HOMILY FOR MUM’S REQUIEM MASS
Eileen Barrett was baptised into the Life, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. was born on 10th June in 1936 and she died on Saturday 4th October 2025 at home at the age of 89 in this month of Our Lady of the Rosary. So, both Mum and Dad died at the age of 89, both died in the month of October and tomorrow will be 3rd anniversary of Dad’s death whilst today we offer this Requiem Mass for Mum.
As our family has found, the most powerful way to engage our grief, so as not to be overwhelmed by our loss, is to give thanks for the many signs of grace in mum’s life that like a libation was poured into our lives. We even give thanks for all Mum’s sufferings where she showed us how to carry the cross.
As Mum grew older and more frail, she strangely grew more real to us. We take to heart the words of St Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians where he writes: ‘So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’, [2 Cor 4:16-17].
At the heart of the mystery of baptism, God makes a promise to each of us in and through his Son, Jesus Christ, namely, that no one needs to live alone, to suffer alone, or to die alone. Our mother did not die alone as she entered the mystery of Good Friday on late Friday night and early Saturday morning of 3rd and 4th October: a time between the times when the first Friday flowed into the First Saturday.
Her death, and our future deaths, is that final testing in that Holy War, that spiritual warfare, which fights over a soul from the moment of its baptism. It is the final test we will all undergo: whether we will die like the good thief or die like the bad thief; die a friend of God or die an enemy of God; die truly repenting of our sins or die unrepenting of our sins? It is a Holy War as we have to strive hard to die in the state of grace as St Paul says: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith [2 Tim 4:7].
We are called to pray for the soul of Eileen Barrett and the greatest and most important prayer we can offer is to offer the Requiem Mass. This is required of us because her soul now stands before the Judgment seat of God to render an account of her life. The Requiem Mass is offered for her so that she may have a merciful judgment. Indeed, this is something all of us will have to do undergo as St Paul reveals: ‘For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body.” [2 Cor 5:10]. But I wonder sometimes whether there will still be Requiem Masses and priests when it comes to our turn to enter our Good Friday?
What we can say now is that each of us has an appointment with Good Friday. Our mum has gone through her Good Friday; we here at this requiem Mass and later at the burial of Mum’s remains in Dunstable cemetery are in Holy Saturday, like the Apostles. But through this Requiem Mass, through the Masses offered for Mum and through our personal prayers we are praying that Mum, after a merciful judgment, may hear those joyful Easter words of Jesus: ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ [Matt 25:34].
We know the Lord through his Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, has provided for us the 7 Sacraments. With this Sacramental economy of salvation the Lord brings about the salvation of every soul who comes in search of him: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you [Matt 7:7].
Furthermore, through the Church, we have been given a powerful tradition that is an initiation into the paschal mystery. So let us speak of this Tradition that initiates us into Good Friday which the Church calls the Last Rites! As a family, we have found them a powerful source of grace and a great source of comfort for Mum and for us.
It is important to understand that the Sacraments are for the living. Thus, it is always vitally important that we call a priest to come to the sick so that they may be able to receive the Sacrament of Confession, the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Indeed, this can be done at home as well as in hospital, but it can also be done in the parish Mass, especially if the priest hears the Confession of the sick person before Mass. Having these sacraments at the Mass enlists parishioners to be a powerful source of healing and protection for the sick who go into hospital!
Why speak of Protection? In these days when so many in the medical profession have been infected by the culture of death or seemingly have not taken or not remembered the Hippocratic oath, we do need to pray that the Lord will assist those who minister to the sick so that they do so with a good heart, a good will, with attentiveness and skill. In the Litany of Anointing doctors and nurses are incorporated in our prayer, where it says: Assist all those who care for the sick: Lord have mercy. Something as a family we gratefully experienced as a grace in how some of the medical staff cared for our own mother in the hospital.
