The Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot
Rank: Polyeleos
Read
Acts 8:40-9:19; 1 Corinthians 4:9-16
John 6:48-54; Matthew 13:54-58
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
This reading is offered as an option for proclamation at funerals, for it is in the Eucharist we find our destiny. The Eucharist is the “medicine of immortality” as St. Ignatius of Antioch calls it. By uniting ourselves to the Son of God, we share in the same life that he has, which includes the lasting victory over death.
For a medicine to do its work, it must be accompanied by the proper lifestyle to facilitate the healing. For example, while cortisone shots may help your swollen knee, in order for its effects to last, physical therapy is required. It is the same as the Eucharist. We need not only Eucharistic moments on Sunday and holy days, but Eucharistic lives. It is a life of sacrifice and self-gift that lets the medicine of immortality do its work. St. Ignatius of Antioch puts it in these striking terms when he counsels some of his friends against saving him from his martyrdom: “Allow me to become food for the wild beasts, through whom it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ” (Letter to the Romans, 4).
The goal of the Christian life is to become Eucharist, to become wheat fallen to the ground, made anew through the process of repentance and divine refashioning. At the moment of our funeral, the goal of the Christian life is accomplished. Someone who has united to the body of Christ in life has now become his body in death.
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