Funeral Sermon for Margaret Robinson 9 August 2004

Dear Fathers, family, friends and faithful,

I welcome you all here and thank you for coming to share our
grief, pay respects to the memory of Margaret, and pray for the
repose of her wonderful soul.

Deeply as we are saddened at this great loss to our lives, so truly

are we consoled by the gift of our Catholic Faith, the teachings and
example of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His saints, with the genuine
hope this faith brings.

“What great things God has prepared for those who love Him”

We are here to show reverence to her mortal remains, and

recognize in them the consecrated chalice and ciborium of her
body, this vessel of the Most Holy Trinity.

She has passed from this vale of tears, her pilgrimage and exile
have ended, and well may we hope that our Heavenly Mother
Mary will “show unto her the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus”, as
so often she has prayed for this.

This is why we offer this morning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
to obtain her speedy entrance into eternal bliss, having united her
sufferings with those of her divine Lord in the offering of so many
daily Masses.

We have the privilege of having present here the three celebrants of

this Solemn High Requiem, all from the priestly Society of St. Pius
X; and with us in the front are visiting priest friends from the
Order of St Vincent de Paul and St. Benedict, as well as two priests

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from the Oriental Maronite Rite of St Maroun and St Charbel, here
with the blessing of the Maronite Archbishop.

This shows the unity of faith and legitimate diversity of rites

within the Church, and we pray there will be even greater unity in
the truth throughout the Church soon. Thank you all for coming,
and heartfelt condolences to my dearest Dad and my wonderful
supportive five brothers.

You will notice that not only are there booklets with the sacred
texts in Latin and English for you to follow the proceedings and
join in the hymns, but also another booklet with the order of
ceremony and some words written as a eulogy by my Dad on the
day Mum passed away. It is clear from how he writes that Dad
clearly considers his late wife to have been an Angel of charity to
him and all who knew her.

Many of you will concur with this opinion, not that we are here to
canonize her nor to exaggerate anything. Let us commend her soul
to God, remember with gratitude what was good, and commend the
rest to the Mercy of God.

Let us try also to understand how Faith leads to differing vocations

in life; for mum it was motherhood and that entirely and joyfully.
For St. Charbel it was monastic, to an extent we cannot
comprehend. He knew the danger to his vocation of natural and
family attachments, so he refused to ever visit or allow his mother
to visit him, nor did he even attend her funeral. This seems to us
cruel, maybe sinfully against the fourth commandment, but not so
in the light of Faith and fidelity to one’s vocation.

Mum’s vocation was to love, like St Theresa of the Child Jesus (a

favourite saint of hers), except to love as a mother not a nun. She
fulfilled her vocation admirably and we her children are justly
proud of her. She gave us the Faith with her mother’s milk, and she

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and Dad nurtured it with the holy sacraments of the Church.
Margaret has six of the seven sacraments, three at the hands of her
son, a priest.

The late Archbishop Fulten Sheen wrote that motherhood is like a

natural sacrament, similar to Holy Orders in a way.
The mother takes her baby to her breast, and, like the priest, says:
“This is my Body, take and eat…unless you eat My Flesh and
drink My Blood you will not have life in you”. Her flesh becomes
the victim for the child to consume, her life is sacrificed to give us
life; every mother is at risk of death in delivery, as a consequence
of the Original Sin. God did not bring sin, or suffering or death
into this world, we did by abuse of our precious gift of free will.
Hence it is just that we suffer.

Suffering and death are the natural consequences of sin, and the
Holy Sacrifice of the Son of God is the ONLY remedy for this
disease.

So that is why mum was devoted to the Mass, the remedy for sin.
When she could, she came here to Rockdale to attend this ancient
and venerable rite of the Latin Church which she loved so much.
As a child she belonged to the Maronite rite, and this changed
when she was married, by law of the Church. It was the Maronite
rite that I discovered aged 20, even before I knew there had ever
existed a traditional Latin rite of Holy Mass. When Mum could not
get to Mass she would put on a video of this very church or a
similar one, so that she may participate with her whole heart and
soul and mind, and follow with the missal, thus fulfilling her
Sunday duty under the third commandment, to keep holy the
Sabbath.

I do not wish to speak a lot about the person of Margaret Robinson,

but more about her great reward that we hope from God’s mercy,
and how we also may attain to this. A little comparison may help.

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At the end of the fourth century there lived a little known but
extraordinary woman called St. Nonna. She married a non-
Catholic, as did St. Monica, and like her, Nonna managed to obtain
the conversion of her husband, and now all her three children are
also canonized saints!

Nonna’s eldest son was a famous priest, St Gregory Nazianzen,

who had the dreadful duty of preaching the funeral panegyric of
his sister, brother, father and mother, all of which you can find and
read at your leisure.

