Well, from horror movies to walking, from exercise classes to new friends, from working hard to praying hard, Joan certainly lived a very full life outside the home – and she clearly got out of it the huge amount she put into it. But it was her husband, her son and her God which formed the core of who Joan Downie was. Faith and love made Joan a woman for others, with uncomplicated self-sacrifice and self-giving. When I brought her the sacraments a couple of times in recent months, I found it not only a pleasure but also a privilege to be with her and to listen to her homespun wisdom and wit. She reminded me a little of my own mother in her devotion and faith. She was selfless in her concern for Andrew and his family. I was able to see for myself something Andrew said in his eulogy: that his memories of his mum contain strong feelings of warmth, security and love, the self-same feelings he was able to reciprocate as her time came to return to God.

When Joan was born on that 1^st of January in 1943, she was probably taken not long after that to the church to be baptised, or christened, as we say today. Just as her mother’s waters broke and Joan emerged from the womb into this life, so the waters of the baptismal font poured over her that day in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit gave birth to Joan again, this time into the life of God. And just as her mother did not give birth to Joan without blood, so the new life of God came to Joan as the result of blood, the blood from the side of the crucified Christ. Joan’s mother’s blood was a wonderful gift of nature; Christ’s blood is the even more wonderful gift of grace. Just as the darkness of the womb was left behind when Joan was born into the light of this world, so the darkness of original sin was left behind when she was reborn into the light of Christ, of the new world of eternity.

Here is the incredible wonder of the gift of baptism as St. Paul explains it in the second reading today from Romans. It is Christ who in real terms actually underwent death, but by the grace of baptism He takes us up spiritually and sacramentally into that death as if we ourselves already died with Him on the Cross. It is Christ who was actually buried, but by the grace of baptism, we enter the tomb with Him. It is Christ who actually rose again, but by grace, we too rise with Him and, indeed, ascend into heaven with Him. All these stages in the saving mystery of Christ are made available to each baptised person. Why? Well, supremely, because of Christ’s love for us. He did not want us to endure the Cross which our sins deserved. He endured it instead. He took our place, the place of all of us, your place and mine. And yet, through baptism, we do go through all he endured in a spiritual way, but without having to endure it ourselves. But there’s another reason why He did all this. It was so that the baptised would live this life here below in the power of the freedom from sin which He gained for us, in the power of His mighty love. He wants us to ratify in person, by the way we live and pray and suffer, the gifts and graces He won for us at the cost of such suffering, such death, such love.

And we can do it! We can do it because His power is in us, His life is in us, His Spirit is in us, His death to sin and the seduction of the world is in us. He asks us to live with Him, in grateful response to Him for all He has done for us. It is false to say that what He asks of us is beyond us. He would never ask us for more than we can do. And so, if He asks of us to love and serve Him above all things and persons, and to love others in Him and because of Him, He is not crushing us with the impossible but revealing to us the sublime power of which we are capable.

When at last, then, we come to die in our bodies at the end of our life, all the grace and love He showers on us in this life and all of the efforts we have made to live in the strength of that grace and love are openly revealed before the face of God and before our own face. So long as we live in this mortal body, our mortality veils the deep, inner, spiritual beauty of the heart and soul. When it dies, just as we heard of the death of Jesus in the Gospel, the veil is torn apart. We are revealed to God and God is revealed to us. Our problem is that because we don’t see these deep spiritual realities with our bodily eyes, we can think they are not there, and that only the life of the body and the things of the senses, or at best our feelings and self-invented ideas, make up the sum totality of who we are. To do that is to walk like beggars who are hungry and thirsty on top of an underground garden of fresh water and fruits, never stopping to look underneath the surface, almost hypmotized into thinking that the poverty of our life is itself wealth.

That look inwards, into the depths of our very own spiritual reality, was something which Joan was able to do instinctively. When I would go and see her, she would be very chatty about this and that. Let’s say that that was the surface talk. But the minute I made the sign of the Cross and began to administer to her the sacraments of reconciliation, anointing and Holy Communion, the depth within her was what came to the surface. She recognised in the Sacraments of Christ, the presence of Christ Himself coming to cleanse her, restore her and flood her deepest heart once again with that grace of baptism of over eight decades before. She was under no illusion that her happiness of this life’s little day would last much longer, but in her own way she understood that a much greater happiness awaited her when the veil of death would take her to see her Lord, face to face. Surely, of course, the Lord will have purified her further even after death from any remnant of sin unspoken and unconfessed, but only to perfect the beauty of her soul and to prepare her for the resurrection of the body on the last day with all who have loved and believed in Him.

I would say to Andy that all the warmth, security and love which your mum showed you in this life and which you showed to her as she died, is still there. In fact, it is even more intense and assured now than it ever was here below. For death has not so much taken her from you as given her to you in a higher and truer way. I have no doubt that her prayer for you and for us all before the face of God is that we treasure again the grace of our baptism, that we plumb its depths, that we allow its power and beauty to arrest us, to stir us, to embolden us to live, not only for this life, but for the life of the world to come and for its Lord and King. Amen.