Somebody I knew for over twenty years died recently.

In our grandparents’ days, death was all around and thought of constantly. Sex was private and seldom mentioned.

Now we saturate ourselves in what passes for sex — all advertisements, entertainments and gossip seeming to drag sex in somehow.

But when forced to talk about death – as at funerals – we mostly find we have nothing intelligent to say.

* * *

Somebody gets up and describes the deceased’s hobbies, favourite music, favourite sporting club — and how “passionate” he/she was.

Cheer up, says somebody else, death is merely a journey. Whatever you do, do NOT get up and ask, “A journey to where?” Nobody will forgive you.

Modern funerals: we tend to call these embarrassing gatherings “not so much a grieving at his loss, but more a celebration of his life . . . .”

But clearly they are designed to celebrate, console and comfort the living – with little thought for any spiritual profit for the dead.

Yet death is a religious subject, whether we like it or not.

We can try having our funerals at the graveside, or at other places that are not churches . . . but we’re wasting our time. Death is religious by its very nature, and there is nothing we can do about it.

* * *

You, dear reader, are going to die:

 * make sure your relatives know that you want your funeral held in a church.

 * and that you want prayers said for your departed soul — both at the funeral and privately by all    present for the rest of their lives.

 * and that you want the priest to wear black vestments, as done for centuries for good reasons, and    abandoned recently for bad reasons.

 * and insist that you be buried, not cremated.

What is a saint?

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines a saint as a “holy person.”

However, we’re already hearing a lot of baloney about Mother Mary from people keen to play down her holiness.

Yesterday a chappie on the South Australian Catholic Church payroll told the media: “The thing about Mary is she’s a bit more vibrant, she’s not a goody-two-shoes type figure . . . .”

* * *

Cringe.

Are we so afraid of the notion of holiness that we must pretend that even true saints — who have given their whole lives to sacrificial devotion in the hope of becoming holy — are not really holy at all, but are, in fact, just a little bit like us?

Are we determined to domesticate even this greatest and holiest and most God-centred and prayer-centred Australian of all time, and make her ordinary – so that we, in our state of personal decay and feeble compromise, need not feel embarrassed or challenged to change ourselves?

* * *

Pope John Paul II warned against this: “Dear friends: Mary MacKillop cannot be understood without reference to her religious vocation . . . Mother Mary of the Cross did not just free people from ignorance through schooling, or alleviate their suffering through compassionate care. She worked to satisfy their deeper, though sometimes unconscious, longing for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’.”

* * *

Here is a prayer that Mother Mary MacKillop used in her personal devotions:

“I resolve, with the help of God’s grace

to die any kind of death,

or to suffer any kind of pain,

either of mind or body,

or any other affliction that can befall me,

sooner than for one moment to commit a deliberate and known sin

against God’s love,

and the claims he has upon my duty and service. 

Hitherto I have sadly forgotten my great end . . .

I will come back to thee, my Eternal Father . . .

Let me not prove a coward in thy service. 

Let me love to be humiliated and persecuted,

so that I may, during the remainder of this short life,

remain as near to thee, my Jesus,

in the thickest of the strife,

as in thy Divine Wisdom thou art pleased to permit.  Amen.”

* * *

Holy Mary MacKillop, Saint Mary of the Cross, traditional Catholic, please pray for us.

In 1983, on the seventh Wednesday before Easter, bushfires roared through many districts of Victoria and South Australia, leaving 85 people dead and over 3000 homes and other buildings reduced to ashes.

That event is remembered as the “Ash Wednesday Fires”.

* * *

The 46^th day before Easter was, of course, known as “Ash Wednesday” long before that.

A “day of ashes” to mark the beginning of Lent, the six-week pre-Easter season of prayers and fasting, has been celebrated by Catholics for over 1400 years.

It was mentioned in the Order of the Mass called the “Gregorian Sacramentary” (named after Pope Gregory I, pope from 590 to 604AD) which was the forerunner of the Traditional Catholic Mass used by all Catholics until the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s – and still used by traditional Catholics.

* * *

The name “Ash Wednesday” comes from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of believers as a sign of repentance. While doing it, the priest recites the words: “Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.

Using ashes in ceremonies associated with sorrow for sins goes even further back into Old Testament times (in the books of Jeremiah, Psalms, Jonas, Judith, Job and others).

