Rest In Peace

A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage to Rome with some friends from Washington DC. We spent a wonderful few days touring the sights and praying in some of the most beautiful churches on earth.

Sadly, this weekend I received a message on Facebook that one of the priests who accompanied us, Fr. Bill Dunn, recently died. A doctor for thirty years before entering the seminary, he was a kind and gentle soul. I hadn’t met him prior to our trip, but he and I had the opportunity to become better acquainted on one of our itinerary-free days in “The Eternal City”. We ended up wandering around the city in a search for the best cappuccino money could buy:

Fr. William Dunn: Rest In Peace

The natural human response at the death of a friend is one of mourning, sadness at being physically parted from a loved one. For the Christian, however, death is not the end. As Christians, we also respond with thanksgiving, praising God for allowing us to share in the life of one who loved the Lord so deeply. Finally, the Catholic also responds with petition, that God will have mercy on our friend’s soul and grant entrance into Heaven. I say it is a Catholic’s natural response but, in truth, I think it is the natural response of every Christian, Catholic or otherwise. We want the best for our loved ones, in this life and the next, so we naturally want to intercede for them in this life and the next.

This Memorial Day I spent most of my time reading St. Augustine’s Confessions. Against the backdrop of Fr. Bill’s death I read St. Augustine’s struggle and prayer following the death of his mother:

I closed her eyes; and there flowed in a great sadness on my heart… As soon as she breathed her last, [my son] burst out wailing; but he was checked by us all, and became quiet. Likewise… my heart, seeking escape in tears, was held back and silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that death with tearful wails and groanings. This is the way those who die unhappy or are altogether dead are usually mourned. But she neither died unhappy nor did she altogether die. For of this we were assured by the witness of her good life, her “faith unfeigned,” and other manifest evidence…

And then, little by little, there came back to me my former memories of thy handmaid: her devout life toward thee, her holy tenderness and attentiveness toward us, which had suddenly been taken away from me – and it was a solace for me to weep in thy sight, for her and for myself, about her and about myself.

Now that my heart is healed of that wound… I pour out to thee,  O our God, on behalf of thy handmaid, tears of a very different sort: those which flow from a spirit broken by the thoughts of the dangers of every soul that dies in Adam. And while she had been “made alive” in Christ even before she [died], and had so lived as to praise thy name, both by her faith and by her life, yet I would not dare say that from the time thou didst regenerate her by baptism no word came out of her mouth against they precepts. But it has been declared by thy Son… that “whosoever shall say to his brother, You fool, shall be in danger of fell-fire.” And there would be doom even for the life of a praiseworthy man if thou judgest it with thy mercy set aside. But since thou dost not so stringently inquire after our sins, we hope with confidence to find some place in thy presence. But whoever recounts his actual and true merits to thee, what is he doing but recounting to thee thy own gifts? …

Thus now, O my Praise and my Life, O God of my heart, forgetting for a little her good deeds for which I give joyful thanks to thee, I now beseech thee for the sins of my mother. Hearken unto me, through that Medicine of our wounds, who didst hang upon the tree and who sittest at thy right hand “making intercession for us.” I know that she acted in mercy, and from the heart forgave her debtors their debts. I beseech thee also to forgive her debts, whatever she contracted during so many years since the water of salvation. Forgive her, O Lord, forgive her, I beseech thee,… Let thy mercy be exalted above thy justice…

[S]he took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped or embalmed with spices. Nor did she covert a handsome monument, or even care to be buried in her own country… [She] only desired to have her name remembered at thy altar…where she knew that the holy sacrifice was dispensed by which that handwriting that was against us is blotted out…

[L]et none separate her from thy protection… her sins are forgiven by Him to whom no one is able to repay the price which he, who owed us nothing, laid down for us all.

Therefore, let her rest in peace with her husband, …whom she obeyed with patience, bringing fruit to thee that she might also win him for thee. And inspire, O my Lord my God, inspire thy servants, my brothers; they sons, my masters…that as many of them as shall read these confessions may also at thy altar remember Monica, thy handmaid, together with Patricius, once her husband; by whose flesh thou didst bring me into this life… May they with pious affection remember my parents in this transitory life, and remember my brothers under thee our Father in our Catholic mother; and remember my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, for which thy people sigh in their pilgrimage from birth until their return. So be fulfilled what my mother desired of me – more richly in the prayers of so many gained for her through these confessions of mine than by my prayers alone.

– The Confessions, Book IX, Chapter 11-13

Fr. William Dunn, Rest In Peace.

The article Rest In Peace first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net