Spero Consulting

Today, we went to a funeral Mass for a friend’s father, and the priest had an excel­lent homily. It was the kind that one can only give if he well knows the dece­dent, and in this case, it seemed that the priest had known our friend’s dad for over twenty years due to the latter’s deep involve­ment in the parish.

Dur­ing the ser­mon, the priest merged details and anec­dotes of the man’s life with the typ­i­cal (and very use­ful) Catholic empha­sis on hope and redemp­tion, rather than sor­row and despair, e.g., that it is the begin­ning of the next step of a jour­ney and not the end of everything.

In fact, the good Father men­tioned that through­out the New Tes­ta­ment, Jesus states 125 times for his dis­ci­ples and oth­ers to be not afraid. (He said that he didn’t actu­ally count those instances him­self, but that’s com­pared to eight times when Jesus men­tions the top two com­mand­ments: (1) love God above all oth­ers, and (2) love (and treat) oth­ers as you wanted to be treated yourself.)

Per­haps it is because our own demise seems so far removed – but who really knows – we thought that his advice was excel­lent: be like our friend’s father – live life to the fullest and fear not death.

That’s coin­ci­dent with what we con­sider to be the best line in the three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. It was uttered by Cap­tain Teague, played by Keith Richards, as he rebukes his son, Cap­tain Jack Spar­row (played by Johnny Depp) in the third movie, At World’s End.

Jack Spar­row had just turned to his father, and quipped, “That’s the trick, isn’t it, to survive?”

And Cap­tain Teague replies with a very Catholic:

“It’s not just about liv­ing for­ever, Jackie, the trick, is liv­ing with your­self, forever.”

Of course, the beauty of it is that while it is com­pletely con­sis­tent with our own reli­gion, it is also com­pletely con­sis­tent with what we know of every other reli­gion, too.

Like our friend’s father, may you, dear reader, live to an age when and behave in a way that you have no regrets.