| Sermon preached
at the funeral liturgy for Archbishop Pantin on Saturday, March 18, 2000
by Fr Michel de Verteuil
I would like first to thank Fr Christian and the organisers of today's liturgy for
giving me the privilege of giving the sermon at this funeral Mass.
I am very conscious that I am only one voice speaking on behalf of all those who have
deep and beautiful things to say about Archbishop Pantin.
During this entire week we have been reading and hearing wonderful tributes, in the
press and through the various call-in programmes on radio and television coming from
people of every social class and of every religion.
I see myself as the spokesperson for you all. I remember with deep emotion that just
two years ago, on this very day of March 18 Archbishop Pantin did me the honour of
inviting me to preach for the 30th anniversary of his episcopal ordination.
He had fixed it for the 18th and not the actual date of the 19th and it is important to
know why, as it was so typical of him. The 19th was the anniversary of President
Robinson's inauguration and the archbishop did not want to take anything away from the
president's function.
Two years later, on the March 18, we are here grieving at the loss of our beloved
archbishop. Let us grieve, weep, without any embarrassment, the Lord shares in our grief.
He told us, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
A word of comfort
The evidence of the past week and especially of the past three days is that we are not
only mourning, we are also celebrating, celebrating the blessing God has given us in this
wonderful person.
Let us remember that in celebrating Archbishop Pantin we are celebrating Jesus, Jesus
who said to his followers, you are in me and I in you.
He was the presence of Jesus among us, it was Jesus who ministered to us in him, and it
is to Jesus that he has now gone, to be part of his glorious body.
It works two ways. It is Jesus who gives us the key to understanding him and in
remembering him we understand Jesus better, he makes Jesus come alive for us in our time
and in our country.
The gospels must be before our eyes during these days, and this morning we can let one
gospel text guide us in seeing Jesus in Archbishop Pantin, and seeing Archbishop Pantin in
Jesus - the reading (Mt 5:43-48) which we just heard, the one prescribed by the Church for
this Saturday of the first week of Lent.
It is being read all over the world today. Wherever members of our Church are gathered
for the Eucharist, or are doing their personal reading, this is the word that they are
hearing.
The Lord is speaking it to us this morning as a word of comfort, a word of challenge
and conversion.
Fr Michel delivers his sermon. Listening (from
left) are Frs Lumsden, Harricharan and Merrick.
The reading is summed up in a teaching which is totally appropriate for our funeral
service this morning since it contains the wonderful words of Jesus, "Be children
of your Father in heaven, for he causes the sun to rise on bad as well as good, and his
rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike".
The text tells us about a day when Jesus wanted to explain himself to his followers,
wanted to share with them how he saw himself as the Son of God. It also tells us how all
sons and daughters of God are.
Jesus invited his followers to look at the sun rising, the same sun which continues to
rise on us today, bringing its light and warmth.
He told them, look at the sun, note how it rises for all of us indiscriminately. The
sun doesn't ask who deserves its light and who doesn't, it just rises and shine.
Some welcome its rising, others don't, that is not the sun's business, it just rises
and brings its light and warmth. Then Jesus said, that is how God loves, and God's sons
and daughters love, generously, indiscriminately, without calculation about who deserves
to be loved or who will make good use of that love.
Then one day when it was raining and all his companions were welcoming the rain and
collecting it in buckets and looking forward to the grass turning green, he invited them
to celebrate how rain too falls as a blessing on all, without discrimination between who
is deserving and who is not.
We can imagine his disciples nodding their heads and saying, so this is why Jesus acts
the way he does, it is because he is the Son of God.
They remembered how he welcomed everyone, those who were his friends and gathered round
him, but also those who didn't like him and tried to trap him - the Pharisees and
Herodians and the delegates of the chief priests and scribes. He had meals with them all,
discussed things with them, treated them all with respect.
This teaching about the sun and rain helped them to understand something else about
him, that he had a preference for those who felt unloved and unnoticed - tax collectors,
sinners, prostitutes, lepers, the poor widow whom no one noticed was giving everything she
had.
They realised that he wanted to assure them that God's love was shining on them too,
was falling like rain on them too.
They remembered too that welcoming people doesn't mean that you don't tell them the
truth. Jesus knew that the religious leaders were preventing people from experiencing
God's love, and he reproached them severely for it.
As we hear these wonderful words, "Be children of your Father in heaven, for he
causes the sun to rise on bad as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and
dishonest alike", we too can nod our heads because we recognise Archbishop
Pantin, a true Son of God.
We think of all the testimonies we have been hearing in the media but also in personal
conversations. Everyone, from the highest to the lowest, has a story of how they were
welcomed by him and made to feel important.
This morning we celebrate that he was truly a Son of God, his smile, his good humour,
his big hugs, shining like the sun falling like the rain on all alike.
But like Jesus he had a preference, for those whom the rest of us tend to forget. Every
Christmas he must bring sunshine to Carrera, Christmas morning itself he must celebrate
Mass at St Dominic's Home, every Easter morning St Ann's Hospital. Regularly at St Jude's,
the Lady Hochoy Homes, the hospitals.