* * *

Ashes signify that we want God to give us a humble heart, so that we may weep for our sins and stop doing them – and to receive God’s strength to never give up, but to persevere in pleasing Him.

With such thoughts in your mind, go to church today and, as the ashes are put on your head, ask humbly for God’s mercy and grace.

Research published in this month’s Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that:

* the average Australian watches television three hours  per day

* every extra hour a day spent watching television increases one’s risk of death from heart disease by 18 percent

* those watching four hours a day have an 80 percent higher heart death risk than those watching two hours or less.

Most people wouldn’t be surprised by these figures — we know television is bad for us.

Why do we watch it then?

Are we addicted to it?

* * *

In a 1970s study, 182 German families agreed to stop watching television for a year and were offered money if they succeeded.

None lasted beyond six months. All suffered anxiety, depression etc., and had to start watching again, just to feel “normal”.

That’s true addiction — compulsive, self-harmful behaviour, without which the user can’t feel normal.

And there’s a side to every person which enjoys seeing human nature at its worst. Television brings this tendency to the surface.

Health problems and physical death aren’t the worst aspects of television.

* * *

The answer is never to watch television at all.

That would make your day three hours longer.

You could comfortably fit in an hour of praying, an hour of useful reading and an hour of silent contemplation in God’s presence.

If you could teach yourself to do that, you might increase your chances of being an unselfish and loving person here on earth by several hundred percent.

And improve your chances of being found fit to spend eternity with God by an infinite amount.

Mrs Kathleen Evans of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia had been a cigarette smoker from the age of 16 to 46.

Then she gave it up. But it was too late. Three years later she was diagnosed with lung cancer and told it had spread to her brain and that she would be dead for sure in a matter of months.

Now, 17 years later, she is still alive and disease-free.

She had no medical treatment, but attributes her cure to praying daily to Mary MacKillop (Blessed Mary of the Cross) and wearing her picture plus a piece of cloth which had been part of Mary M’s clothing.

After much investigation and scrutiny, the Catholic Church has endorsed that this cure was a miracle.

Last month, Pope Benedict announced the fact, and yesterday Mrs Evans went public, identifying herself publicly for the first time, telling the media, “I do believe in miracles.”

So what are the skeptics going to make of this?

* * *

We live in a society where believing in that kind of thing is considered superstition.

But Christians believe in miracles anyway.

They say that the big miracle, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead after being crucified, also has the evidence of eyewitnesses and compels belief.

The eyewitnesses to that event certainly didn’t make the story up. Most of them persisted in proclaiming what they had seen in the face of persecution and death, and several were themselves crucified. Others were thrown to the lions etc.

* * *

To those who doubt, we say, “Do not close your mind. Do not rule God out. Remember, the one true joy in life is to know that God lives and that God is love.”

Pope Benedict XVI will visit the main Jewish synagogue in Rome soon — on January 17, which is now being called the Church’s annual “Day of Dialogue with Judaism”.

Rome’s chief Rabbi, Riccardo di Segni, praises the forthcoming visit as a “milestone”, saying he has “great expectations”.

* * *

One expectation of the Jews seems to be that the Pope will let them dictate who will and who won’t be made saints.

They complained again recently, when the Pope brought the sainthood of Pius XII a step closer.

And last year they were telling the Pope what prayers are OK for Catholics to pray and what aren’t.

On Good Fridays, Catholics pray for the conversion of Jews to Christ — a prayer asking that “God our Lord enlighten their hearts that they may know Jesus Christ, Saviour of men”.

In the face of Jewish complaints, the Pope, would you believe, obediently changed the wording of this prayer. But apparently not obediently enough, because the Italian Rabbis still boycotted last year’s “Day of Dialogue” in protest against the Pope’s inadequate subservience.

* * *

This is all nonsense.

Jesus himself spent his whole life trying to convert Jews.

His last words to his disciples included, “Go and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded.”

The idea that Jews don’t need to convert to Christ is not part of the Christian religion — but its opposite.

If those calling themselves Christians love the Jewish people, then they MUST want them to receive all the benefits that God offers to mankind.

To interpret such a desire as hatred for Jews just doesn’t add up.