My mother at the age of 3 years, Pittsburgh Pa.
Today was the funeral of my mother, Regina Wagner. The time of her death on Saturday, June 30th at 1:57 am, to right now has been filled with a tremendous amount of activity and planning. It has been filled with enormous upheavals of emotion as my inner child cries because my mother has died, and the deacon in me tries to console my inner child with assurances of faith and trust in God. While I have known from the time Ruthie and I became grandparents that we were no longer “the kids”, the death of Ruthie’s mom, and the death of my dad and now my mother have really hammered that concept home. As I did at the deaths of my sister and my father, I assisted at Mass and preached at the funeral of my mother. It was my last gesture of love to the woman who had loved me into existence and cared for me all these years. What follows is the gospel I proclaimed and the homily I gave on the life of my mother.
Mom as a freshman in college.
GOSPEL
Luke 1:46-55
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke
Mary said:
“My soul proclaims your greatness, my Lord;
my spirit rejoices in you, my God, my savior.
For you have looked upon your handmaid’s lowliness;
behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.
You, the Mighty One have done great things for me,
and holy is your name.
Your mercy is from age to age
to those who fear you.
You have shown might with your arm,
dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart
You have thrown down the rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry you have filled with good things;
the rich you have sent away empty.
You have helped Israel your servant,
remembering your mercy,
according to your promise to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Me, Dad, Bill, Mom and Mary Ruth
HOMILY FOR MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL
You may have noticed that the gospel I chose for my mother sounded a little different. Whenever we hear this beautiful prayer in the Gospel of Luke, Mary refers to God in the third person. I changed the tense from the word “him” to the word “you”. I did this for a good reason.
For my mother, God was not some transcendent being in a galaxy far, far away. Rather, God was always immanently close to her. Her relationship with God was so personal, so close that when she prayed it was as if she was carrying on this intimate conversation with God sitting in a chair right next to her. I could see this whenever I gave her holy communion. She would grow silent, in a way, distant from me, as she communed with the God inside her. The words from the hymn, “You Are Near”, speak volumes about my mother’s relationship with God, “Yahweh, I know you are near; standing always at my side. You guard me from the foe, and you lead me in ways everlasting.”
One might think that my mother’s intimate relationship with God provided for her a life free from all care and pain. On the contrary, her life was one filled with hardship and tragedy. Her mother and her little sister died 2 weeks apart when my mom was 12 years of age. Her dad died when she was 25 years old. My sister, Mary Ruth, died at the age of 42 years in 1997. My dad died in 2004. All her remaining brothers and sisters have died in the past 16 or so years. With all this death in her life one would think she would have shaken her fist at the heavens and cursed God. But God’s presence was so deep within my mother, that instead of cursing God, she chose to fall trustingly into that deep embrace that God holds out for all who mourn.
As mom’s stay at Mala Strana grew longer and her dementia grew, she would often talk about the activities in which she was involved as school classes. She often referred to the staff as the teachers or nuns. While perhaps unintentional, mom hit upon a very important metaphor that I think applies to all our lives. Classes are not only confined to those years when we are in school. Rather our entire life is an active class of learning how to love as God loves. Our lives are our opportunity to learn how to live fully the great Commandment that Jesus taught us, namely, to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
My mother’s life was one long, beautiful lesson on how to lovingly live out the Great Commandment. Her love and devotion to God was evident in her faithful worship of God at Mass on Sunday, and in her daily personal prayer life. Her love and worship of God was also present in the love she poured out not only for myself, and my brother Bill and my sister Mary, but for the stranger and those who were greatly in need. She saw her faith and her life as a tremendous gift of God that must be shared with others, especially those who lacked loved and felt despair and want in their lives.
She learned this from her parents. My grandfather, Oscar, whose position at the steel mill afforded him a larger salary, would use that extra money so that he could buy food to share with those who were hungry. My grandmother, Mary, would prepare the food and send him down to the mill to distribute that food to the hungry and needy. After her mother and little sister died, my mom and her older sister, Ruth, took on the work of caring for and feeding their younger brothers while my grandfather was at work. Upon graduating from Mount Mercy College, my mother initially taught home economics in the ghettos of Pittsburgh, teaching poor girls how to cook and make their own clothes.
This pattern of giving of herself in love and service to others continued throughout her professional career and when she met my dad, she found a man who was as giving as herself in love and service to others. (Though before marrying mom, dad did have to get past the test with Fr Coglin, the old Irish pastor at St Rosalia Church. After her father died, Fr Coglin took on the responsibility of screening those whom my mother dated. Not just any guy was going to marry Queenie. He had to be special.) With such great examples of servanthood in my family, is it any wonder I became a deacon of the church?
One would think that spending her remaining days in a nursing home would be a cruel downturn to a life faithfully lived. Far from the contrary, mom saw it as an opportunity to continue what she always did only in a different place. She would tell me that her mission was to help the “new kids” coming to Mala Strana adjust, to help them feel welcome and at home. That was one of the reasons she didn’t spend a whole lot of time in her room. She was always peddling around in her wheel chair seeking out those having a bad day in the hope of making them feel a little better. What one experienced at Mala Strana was the quintessential mother I have always known and loved.
I will end with one anecdote about the time when I was in third grade. At the beginning of my 3rd grade year, my teacher, Mrs. Hunnsiger, became pregnant and had to spend the majority of her pregnancy in bedrest. The long term replacement for my 3rd grade teacher was my mother. I was in a bit of a quandary in that I didn’t know whether to call her mom, or call her Mrs Wagner while in school. (I ended up calling her mom.) What I didn’t know was that for the 8 months she taught, she didn’t receive any salary at her own insistence. She was so grateful to have had a college education at a time when so few women had that opportunity, that the gift of education she received from God had to be shared freely with others. She never said anything about teaching a whole school year for free to anyone. It was only years later when it became known at a college reunion when the president of the college read a letter written by Monsignor Doherty who was pastor at St Andrew’s the year my mother substitute taught my 3rd grade class. He said, he had never seen such a living example of the faith and love that Jesus taught in the Gospels as he did in my mother. I agree.
I am so grateful that at on June 30th at 1:57 am, she heard the God she loved so much say to her,
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name: you are mine.
When you pass through the water,
I will be with you;
in the rivers you shall not drown.
When you walk through fire,
you shall not be burned;
the flames shall not consume you.
For I am the LORD, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your savior.
Because you are precious in my eyes and glorious,
and because I love you.”
Mom with her great grandsons Owen and Ollie
