Tribute to Monsignor John Lennon
St Therese's Parish Edmonton
Diocese of Cairns
27 May 1930 – 28 August 2006

Homily By Bishop James Foley
at the Funeral Requiem Mass
St Therese's Catholic Church
on 31^st August 2006

God ‘s providence is evident in the death of John Lennon. The hand of a loving God seems everywhere present in the sudden no nonsense way of John’s dying and in the efficiency in what has happened since here in the parish of Edmonton which would have done his own organising abilities proud!

Right now and even here, God’s hand and John’s help has not abandoned us. In this fine light church, John took particular pride in the unusual Stations of the Cross. They are photographic and by a young Brisbane artist, Cameron Stelzer.

Take the last three Stations (pictured beside). In the renewed order of the Fourteen Stations, No. XII is Jesus’ Crucifixion and Death - the climax of Good Friday. Station XIII has Jesus’ body laid in the Tomb the strangeness of Easter Saturday. While Station XIV is the Resurrection life restored: renewed enlightened as on that first Easter Sunday.

In the depiction of the death of Jesus two photo images have been interposed. Two consecutive frames are ghosted: a head and face upright still alive! Then a head, the face are slumped down to the left shoulder - dead!

The moment of death is as sudden as that: in the twinkling of an eye (I Cor 15: 52); in a split second; in the click of a camera shutter.

In Jesus’ death the sheer weight of his exhausted body became just too much to lift up again to maintain the sheer effort of struggling to breathe. Jesus died between a faint, shallow breath and a final but tailed breath.

At a little before 2.30pm on Monday afternoon, the 28 August, John Lennon died with and in Christ (2Tim 2:13).

It is as if John’s own body had become just too pained, just too tired out, just too old to continue to hold his Self - his large mind, his big heart, his noble Soul.

In words in this Mass: When the body of our earthly dwelling place lies in death we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven. (Preface of the Dead, I) Or, as St Paul declares in 2Cor 5:1: We know that when the tent that houses us on earth is folded up there is a house for us from God, not made by human hands but everlasting, in the heavens.

In Station XIII Jesus’ body is laid in the tomb. His enshrouded body is prone, somehow suspended and appears to float above or is resting but lightly on the burial bier. Swirling above this oddly wrapped rested body, three points of light have become protracted, elongated, and hover, vapour or ribbon-like. This is achieved by means of time lapse photographs.

This is Holy Saturday in the Liturgical Year. The only intimation Scripture gives us of this strange stage is from the letter of I Peter: in the spirit, he went to preach to the spirits in prison (3:19). The words of the ancient Apostles Creed put it starkly : ‘He descended to the dead.”

This is the region, the phase John - and we, to a limited degree - occupy in these very days. This is that in-between time. John has crossed that threshold. We still remain on this side of that threshold.

The details, any distinct picture is still obscured necessarily, inescapably for us. ‘Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror (1 Cor 1 3:1 2) or the things that no one has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).

Both our simple piety and more elaborated theological reflections too frequently develop too precise a picture or map of the landscape of the After Life.

Monsignor John Lennon's own instincts and insights may accord better with the New Testament and the nuanced Tradition of the Church.

At our Priests’ Meetings,from his own mouth, and from the occasional comments I received about John’s preaching at funerals, it was clear that he was rightly cautious about some rather quick and easy Express Lane transportation immediately after death. It is not simply the case that at the moment of death we enter some lift, an elevator, on the ground floor and are whisked without any further stops at intermediate floors, to arrive instantaneously at the very top floor. Apparently John resisted the attractive but rather facile notion of immediate glorification the presumption the instant, full and final Resurrection immediately at the point of death.

John was given to use more the language of a Purgatory. This word carries the sense of some place bleak and punishing. Such a “Purgation” became an issue much disputed by Protestant Reformers.

Yet, this intermediary rather than immediacy is a powerful, subtle and hope-filled concept. It suggests some place or period or phase of transition - suspension - purification - perfection. Here Western philosophical categories may he of help. In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) has as its crucial fulcrum point the aesthetics that communion phase where the subjective knowing self engages with the objective known world via the Inner Form of Time and its Outer Form - Space: you need space to measure/mark time!! Yet space/time cease to carry their conventional understanding or significance when passing from one order of reality to another. In that non-statement: in eternity (=no time) there is neither time nor space!

We are moving here, like Alice in Wonderland into the mysteriouser and the mysteriouser!!

Lest this is to preach in the terms of philosophy (I Cor 1:17) there is the apocalyptic imagery of our first reading It will never he night again and they sill never need lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will he shining on them (Rev 22:5).

So it may be better and safer to return to our Gospel reading at this funeral Mass: Jesus’ reassuring promising words: There are many rooms in my Father’s house; if there were not I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too. (John 14:2). Jesus speaks of many rooms: degrees, stages, floors or levels of intimacy within the love of God (in the language of John).

