Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

When I was first discerning a calling to the Priesthood a core piece of the ministry that drew me into it was the idea of being with people in the good and the bad and the hard parts of their lives. I had experienced the Church as present to me as a blessing in the full range of my experience, even as a very young person, and wanted to be a part of it. I know now that being able to be with people and all of the markers of their lives is unlikely, but as a priest I step into a season with people and get to be present for joys, challenges, the really hard stuff. I get to attempt to point to the ways that God‘s Spirit is present and working among us in that time and always. One of those times that stands out is the planning of and officiating of funerals. As we inch toward Halloween and All Saints and All Souls I’ve been thinking a lot about how we interact with and honor the whole communion of Saints, and the places in our scripture that animate this relationship for me.

At the beginning and end of the BCP Rite of Burial we say (or sing) Anthems that are combinations of different pieces of scripture. The one that has stood out to me recently is “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God.” I wondered where the Anthem was from and finally looked it up - it’s from Job. Being in one Church long enough to really live in the space, I know that I say this anthem while in the midst of the people, and the end of the Anthem, right at the altar: “For none of us has life in himself, and none becomes his own master when he dies. For if we have life, we are alive in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord. So, then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's possession. Happy from now on are those who die in the Lord! So it is, says the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.” That part is from the Epistle to the Romans.

These anthems bring great comfort to me, the coalesce the faith down to what we need to know on the hardest days: Whatever happens, wherever you go, however you are, you are with God. “And in my body I shall see God” catches me each time I pray it - some mystical promise that union with God is indeed our hope.

These lines are contained in the funeral rites of queens, of strangers, of long-time members of the church. It’s the funeral I presume I will receive. And in my body I shall see God. Somehow, God meets us in the body, not just the soul. As the body of Christ, as the way God is in the world, the people we become when we consume the Eucharist and are consumed by it, means that somehow God is in our very bodies. Bodies that are feeble, that fail us that disappoint us, that breathe and stop breathing, God is in the body.

In Christ,

Mtr Taylor