Pentecost Sunday, Sitting Shiva, and Saying Goodbye

On Sunday, I prepared myself to say goodbye to our beloved priest who was being transferred to a different parish.  I had known this day was coming for several weeks and thought I had shed all the tears I possibly could.  But Sunday morning came and I began to cry again.  I pulled myself together before mass, gathered up the family, and off we went.  As I was driving, I began to think of the disciples who wept when they had to say goodbye to Jesus.  He was their friend and teacher.  He was their beloved priest, if you will.  Their goodbye was final in their mind.  What grief must they have felt?  What pain must Mary have felt?  Jesus wasn't moving down the road to a different parish as my priest was.  I got sad all over again thinking of the disciples, which oddly made me feel better about my situation.  It kind of put it all into perspective.

Sitting in church before mass started, I started to well up again and found it very difficult to sit there knowing it would be the last time I would watch our priest process in and the last time I would share the Eucharist with him in our Church.  I began to think of Jesus again and remembered our priest would not be far away.  Jesus' friends and followers must have felt such desperation as his sentence was handed down.  Not only had they loved Him and believed in Him, but they would be willing to die for Him.  The love our parish had for our beloved priest was but a small window into the love those early disciples felt for Jesus.  I felt it.

After mass, I went to visit my neighbor and friend who was sitting shiva for her father who had passed away just a few days prior.  She knew his death was imminent as he was elderly and had been battling cancer, but he took a quick turn for the worse and his death was sudden.  I had been feeling her pain all week and was looking forward to attending shiva with her and her family.  Because we were in mass in the morning, I had missed the funeral and interment, but was able to go to her home for shiva.  I arrived in time for the prayer service they would be having in their home.  It was so beautiful as I stood in a house filled with family and friends steeped in Jewish faith and tradition.  It was that faith and tradition that I got swept up in.  How similar we are to one another; Judaism and Christianity.  We sang in Hebrew, repeated prayers, and prayed over the family.  Towards the end of the prayer service, there was a beautiful paragraph about saying goodbye, and I wrote down one of the sentences: "All that we prize is but lent to us, and the time comes when we must surrender it."

That sentence hit me like a brick.  I had been grieving for weeks over having to say goodbye to a friend, but here was my friend who had to say goodbye to her father forever.  She was grieving.  She was consoled by her faith and the prayers extended over her and her family.  I had been consoled earlier in the day at Church by my faith and the prayers said by our faith community.  It was Pentecost Sunday.  The Holy Spirit was alive and well - passing over all of us in our time of need.  I thought of Jesus and his grieving followers and friends, I thought of my Jewish friend and her grieving family, and I thought of my Church and its grieving community.  I was connected that day to Jesus and our Jewish roots.  Surely, Jesus would have sat shiva for Joseph?  We were all connected and our faith was what held us up.  I knew that the time had come to surrender.  Surrender I did.

"All that we prize is but lent to us, and the time comes when we must surrender it."