BROTHER LAURENCE'S FUNERAL

DEC 22, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isaiah 25:6-9

Philippians 3:20-21

John 12:23-28

 

Who is the man we are celebrating today, my brothers and sisters? Who is the man who was named Gerald Hoevel at his birth in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the year of the Great Depression of 1929, who was given the name Brother Ferdinand when he entered the monastery of Our Lady of Gethsemani in 1947, and who chose the name Brother Laurence (with a U) in the early 70s? In a life that spanned nearly fourscore years there were many facets that shone out in the man who bore all these names. Which ones gleam brightest in your own eyes? Is it the shy and idealist young man who felt called to throw away his life in a Trappist abbey in the knobs of Kentucky? Is it the hardworking novice and junior professed monk clearing ground and building a new monastery in the Low Country of South Carolina? Is it the man who bore the burden of cellarer in the economically struggling young community? Is it the mature monk trying to make a difference in the poor living conditions of those who lived in the immediate environs of the established community of Our Lady of Mepkin? Is it the man whose body was broken and mangled by the backhoe on which he seemed to live for so much of his later years? Or is it some other facet of the rich jewel of the life of the brother and friend to whom we have come to say our final goodbye?

This evening the monastic community will gather and share stories of all these different strands of Brother's life among us: funny stories, poignant stories, stories of simple things and stories of profound things. Right now let us look to the Scriptures to help us understand the deeper streams that flowed in the heart of our brother and made him who he is.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Can there be any doubt that this was true for Brother Laurence? After we anointed him on Thursday, he asked our youngest brother, Brother Dismas, to get the Paschal Candle, the symbol of the Risen Jesus, and light it so he could see it and gaze upon it. He who feared fire so much, who would blow out every candle he would see in his later years, on the day which would be his last one on this earth, asked for a lighted candle. What a paradox and yet what a paradigm for each one of us!!

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

How often would we see Brother Laurence in quiet prayer in our old church, focused on the light coming from the tabernacle. Kneeling silently, usually with his beads in his hand. He was not what we would call “pious” as we might call by that epitaph some of the brothers who have preceded him in death. But for me, that is who Laurence is: a man of prayer. A man for whom: The Lord is my light and my salvation. His service to the community in all the hard work he did was that same man of prayer in action. He sought no glory for himself. He did what he did from that deep conviction we heard Paul speak of: the conviction that “our citizenship is in heaven.” It is the same conviction that Jesus points to in his words: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.”

I never doubted his monastic vocation. I respected deeply his call as a monk and a man of prayer. But I cannot say he did not doubt it. He had a great sense of inferiority, strange as that may sound in someone so strong and masculine. Especially, I think he felt cowed by what he perceived as the surpassing intellectualism of Father Francis, as if that made the monk, -- and in a different sense the ability of the abbot who buries him to articulate the monastic charism. The only thing that helped to break this down was the practice of going to his room and saying a few prayers before he went to sleep. He loved this. He waited for it with eagerness. Because there we touched as brothers, for whom The Lord is our light and our salvation.

And now he knows of that love and profound respect in an even deeper way. Did you notice the day on which he died? 45 minutes into the day of December 21, 2007, the day that would have been his 59 th birthday, Father Francis met him at the gates of heaven and proclaimed – perhaps even before Jesus – “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share the Master's joy.” And just as Brother Edward took Francis on that last golf cart ride a week before his death around the Mepkin he had come to love so much, just as AJ took Laurence on that last golf cart ride around our blessed land last Saturday, so now, can you not imagine Francis asking for the birthday gift of a ride around paradise with the man he so respected and whom, no doubt, he told the Lord: ‘He has suffered enough'?

And surely on that golf cart (or is it a backhoe with a huge bucket) is a man Brother Laurence simply called ‘Johnny'. He even wrote a book about him and included many of Johnny's life-giving sayings in it. But Johnny is not the only one on that golf cart. How about Sam Pinckney, how about Paul Rivers, how about Frank McNeil, how about… how about… all of them people in the black community for whom he did so much. And, of course, the man whose name he took, the man who taught him to spell Laurence with a U: Laurence Hamilton.

As we gather around this altar with Laurence in our midst for one last time, let us cry out with the words he loved so much, the words that echoed his conviction of our citizenship in heaven, the words that Jesus begged his Father to hear as his Hour was upon him:

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, he is free at last.

Amen.