THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Brother Elias’ Funeral

January 11, 2007

Scripture: Is 25: 6-10a; Jas 5:7-11; Jn 11:1-44

If Brother Elias could sit up and speak to us right now we all know what he would ask: So, what are we serving at the meal after the funeral?  There was a time at baseball parks when the organist, or now maybe the deejay, would play songs that represent the personality of the player coming up to bat.  For Brother Elias, I would pick the canticle of Moses: “I feast the Lord; Glory covers him all over!”

Isn’t it perfect that Brother Elias’ passage from life on earth to life eternal should happen during a great feast of the church?  For the past 40 years here at New Skete a great feast would not go by without Brother Elias being involved in its preparations: from designing menus to spending hours cooking in order to make everything perfect. Brother Elias loved food and he was a great cook.  One might say food was his downfall, but it was also his gift.  It was through that gift that he brought delight to others. Whether it was as a community cook or through the recipes for curing our hams, bacon and poultry or the Italian sausage, pancake mix, chutneys and cheese spreads he created, his gift has made mouths water around so many tables. Yes, he loved to eat but he also loved to share the meals he prepared. His delight in the culinary arts was not just for himself. As he learned from his family, a meal is where you share your life with others: Its hospitality, its gift, its friendship, and its love in the most generous sense. In this he gave of himself to the full, in imitation of God’s giving nature.  And the prophet Isaiah reminds us that God calls us to feast with him.  Brother Elias responded to that call here on earth and now is enjoying that greatest of feasts with all the saints in heaven, where God “has destroyed death forever” [v 8].

After Br. Elias passed away on Monday, I walked into his room to spend some time just to get a sense of place and of his spirit. What did the room tell me?  Family, faith and birds! Brother Elias loved nature. What better acknowledgment of God’s bountiful gifts to us than the love of the many natural wonders around us? He was an avid bird watcher. No wonder I found books about bird watching and prints of birds in his room. He also loved fishing and, maybe peculiar for someone living in upstate NY, he loved cacti. He just got a new cactus at Christmas this year as a gift from the community. He loved family. The monastic community was his family, the family he lived with for over 40 years. But he never lost his affection for and connection with his family of origin whose photographs, going back to his grandparents’ generation, are on his wall, right in the place where he prayed for every member of this community, his family and friends as Br David mentioned last night.  He was an Italian American and proud of it.  But he thought there was Greek blood in his family background too.  Brother Elias loved the church and the tradition. He loved to sing and his beautiful baritone voice in choir will be greatly missed.  Signs of his faith are there in the room too, not just the theology books and prayer books but also the icons and the beautiful crosses, especially those of the Russian, Coptic, and Ethiopian traditions. Those crosses are also a connection to his work with jewelry and enamels, which he crafted in our workshop.

Indeed, Brother Elias was a man of many talents. And we saw those talents on display in the community over the years. But he was also a man of many sorrows, most of which he kept bottled up inside. I believe he genuinely loved everyone he lived with and everyone he met. As was mentioned last night, he listened to others talk about their problems and he could reassure others with his infectious smile and gleaming eyes. But while able to show great love for others he left little room for love for himself. This was a cross he had to bear right to the end. But it never deflected him from the commitment he made those 40 years ago when he decided to give himself to this community and this way of life.  As the Apostle James points out: “remember it is those who had perseverance that we say are the blessed ones.” [5:11]

The reality of his departure from us will sink in to each one at a different time and in a different way. In our house, we may have begun to get used to his absence over the past year since he was away most of the last 12 months in hospitals or rehabilitation centers, but still he was at the other end of the telephone, he was there when we visited him and he did fight to come back and be with us for a few weeks despite his deteriorating health.  But after today, when we gather to pray in church, he won’t be there, when we gather around the table for meals, he won’t be there, when we gather to relax in our recreation room, he won’t be there either. And we will know it and we will feel it and we will feel the emotion of that loss welling up inside and we will cry. And that’s ok.  It’s grieving. It must be done. We must cry over the loss of Brother Elias even as we celebrate the life that was with us but is now with God.

We grieve our loss, but we rejoice in his homecoming, his return to that place where all life begins, a place beyond the sorrows of this world, that place Christ has prepared for all, that place to which we are all called. When Christ went to Bethany to be where his friend Lazarus lay in the tomb, Lazarus’ family and friends’ weeping and grieving over the loss of their beloved brother surrounded him.  Even Jesus wept.  But then he called Lazarus to come out into the light. At that call all their weeping was turned to joy. That call has gone out now to Brother Elias to go into that light of Christ, into that never setting sun. It is for us to say good-bye, to let him go on that journey, which is the destiny of us all, to where God remembers each by name.