For this week’s invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart, I have chosen to jump almost to the very end of the litany. The invocation for our reflection is as follows:
Heart of Jesus, hope of those who die in You, have mercy on us
There is a very particular reason I chose this invitation. You see, as I am sitting down to write this article, it is a Saturday afternoon, and earlier today, I celebrated a funeral Mass for an infant from our parish who died just under twelve hours after being born. The death was expected, as the parents were aware of the diagnosis for several months leading up to the birth. Though that does not take away the sadness of the situation, it at least helped with having some time to process what would likely happen.
There are various words that could have been used to describe the atmosphere as we gathered for the funeral, words such as “heart-breaking”, “sorrowful”, “tragic”, “unfortunate”, just to name a few. But the word that I kept coming back to was quite different. That word was “hope.” Perhaps my spending an entire year writing on the topic of hope last year had me predisposed to this theme, but I think it was more than that. The reason that hope rose above every other feeling was because of something that took place after the infant was born, but before it died. The infant was baptized and confirmed, and in doing so, was made an adopted child of God through Jesus Christ and given the promise of inheriting eternal life. The prayers for the Funeral Mass for a Baptized Infant express this hope in such a beautiful way, and the Church is never more certain about the salvation of a soul than with an infant who dies shortly after being baptized. The opening Collect reads (with the key phrase in bold):
Most compassionate God,
who in the counsels of your wisdom
have called this little child to yourself
on the very threshold of life,
listen kindly to our prayers
and grant that one day we may inherit eternal life with him (her),
whom, by the grace of Baptism, you have adopted as your own child
and who we believe is dwelling even now in your Kingdom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
The sting of such a sad loss is certainly lessened by this beautiful belief that this infant is at rest in Heaven. It also provides a helpful reminder to all of us who are still on our pilgrimage of life, that we too have good reason to hope that because of our baptism, if we die in the Lord, we also believe that we will rise though Him to eternal life. In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul reminds us: “We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over Him” (Rom 6:9), and when we die in the Lord, neither does death have power over us.