Post Ash Wednesday mass reflection and a dead Jesuit

Five minutes after Ash Wednesday mass at 7:30pm, I found myself standing in line to pay my respects to a dead Jesuit named Fr. Desmond Reid. I don't think I have ever met Fr. Reid, and certainly did not recognise him from his picture. But M, who was responsible for getting me in the queue, said he was such a wonderful person, a friendly man, who had led many of her bible discussion groups. So I said, okay, I would accompany her to the wake. It was also, conveniently, on the way to where I had parked the car, so there was that, too - a heavy flow of traffic that would have prevented me from leaving anyway. I was quite taken aback by the crowd of people who had gathered in the hall that for these past three nights had become a funeral gathering. It seemed there were more than two hundred people there, and more outside. Amazing and wonderful and to my mind, rather unexpected.

As we were shuffled, waiting for our turn, I found myself telling M, who I feel very friendly and homey toward (for the simple reason that she is/was a good friend of my cousin's in college), how it was only in Singapore that I started going to mass regularly again. That actually, once I stopped living in my parents' house, mass was only an every now and then thing. As and when. Now and then. And that I had no other reason for my return other than an inexplicable, indescribable need for it...you might even say a hunger. Also, I was worried for my kids, for my family. If I was not going to give faith to them, who was? They would be left bereft, without a choice simply because they did not know. I received it. I chose to leave it a little, and I chose to return. I pictured my kids as adults and realised that if they never had it, they might possibly never want it to return to.

M, who I see at mass sometimes with her children, rarely with her husband, seemed to understand what I meant. That night, for Ash Wednesday mass, we were both alone, and there was no need to speculate on the reasons.

As we shuffled closer to the open casket, I caught a glimpse of Fr. Reid. All of a sudden I remembered a story T had told me of a time when he was maybe in the third grade at the Ateneo. Some Jesuit, then as now, had also passed away. And all the students in all the classes were made to line up and pay their respects in pairs. T was paired with a school mate and as they looked down at the face of the dead Jesuit, T felt a mad uncontrollable impulse to laugh. Something about the man's face. Something off in a funny way. His eyes met with those of his friend's, and almost as if by understanding, they shared that wild desire for laughter. Biting their lips, they ran like mad, pell mell to the outside of the chapel. Only when they got there did they burst into spasms of gut-wrenching mirth.

Recalling this, I squelched a similar impulse of my own to laugh. I closed my eyes, bit my lower lip and said a silent prayer. For Fr. Ried and for my family and for our faith.

Of course.