I rather enjoy funerals. I know, I know. Kind of sick in a way to say you like hanging out with dead people. But seriously, think back to some funerals (or “wakes” as they are called in most circles). Admit it. Didn’t you hear some of the best jokes while standing around with relatives you had not seen in awhile? Like the title of this reflection. Some may recognize it as being from the movie, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where Eric Idle shouts it out while collecting dead bodies during the black plague. Maybe this tendency for humor at funerals is just my family. Or maybe it is an Italian thing. Even at the funeral of my older brother who died from complications of an aneurysm. Of course, we were sad. But there just seemed to be some release that allowed us all to let our hair down and let the grief not penetrate our souls.
Contrast this view of death, and association with dead bodies, with the description that happens in Tobit…the book we have been focusing on over the last several days. Tobit is one of very, very few Jews who dare to touch a dead body. Not only does Tobit touch the dead, but he buries dead bodies he comes across. A very intimate level of contact. The issue with this is that this type of interaction with the dead is forbidden by Mosaic Law. The 613 commandments God handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Contact with the dead must be followed by strict ritual purification and being in a state of defilement for up to a week. Almost like having leprosy. This law was so strictly interpreted that a person had to refrain from closing the eyes of a person after they had died or suffer the need for purification and isolation. And this was the fate of Tobit and his family revealed at the beginning of the book.
It today’s reading from Tobit we see the angel Raphael revealing his identity as a messenger from God to Tobit and his family after Tobit and Tobias decide that they should generously reward the stranger who accompanied Tobias on his journey. After Raphael discloses his true nature, he proceeds to exhort the family to always praise and thank God for His gifts, to praise God’s works and to focus on almsgiving more than prayer or fasting. He then informs them that it has been he that carried their prayers to God and how Tobit cared for the dead. Raphael then “ascended to Him who sent me.”
I don’t think it was a coincidence that these last words of Raphael was suspiciously similar to the words and actions of Jesus. He spoke of the need to love and worship God and to care for neighbors as did Jesus when he spoke of the two greatest commandments. We also recall Jesus touching and raising from the dead Jairus’s daughter as well of the widow’s son at Nain. In both situations Jesus defies the prohibition against touching dead bodies. And instead of being defiled, he imparts His power into the bodies to bring them back to life. While ignoring the Law of Moses brought spiritual death to the Hebrews, faith in eternal life in Jesus brings life, even to the dead. Jesus conquers death and it is no longer something to fear. When Mosaic law was not kept, the person was thought to be cursed and had to offer repeated sacrifice or the consequence was death. But Jesus paid the price for being cursed by sin once and for all. Belief in Him, and asking for forgiveness overcomes death. Both death from sin and physical death.
So the next time you are at a funeral, tell a good joke and laugh in the face of death. It is our belief as faithful Catholics that we shall have the last laugh over death. And if you can’t think of a good joke, here is one you can use:
A notoriously poor religious education student responds to his teacher’s request for an explanation of Easter by giving a surprisingly spot on account of Jesus’ passion and death. His teacher is amazed until he gets to the part of the emergence from the tomb and he states “…and Jesus rose from the dead, left the tomb into the sunlight…saw his shadow and declared there would be 6 more weeks of winter”.
