As I brewed the coffee in Sophia’s kitchen, the aroma wafted up the stairs and she shouted down to me that I should heat up some milk so that we could have lattes. Then I swung by a coffee shop and had them grind some fresh beans. One morning, I stopped by the bakery and picked up some of the most Parisian looking pastries I could find. Life? Would there be life beyond death? She’d like to believe so.
#Does she know sophia fresh download full
If only heaven were full of cafés, or patisseries where she could while away the hours talking with others who, like her appreciated the finer things of life. It would be nice to think that there would be a place for her, not exactly heaven per se, but someplace heavenly. But as death drew near, she longed for the certainty of her youth. Her parents saw to it that she was raised in the church, but a lifetime of tragedy and heartache had led her far away from the faith she had grown up with. It didn’t take me long to figure out that she’d spent a great deal of time in the church. She would say, “Just give me the facts!” I liked her no-nonsense approach even though I knew that the meager facts which I possessed, might not sustain us on our journey. Some days, when she was able, the questions just tumbled out of her. I went to Sophia’s bedside every day for weeks. No time for gentle hello’s, or warming up to one another, just a long, painful and sometimes awkward good-bye. To be present to a stranger when they are so close to death is a daunting task. I had been told that she only had a few weeks before the cancer would, and I quote, “take her,” not die, but that “the cancer would take her.” No one used the word death or said that she was going to die. So, via, a friend of a friend, I was summoned to her bedside. I became her pastor because she knew somebody who used to be a member of the congregation which I serve. When the doctors told her that she was dying she thought that she ought to have a pastor.
For the purposes of this sermon, I will call her Sophia Sophia, the Greek word for WISDOM. Today, as we remember ALL the SAINTS who have gone before us, together with ALL the SAINTS who dwell among us, my heart goes back to the WISDOM imparted to me by a particular saint, who taught me so much about the ways in which the DIVINE MYSTERY works, in, with, through, and beyond us to comfort those who mourn. So, it doesn’t surprise me that those of us who have given up worshipping personifications of the MYSTERY which IS the DIVINE LOVE in which we are all ONE, we are left longing for a way to mourn and to comfort which does not require that we worship the idol of the all too small sky-god, which we once worshipped. This image of the DIVINE MYSTERY is readily offered to the dying and to those who mourn as a kind of talisman, who alone can provide the necessary comfort, all we need is just have faith in the various visions offered to us by the faithful of an afterlife. So much of what I would call popular, cultural, Christianity imagines the DIVINE MYSTERY which is the SOURCE of ALL that IS, the SOURCE of ALL life as a kindly, old, gentleman in the sky from whom we should seek comfort from the pain of death. But how do we mourn and how shall we be comforted in the midst of a pandemic? Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. This year as a result of public health restrictions, death has been a lonely endeavour, for both the dying and for the grieving. Sadly, millions more people have died alone of the regular stuff which causes our bodies to perish. In Ontario, more than 3,100, and here in York region 267 people have died from COVID-19. Since this pandemic began, more than 1.2 million people around the world have died from COVID-19. In Canada, the death toll exceeds 10,000 people.
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