The title of my reflections for this Good Friday Mass tonight is, “Last Words.”
On the death bed of our cross - what will be our last
words?
On Good Friday - down through the years - it’s been a tradition - to reflect on one or
two or all of the traditional 7 Last Words of Jesus.
Actually they are seven sayings or statements of Jesus - like, “Father,
forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Or “Father, into your
hands I place my spirit.” Or “I thirst.” Or, the words which Jesus said to the Good Thief on the other cross, “Today you’ll be
with me in Paradise.”
Someone wasn’t under the cross with a tape recorder or a Cross
Ball Point pen jotting down these last words of Jesus.
But in time to help us, they were written down in Greek
in the Gospels - and we find three of them in Luke and three of them in John.
And the other statement, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we find in
both Matthew and Mark.
What will be our last words? I would say that we can’t plan on what we’re
going to say when we’re dying. In books of quotes we find various death bed
words from famous people - and some are apocryphal like Lincoln saying to his
wife, “I told you - I didn’t want to go to - a damn play.”
I remember reading - that
Goethe’s last words were, “More light.”
This afternoon in writing this homily to get some light - I looked up on
Google, “Death Bed Words” and found some interesting comments.
One woman said, “My mom's last words to me were 'You have to learn the
difference between Chinese and Japanese people, because they don't like it when
you mix them up.' I wish I was joking. Those were my mom’s last words.”
Another lady said, “I was a health care aide on a geriatric ward - when
a woman - so old and frail - she looked dead already - motioned to me to come
to her. I put my ear next to her mouth and she quietly said, 'I just wanted to
say 'goodbye' to someone.' It broke my heart. She died a few days later….”
Another person said, “When I first started as a 911 dispatcher - I had a
call come in - and all that the person said was 'Tell them I'm sorry,' and hung
up….’ “I knew right away what we were going to find when we got there. It was
the worst feeling. I just felt so dirty that I was the last one to talk to this
guy, and no matter how fast we sent help it didn't matter - it was just too
late. So I guess he was confessing, but it just made me feel icky.”
“In nursing school a lady in her mid-40s came in after a car accident.” “She
needed surgery, and before she went in - she made me promise to tell her
husband that she had a child before she met him and put it up for adoption and
should her son ever come looking for her to let him know she was sorry and
loved him every day.” Then this nurse said, “She lived and I hope she got to
tell him that herself.”
Frank Sinatra died after saying, “I’m losing it.”
William Henry Seward, architect of the Alaska Purchase, was asked if he
had any final words. He replied, “Nothing, only ‘love one another.’”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, died at
age 71 in his garden. He turned to his wife and said, “You are wonderful,” then
clutched his chest and died.
As he was dying, Alfred Hitchcock said, “One never knows the ending. One
has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have
their hopes.”
Father Tizio would love this one. Former baseball player “Moe” Berg’s
last words: “How did the Mets do today?”
The night before my brother was to have major surgery in the Washington
Hospital Center on his brain cancer, I
talked to him on phone from New York and my last words to him were, “I love
you.” And his last words to me were, “I love you too.” I got down to D.C. the
next day - but he didn’t make it.
I have my last words with my mom on a tape recorder - 45 minutes’ worth
of wonderful words. I got the thought to get her story on tape. She was still
very healthy and still working - at the age of 82. So I set up a small tape recorder and asked her about her
life. After a while she got tired and said, “The moo is out of me.” She then said, “Next time we’ll get the rest of
the story.”
She was killed in a hit and
run accident two weeks later - so that tape is very precious - very, very
precious.
And I got the moo part of her
comment when years later we visited a family graveyard not too far from where
my mom was from in Galway, Ireland. To
get into the graveyard, they had like a turnstile to keep cows out. I was with
my two sisters and my brother-in-law. Wow was my sister Peggy the nun surprised
when she stepped in you know what. Evidently the cows had an Easy Pass Path in
some other way.
Nope what she said was not her last words. I got to hear a few of them
in a last chance conversation with her in Scranton, Pennsylvania before she
died.
The title of my reflection for tonight is, “Last words.”
Jesus had some wonderful words on the wooden death bed of the cross. The
one I like the best and have said 1,000 times is, “Father, forgive them for
they do not know what they are doing.”
I would like and love to add something my classmate Larry told me. He
had had a sort of fight or disagreement with his mom over something as he was
going back to Brazil where he was stationed - and he gets back and gets a call
a short time afterwards that his mom had died.
He flew back to Brooklyn but before going over to the funeral parlor he dropped
into church and had a great prayer talk with his mom - that was filled with
forgiveness - and then he was able to face her in the casket.
We Christians have Easter. We have our great faith gift that there is
life after this - and we only have metaphors and hopes what heaven is like -
but my hope and my faith tell me - we can all love one another for all eternity
and say the things we always wanted to say - the “I’m sorry’s” - the “I love
you’s” - the saying, “With you and God I am in paradise.”