When a person is gravely ill and in possession of their faculties, it is the duty of a spouse, the family, relatives and friends to help the gravely ill person to turn towards the Lord. Indeed, when a sick person’s condition is clearly terminal, the work of a family must be to surround their loved one with love, with kindness and make sure that they receive the Sacraments of Confession, the Anointing of the Sick and the Eucharist. It is the time, the soul-time of Kairos, for them to gather round and to pray using the Divine Mercy, the Rosary and the Litany of the Saints to strengthen the faith of the sick person. Laity can also bless the death-bed and bless their gravely ill loved one with Holy Water. The love, care and ministry to the dying is at this stage a spiritual and corporal work of mercy that helps them to turn away from this world and turn towards Our Lord, Our Lady, the Angels and the saints.
Finally, in the Rites of the Dying the priest has a vital role in giving the Sacraments but he is also there to give the Apostolic Pardon and Viaticum. The Apostolic pardon is given to the dying at the conclusion of Confession or the Penitential Rite and it promises full remission of the temporal punishments for sin. Thus, is a soul prepared to meet his or her maker, when they hear those powerful words of the Apostolic Pardon proclaimed by the priest: ‘By the Authority which the Apostolic See has given to me, I grant you a full pardon and the remission of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen’.
Now Viaticum is the receiving of the Eucharist after making a final profession of faith based on the Baptismal promises that we say at Easter. It is the duty of all Catholics to ask for Viaticum for themselves or their loved ones when in a state of grave illness. Viaticum makes the sick Christ-like because they have chosen to enter the mystery of Good Friday and to die a death like his! Viaticum once received means that our loved one is now in a state of grace, whereby, they can offer their sufferings and their dying for their sins, for their loved ones, for conversion of sinners and for the reparation of sins of their loved ones and humanity itself and such offerings are powerfully efficacious.
Given this mysterious reality of how the soul conformed to Christ on the cross enters their last agony, this is not the time for those close-by to gossip or engage in useless worldly conversations. Rather, it is a time for those around the death-bed to assist the sick person with weapons like Gospel readings, Psalms, Litany of the Saints and other litanies and especially the Divine Mercy and the Rosary. In so doing we help our loved one to turn from this world and turn towards the Lord and go to God in faith, in hope and in charity.
In conclusion, we as a family give thanks for the love and blessings that came through Mum’s faithful and devout service to God, the family and the Church. Indeed, all of us today give thanks for my mother’s generous welcome, her feasts at table, her works of mercy and her amazing conversations. She was indeed a great conversationalist!
So, I would like to end by going back to the year 387AD. A meeting occurred that year that reminds me of the final conversations, we the family, had with our Mum over the three weeks before she went to the Lord. A few days before St Monica died, she spoke to her son, St Augustine, and said these words:
“My son, for my own part, nothing more gives me delight in this life. I do not know what I still do here, or why I am yet here, since the hopes of this world are already faded. One thing there was for which I desired to linger for a while in this life, that I might see you a Catholic before I died. My God hath superabundantly conceded me this grace, since I see that you already despise earthly happiness to serve the Lord. What then have I to do here?” [Book IX of ‘Confessions]
At the hospital on Friday early evening, Mum and two doctors talked to us, the family. Mum expressed her desire to leave the hospital and come home back to the family home. What we did not realise, at the time, and what she was actually telling us and the doctors, was this: she wanted to come home, to go home! The Lord answered her prayer and so she came home and there entered the mystery of Good Friday.
We pray that we too, when we come to our own initiation into Good Friday, that we may come home to our true home where there will be no more tears, for the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces [Is 25:8]. The Lord God in raising Jesus from the Dead has shown us the future and that future is that we have a real, true and eternal home, the home that is the house of our Heavenly Father.
It is there in God’s house that we hope to meet Eileen Philomena Barrett again. But not yet. The Lord has given each of us a mission. Before we can go to heaven, we must first accomplish that mission on earth that has been given to us by the Lord when we were baptised into the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
By a first born son.
