again. His Name is Jesus Christ the Lord. He alone is the hope of humanity to live for ever. He alone is the hope we have been given as a race and as individuals to overcome death and its root cause which is sin. He alone opens His arms to welcome anyone who will come to Him and who will abandon the fantasy of believing that what this life offers with all its glitter and glamour is all that we mean, all that we are reduced to, as if our souls and hearts can really be fulfilled by mere things and experiences and personal theories and ideas. In the face of death, all these things mean nothing and reduce us to nothing. In the face of Christ, we mean everything and we will become everything in union with Him.

For life, real life, is about Christ. Life, real life, is Christ. Through the love of our parents, He gave us existence in soul and body. Through the love of His Cross, He gave us new and eternal life. That life is accessible to all who desire it. We gain it first in baptism in which He imparts the power of his death to our souls to deliver us from original sin. Through his Church and the sacraments, He increases, deepens, matures and perfects that life within us. Sometimes those who are immersed in the world think of the Church and sacraments as the illusion, as make believe. But that’s only because the illusion they are themselves living makes them perceive the truth to be a lie and the lie to be true. Immersion in Christ, not the world, is what releases the deepest potential of the human heart and soul for love, for sacrifice, for surrender to what lasts for ever. Christ who created us alone knows what it means to be truly human. Abandon Christ, and you abandon your own humanity, your own identity, your own eternal destiny.

What’s needed to make this connection with Christ is trust in Him, faith in His Word and in His promises. We need to wake up, give ourselves a shake, and open our eyes to see through and beyond the seductive appearances of the easy values and ideas on offer. So much in our world draws us to live on the surface of ourselves and of others. It inculcates in us a consumerist mindset not just in what we buy but also in the way we relate to others, in what we think important and valuable. We can wander through life never trusting, never sourcing the deepest resources of our spirit, and maybe even never truly loving or being loved. But Christ taps what is deepest and most authentic in us and draws it out and leads it to discover the rich depths of beauty, of poetry, of creativity and of heroism latent within us. In doing this, He is preparing us for eternity, for that room in the Father’s house He has reserved for each of us. He invites us not to let our hearts be troubled or afraid but only to trust in Him. His love is demanding. It is absorbing. It is relentless. It tests us as gold is tested in fire. It costs us, sometimes everything. But there is no greater love. For it perfects our very being. It is tender beyond words. It is compassionate and forgiving, patient and understanding. In a word, His love is everything. Whoever loves Him will find all things in Him.

Sharon Fleming lived life with the kind of intensity and purpose which will no doubt have delighted the Heart of Christ. She treasured the sacredness of married and family love, and she seems to have had a sixth sense for the best of everyone and everything, including herself. I have no doubt that Christ will have approved. Her love and her good deeds will go with her. Where she may have failed, we entrust her with confident hope to the mercy of our Redeemer. She is now in His hands and we must let her be there. As each day passes now, we get closer to the time when the future becomes again the present and when all our loved ones who are with Christ will greet us again liberated from the shadows of this life and from sin and death. If our grief is the testimony to our love, let us work so that our love will gradually diminish our grief until it vanishes completely in the Kingdom of God. As we surrender Sharon to you, Lord Jesus, grant us to surrender ourselves to you, too, as we make our way through this valley of tears. May our hearts be that little bit more in heaven each day until the eternal Day dawns and death shall be no more. Eternal rest.