21 JULY 2023
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated for Agnes Ryan by Father Terrance Klein at Saint Joseph's Catholic Church in Ellinwood, Kansas.
Who We Are & Who We Want To Be |
Agnes Ryan |
Terrance Klein |
St Joseph 21.VII.2023 |
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-5 1st John 3: 1-2 John 14: 1-6
There are two parts to every human life. One half anyone close to us can see. The other is undiscovered because it never happens. It remains unfulfilled. You see, all of us are two things: who we are and who we want to be.
We’re always struggling and striving for something. We’re trying to go where we haven’t yet been. Who we are is akin to where we are, while who we want to be is the direction we desire to walk. You can’t get where you’re going if you’re going the wrong way.
This is why who we want to be matters most to God. Like anyone else who loves us, God knows whether we walk with ease or struggle to put one foot in front of the other. God can forgive any sin, make anything right in the end. He will help us change direction, but God won’t force the issue. That would mean destroying our freedom, which is what it means to be human.
We were created to choose God, the love of our lives, in each love life offers. Either we do or we don’t. Slow can be forgiven by God. Rejection must be accepted.
You can see all of this play out in Agnes’s life. Who was she? A woman who loved her husband. She was, at least as John tells it, swept off her feet in love with him. Hence that rapid marriage in Oklahoma. And, as John felt compelled to say to her as she drew her last breaths, “You are the love of my life.”
Agnes loved her family. Like other good mothers, she had countless ways of showing it: the food she cooked, the home she kept. Agnes was deeply involved in her children and grandchildren’s activities, especially their sporting events. Indeed, she couldn’t have been more involved, not without risking a technical foul!
Then there’s Agnes’s love of nature. The trips to the lake, water skiing, camping, trips all over the country, her dogs.
All of that could be easily seen. But like the rest of us, Agnes was also struggling to become something, someone, more. She strove to become the person of whom God dreamt before the mountains were set in place or the stars hung in the sky.
You can see the striving in the pains that Agnes took to do things right, at least by her lights, which is all any of us can do. Towels had to be folded a certain way, and that varied with the towel. And just so, each had its place in the cabinet. Tables were set with a vision. Even trash bags weren’t just shoved into trash bins. A beloved dog had to be buried in a proper manner.
Some might call this neurosis. But isn’t it a sign that we strive to be more, to become someone we’re not yet? Somehow, we recognize, we intuit, God’s vision of us, God’s dream of who we were meant to be.
Saint John wrote:
Beloved, we are God’s children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
We can’t be human by ourselves. We influence each other, for better or worse. You can see Agnes striving to become who she was meant to be in the way she loved her own. One way or another, we must say two things to those whom we love. I love you just the way you are, and I know that you can be more. Agnes said both, indirectly and more directly than they might have preferred, to those whom she loved.
If we’re moving toward him, come the end, God meets all of us on the road. He gathers up the pieces of our lives and carries them home with him. And come the end, we see God for who he is. You see, we’ve not been struggling toward an abstract goal. We’ve always been walking towards a person, towards the one who simply is the love of our lives.
When Thomas protested that the disciples didn’t know the way, Jesus told them:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
This is the aim of our prayer. We thank God for who Agnes was, and we pray that God receive her to himself so that she can become who she was meant to be, who she strove to be, a soul safe in the arms of its savior.
There’s a silly song, which Agnes loved. Oddly enough, it expresses this very insight. “Brand New Key” was released back in 1971 by an artist named Melanie. It’s about the joy that comes when two parts that are separate, looking for they know not what, finally come together.
Well, I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates
You’ve got a brand-new key
I think that we should get together
And try them on to see
I’ve been looking around a while
You’ve got something for me
Oh, I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates
You’ve got a brand-new key.
Let’s close with that image. Agnes standing before the Lord who loved her into life, who redeemed her, and who now claims her as his beloved. Looking into the face of love itself, we pray, she realizes that she has readied herself for this moment in each moment, each love of her life. And being ready, she sees the love that prepared her for this moment. Who we are and who we want to be. In the end, we come to see that each is the gift of God.
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