'Goat don't make sheep'
Even as the text tells us about Jesus himself, it tells us something else very
important - Jesus spoke it as a challenge to his followers. Jesus did not merely practice
universal love, he called on his disciples to do the same.
They must be sons and daughters of the Father in heaven who causes the sun to rise on
just and unjust alike, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike.
Brothers and sisters, we are accustomed to hearing these words of Jesus, and now we
take them for granted. But let us this morning allow ourselves to receive them with wonder
as we are meant to.
Let us ask ourselves, what kind of person would make such a challenging demand on
people.
The answer is clear, it must be a person who believes that human beings are capable of
great things, a person who believes in other people.
This is crucial because it reminds us that to love people is to believe in them. We do
not love people when we look on them as objects that we must help.
That is of course better than not loving at all, but it is not the love of God, the
love of God communicates to people that they are capable of loving, that they are members
of the family.
In the midst of this culture, the sons and daughters of God say something radically
different, they say you have within you the capacity to love selflessly and
indiscriminately.
I know you have that capacity because I see in you a son, a daughter of God. As we say
here in Trinidad and Tobago, "goat don't make sheep", God doesn't make children
who are not capable of love.
Sons and daughters of God do not say this angrily, frustrated at the lack of love they
find others. They love others into loving, I will let my love shine on you, rain on you
because this is the best way to bring out the divine power to love that is in you.
Brothers and sisters, let us celebrate how this Son of God whom he has given us as his
gift, believed in people.
There are many, many examples we can point to. We think of the prisoners and
ex-prisoners that he made his special concern. He believed in them, he called on us to
give them a second chance.
We think of the young people. Many found him idealistic and impractical but that did
not deter him. He challenged them to love chastely, faithfully. He rejected with all his
energy that we should give up hope in them. He believed in them.
He believed in our country too. One little phrase annoyed him very much - when people
would say, "This is Trinidad, so what can you expect?"
Our political leaders he never ceased to challenge, because he believed they were
capable of transcending self-interest and being generous in their love and service.
Mutual respect
One group in particular he believed in as sons and daughters of God called to make the
sun rise on all, the rain of blessings to fall on all alike - other Christian Churches,
other religions and other faiths.
We must focus on this relationship because, as our Holy Father, Pope John Paul
continues to insist, we religious people must give the lead in relating with one another
in mutual respect as sons and daughters of God. This is both God's greatest challenge and
his choicest grace for our time.
Let us then thank God, that long before this cause became as popular as it is now,
Archbishop Pantin resolutely embraced it.
Many of you are too young to remember this, but we older ones still do. One day when
the Archbishop Pantin was only recently ordained, he accepted the invitation of the pundit
of the Hindu temple in Tunapuna, went to the temple, took off his shoes and prayed.
That was the beginning. The courageous gesture was followed by the founding of the IRO
of which he was always a committed member, as its leaders have testified many times during
the week. The IRO is one of his choicest legacies he has left us.
Yes, we must now speak of keeping his legacy as we take up our responsibilities to one
another and to our country.
Our archdiocesan administrator, Fr Christian makes a very perceptive remark in his
Official in this week's (Mar 19) Catholic News. He reminds us that we have lost the
Archbishop. On that we had no choice, we accept with faith that the Father has taken him
home.
But the values which the Archbishop stood for, those he put forward in word and
example, those are a different matter. On those we have a choice, we can lose them but
that is our choice. Our prayer today is that we choose not to lose but to preserve them.
God gave us the gift of this special son, it was for a purpose and this purpose can
only be that we would preserve the values he stood for by word and example.
That is a challenge for us as members of our Church and for the entire country.
In the first reading of today's Mass, God tells us through the voice of Moses that if
the nation keeps his commandments then "for praise and renown and honour he will
set you high above all the nations he has made".
We know that we are a people with many riches, natural ones likes oil and natural gas,
rich country, personal riches such as musicians and intellectuals and sportsmen and women.
We dare to pray that what will make us a nation of "praise, renown, and
honour" is that we are God's sons and daughters who love like God - generously
and indiscriminately, like the sun and the rain.
Children were magnificent
In our Catholic liturgy we conclude our service by asking God to let the departed rest
in peace.
For someone like Archbishop Pantin, he will rest in peace because he knows that his
work continues, so that when we ask God to give him peace, this is what we are praying
for.
The events of the past week, especially the services in the cathedral on Thursday and
yesterday give us the hope that it is possible. This was truly Trinidad and Tobago at its
best.
The crowds who came to pay their respects represented every age, race, class, creed,
educational background, political affiliation. All was done with reverence, discipline,
good humour.
The school children were magnificent. God's sun was rising and his blessing of rain was
falling on all alike.
We dare to hope then that God will continue his work among us, and so humbly but
confidently we pray for our nation when we pray for our dear archbishop.
Eternal rest grant to him O Lord, and
let perpetual light shine on him, may he rest in peace.
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