In this very passage are also the often overlooked words of Jesus: I shall return to take you with me (John 14: 3). This reverses, turns upside down and inside out, that common, though non-biblical notion, that at death the departed one goes on some journey, crossing the River Stix so you need to place coins on closed eyes to pay the ferry man!! These are non-Christian notions, relics from Pre-Christian or pagan understanding of death and beyond: that we “pass over”!?!

If we must think in terms of any movement or journeying after death, then it is rather The Lord Himself who is active and we are passive. There is a profound truth in Jesus’ words, I shall return to take you with me: so that where I am you may be too. This resonates with Psalm 22,

The Lord is my shepherd there is nothing I shall want – He guides me along the right path. He is true to his word - If I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil should I fear. You are there with your crook and your staff – with these you give me comfort - Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life and in the Lord's own house shall I dwell forever and ever. (Psalm 22)

Here there is a delicate and difficult aspect of Christian faith an uncertainty about that in-between of my own individual death and everyone’s Final Resurrection. In other terminology: there is a distinction between Particular and General Judgements. This severely perplexed some first generation believers for whom St Paul shed some enlightenment (1Thes 4:1318).

All these spacio-temporal considerations need however to be balanced against the intimate, immediate and forgiving words of Jesus on the Cross to his fellow repenting victim, aptly from the Luke tradition Indeed, I promise you, today you will be with me in paradise (Lk 23: 43).

Now we stand on very sacred ground. What is revealed in the New Testament is the absolute centrality of Resurrection. As Paul puts it starkly, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and my preaching is in vain. (ICor 15:13 14).

With that assurance, let us move from the uncertainties of the present phase in which we find ourselves. Such uncertainty is a crucial cause of our grieving. There is that sting of death (1 Cor 15:55) within Station XIII the Holy Saturday, the Entombment is the strange in between time (perhaps it is this which contributes to the unluckiness of the number 13). Yet we can and do move beyond this in Faith. Again in words from this Mass the sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality - Lord, for your faithful people life is changed not ended (Preface for the Dead I).

As Christians we have utter certainty in the Resurrection The Easter Sunday Event. The tomb/the grave is found empty! The chains of death cannot hold HIM. Death does not take and consume all and everything of us. We shall rise with Christ (I Thes 4:16,) in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will he raised imperishable, and we will he changed. (ICor 15:52)

Station XIV in this series in Edmonton church has a human hotly IRRADIATED - as at the Transfiguration - His face shone like the sun and His clothes became as dazzling as light (Matt 17:2).

The depiction in Station XIV is the simplest yet starkest in all these Stations. It has only one human form indistinguishable individually – young/old – male/female - large/small. The face is unrecognisable because it is so much AGLOW. The body has indistinct lines or blurred boundaries a certain aura about it.

This is our only Faith, our Hope and our Destiny. We believe in the Resurrection of the body and Life everlasting , Amen. (Apostles Creed).

Let me conclude iy trying to capture or summarize all of this in another more concrete way by moving from the art of the Stations of the Cross to the architecture of church buildings.

John Lennon’s material contribution was extraordinarily extensive. Over forty four years serving Cairns Diocese as a priest he was responsible for building, organizing and restructuring to an extent that no other person has done in this Local Church’s now almost one hundred and thirty year history (from a Vicariate Apostolic based on Cooktown founded on 30th January 1877). There are three major church buildings which reveal John Lennon’s heart and mind.

The first, St Monica’s Cathedral was built between 1965 and 1968. John, as bishop’s secretary, had a secondary but significant role. He commented once - rather resentfully - that he received only the blame for all the cathedral’s defects! The cathedral, especially with the former flaming red glass was Good Friday. I recall one Good Friday, a day not unlike today - somewhat grey and overcast, when the red glass actually worked rather well. At the afternoon Good Friday service a powerful purple glow pervaded the whole space reflecting appropriately a sense of the Lord’s Passion and Death.

In the second church building John Lennon was more immediately involved, It carries his own stamp: St Francis Xavier’s Church,West Cairns, built in the 1977.

It has a prayerfulness about it. There is something deeply, darkly contemplative. With due respect to West Cairns parishioners who are here, dare I say that there is also something somewhat heavy and sombre about St Francis Xavier’s. It weighs in upon you. It constrains and contains you and focuses mind and heart, It is inwardly directed! It is a Holy Saturday church where in one sees as through a glass darkly.

Monsignor John Lennon's final resting place facing the altar and Blessed Sacrament at his beloved St Therese's Church Edmonton.

Now and here we are in John Lennon ‘s final and finest church building, St Therese’s, Edmonton. Into this building went all his energies and extensive experience, working with his friend, the notable Brisbane architect, Robin Gibson. This building is utterly different from the other It is white, light and uplifting in every aspect. Compared with the other two buildings - this shouts RESURRECTION.

This church’s clear light and clean lines express those ultimate, inescapable experiences, living, dying and rising those very threshold and marker points of existence.

Here Jesus’ absolutely assuring words gather us all up: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Bishop James Foley