Bernie Kilcline was the neighborhood undertaker in Woonsocket when I was growing up. He had taken over McKenna’s Funeral Service on Harris Avenue which was located next to Kiley’s Oil, a home fuel delivery company, founded by my uncle Jack and later managed by my father.
When my parents were married at St. Charles Church in Woonsocket on June 10, 1939, Bernie graciously volunteered to take motion pictures in color of the bride and groom entering and exiting the parish church. This eight millimeter film has been in the family’s possession these 71 years. I had viewed it occasionally as a young child on those few times an eight millimeter projector was at hand. Now thanks to modern technology, I took the brief film to CVS and had the wedding procession and recession placed on a DVD for easy, full screen viewing.
My parents were older when they married. My mother was 40 and my father was 38. As was the custom of the day, an older woman like my mother wore blue rather than white. Her maid of honor dressed in bright yellow. My father and his brother, the best man, wore winged collar shirts, jacket with tails and pin striped trousers. The women guests all had picture hats and every man had a suit coat and tie. As my parents descended the numerous steps from the church door, their long-awaited delight is striking. My mother catches every eye with her smile as my radiant father firmly guides her down the steps toward the sidewalk. Bright eyed and broadly grinning, they drove off from Woonsocket for a wedding breakfast at the Biltmore.
The O’Brien/Kiley nuptials on that June day before the war had brought smiles to every guest’s face, especially to my parents. Yet when I viewed this old film in its brilliant new form, I experienced a mildly melancholic emotion. In a real sense I wanted to share this moment of elation with my parents. I wanted to congratulate them, embrace them, wish them well just as all those friends and relatives outside St. Charles Church had done. Yet this was impossible. There was no way I could ever personally enjoy that June day in 1939 that happily meant so much to my parents and to their friends. When it came to my parents’ wedding, I would always be an outsider.
But then my Catholic faith intervened to transform my melancholic longing into quiet assurance. Our Catholic belief in eternal life promises that our loved ones, and in this case, my parents, enjoy the presence of God personally and fully. In a mysterious and ineffable way, my parents can appreciate me in God and I can appreciate them through God. Dead to this world, the faithful still share in the communion of saints, that network of prayer, intercession, and support that affords an abiding spiritual contact with our loved ones through God. Aware through God of my personal concern for them, engendered by their brief wedding film, my parents now have even more reason to glorify God in heaven. This is the greatest congratulations I could offer them. The satisfaction that I have in knowing that my parents know the fullness of truth in God, including my concern for them, is better than any pat on my father’s back or peck on my mother’s cheek.
Even after 2,000 years, the mysteries of eternity elude those of us on this side of the grave. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus hints at our wonderful theology of the afterlife that is still to this day evolving. Eternal life was a novel revelation to the Jews of Jesus’ era. Inklings of heaven and hell had stirred during the era of the Maccabees, but Jesus was the first one to declare openly the promise of eternal life. The Christian doctrines of life after death, of death, judgment, heaven and hell, of the beatific vision and of the communion of saints are filled with promise and hope, even if they are short on specifics and particulars. As believers, Christians can pray for their loved ones and be assured that their loved ones pray for them. Through the communion of saints the living and the dead can enjoy a communication, an intimacy, and a support more strengthening and more rewarding than any hand-shake, hug or kiss. The communion of saints truly unites heaven, purgatory and earth. It unites children to parents. It joins those who remain behind to those who have gone before. It is a true communion of saints.