Let us hear what St Gregory says of his saintly mother and try to
learn something of the maternal ideal in the early Church:

“It is impossible to mention anyone who is more fortunate

than my father. I believe that if anyone, from the ends of the
earth and from all human stocks, had endeavoured to arrange
the best possible marriage, a better or more harmonious
union than this could not be found.
“For the best in men and women was so united that their
marriage was more of a union of souls than of bodies.
“While beauty, natural as well as artificial, is wont to be a
source of pride and glory to other women, she is one who
recognized only one beauty, that of the soul…
“She rejected paint and other artificial means of adornment
befitting women of the stage,. She recognized only one true
nobility, that of piety and the knowledge of our origin and
final destiny.
“The only wealth she considered secure was to strip one’s
self of wealth for God and the poor, and especially for
relatives whose fortunes had declined…”

Thus speaks St Gregory of his holy mother.

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How can we be worthy of such words at our funeral Mass? Simple:

“Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin” says
the Lord. As Granddad used to remind me, also from the Good
Book: “He who loves danger shall perish in it”…. Don’t just not
sin, keep away from dangerous occasions, and as St Peter says, do
much good works to make sure of your election to God’s Glory.

Think often of death and what comes after, and you will be ready
for it.

After death is no second chance, no Karma, no reincarnation…

there is judgment immediately according to both our faith and
works of charity, and then hell or heaven, or heaven via purgatory.
Mum died with the Last Rites of the Church and with a holy
sacramental called the Scapular of Our Lady of Mt Carmel. She
was holding it the afternoon she died as I read the prayers of the
dying… “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I give you my heart and my
soul…. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, assist me in my last agony….
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, may I breathe forth my soul in peace with
you …Amen”

These were among the last words she heard, and she made a
special effort to make the sign of the cross, the cross of victory, to
show that she concurred with these prayers and she prayed in her
heart. As we know: “Heaven holds a place for those who pray”

To be prepared for that great journey, ask yourself each day: “am I
now ready for death? Will this decision help me die a better death?
Will I deserve to have a priest at my death bed? Will he need to
provoke me to faith? to fervour? to resignation to God’s holy will?
to forgive others as I have been forgiven?...will he be able to
absolve me from my sins with confidence?”

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Cardinal Wiseman was asked on his death-bed, how he feels. His
answer: “I feel like a young boarding schoolboy, about to take off
for his long happy summer holiday”

Once a dying parishioner came to me after Mass, before he wasn’t

able to come any more and begged me… “Tell them Father, tell
them that they can’t pray at that dread time of the last illness, too
weak too sick…. They must pray NOW while healthy and younger,
they must store up treasure to draw upon for those days.” Words to
this effect with such intensity that I was rather shocked. Then as I
anointed him, I discovered that he was an ex-priest, and I never
knew.

Prayer is the key to a good death. The best prayer is the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, especially THE TRADITIONAL MASS.

The second best prayer (for those who cannot pray the Divine
office) is the Holy Rosary. St Paul often urges his flock to pray for
one another and for themselves. Our Divine Lord says to “pray
always”; that means always to be under the influence of our last
prayer. Do this and you will live eternally. You will get all the
divine help you need to observe even the most difficult
commandments, and trials of life.

So please pray at this Mass for the soul of my dear mother, pray
that you may persevere to the end with the practice of the true
Faith. Let your prayer be supported by the Sacraments as willed by
Our Lord Jesus Christ. “Unless you eat…” and St Paul urges us to
“discern the Body of the Lord” in the Eucharistic Bread.

Let me remind you that in this rite of Mass, Holy Communion is

reserved to Catholics, who have been to confession and are fasting
according to the law of the Church. Also, this great Sacrament is
administered only to those kneeling (if capable) and on the tongue.

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All others are urged to make a spiritual Communion for the sake of
the repose of the soul of Margaret.

I close by reminding you of the role she and all mothers play as a
natural mediator between the children and their father, their God
and the world. Mum told me several times how blessed she was to
have such a good man for her husband, even if at times she got
cranky with his disabling deafness. She made me realize that she
was the happiest woman to have so marvelous a man, exulting his
fatherly authority. She made us all look up to, respect and obey
him. May God grant more wives to learn from this example, for the
healing of society.

This woman’s faith obtained the grace of a priestly vocation for her
son. This son remains eternally grateful to her, and to the Blessed
Virgin Mother, the great Mediatrix who enabled me to be there at
her deathbed; to help purify and fortify her soul, and thus launch
her into eternity best prepared to meet her God.

The priesthood at this time shows itself to be the most sublime

calling possible in this vale of tears.

To be a priest

To be a priest – how blest a thing

To walk the way that Christ has trod
To know the longings of each soul
And help the creature seek its God.

To guide the young, baptize the child

To light dark places everywhere
To lessen the pangs of death itself
Christ in His priest is always there.

To aid by prayer and power divine

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 Each erring and repentant heart
To walk a selfish sinful earth
Serene unstained – a man apart.

To bid the uncreated God

In words so sacred and so old
Descend and rest in human hands
Great deeds in simple words are told.

To see like God the breaking heart

To soothe when earthly powers have ceased
To walk the way that Christ has trod
How blest a thing to be a priest!

Finally, the words that Mum and Dad placed on the holy card of
our dear sister Mary, hoping now that both of them will join the
heavenly choirs and unite with Our Blessed Mother Mary as
mediators, with the great unique Mediator Our Lord Jesus Christ:

“Take her to Thy heart O Lord, and let her henceforth be a

messenger of love between our hearts and Thine”. Amen