POPE Benedict XVI said that, “He who reads carefully the text of the Beatitudes will realise that they are a hidden inner biography of Jesus, a portrait of his person.”
I am glad that you have chosen the theme of the Beatitudes to celebrate the life of Pat because this seems to be the most accurate way of describing her life.
Saint Augustine, in explaining to his congregation the meaning of the Beatitudes goes even further and says that the Beatitudes are the basic guidelines for the Christian life. Pat made them the heartbeat of her Christian life.
If we look at life from a human point of view we are inclined to say that our journey goes from life to death. But Jesus turns this perspective upside down and states that our earthly journey goes from death to life: the true life that never ends. Death is therefore behind us, and in front of us there is the living God, the defeat of sin and death and the beginning of a new season of joy and light.
And this is the attitude the first Christians had towards death – their funerals were joyful because they had the great faith that death is not the end but the beginning of a new life, so much so that they called it dies natalis, day of birth, to paradise.
In recent years, in the catacombs where the first Christians were buried, archaeologists discovered a moving inscription which said: “My night has no darkness”. Precisely because they believed in the light of the Resurrection.