Reflection by Michael Vertin
at the Funeral of Margaret O’Gara
23 August 2012
36 years, 3 months, and 28 days ago, Margaret O’Gara and I exchanged marriage vows in this church, standing in front of this very altar. We had first met one another some three and a half years earlier, as members of a discussion group for graduate students and faculty members that was sponsored by the Institute of Christian Thought at St. Michael’s. Margaret was a doctoral student in theology and I was a newly-appointed assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies.
Our first significant encounter, however, occurred a year and a half later, when we collaborated as two of the weekly speakers in a month-long Lenten lecture series. The series was sponsored by the St. Michael’s College Student Union, and it was entitled “The Problem of Evil.” After our collaboration had blossomed into marriage, Margaret and I often joked that this development was an excellent example of St. Augustine’s saying that good can come out of evil.
The substance of my brief reflection is divided into four main parts. The first is the longest.
Part I
All of us are yearners by nature. All of us are inherently eager for answers to our questions. What is making this noise? What does Sally’s gesture mean? Is Jack’s statement correct? Is Jill’s proposal good? Moreover, all of us are inherently eager for fulfillment of our desires. That’s obviously true for bodily desires. A hungry person innately craves something to eat; a thirsty person innately craves something to drink. But it’s also true for desires of the heart. I innately desire to grasp, possess, become united with whatever will satisfy my deepest longings.
Next, there are three things to notice about this inherent yearning for answers to questions and fulfillment of desires. The first is that it is basically something very personal. At root it is not something that we attribute to other people or deny about them. Rather, at root it is something that we discover in ourselves. It is the fundamental curiosity and radical restlessness that I experience in myself, and that I strongly suspect you also experience in yourself, whether or not either of us has ever thought much about it or even if we are inclined to deny it.
The second thing to notice is that our inherent striving for answers to our questions and fulfillment of our desires is at best the basic norm, the fundamental standard, the primary criterion for the kind of living that we call “intelligent,” “reasonable,” “responsible,” and “loving.” In the words of Karl Rahner, “Properly human living is a matter of fidelity to our best selves.” Or, in the words of Bernard Lonergan, “Genuine objectivity is the result of authentic subjectivity.”
The third thing to notice is that insofar as we reflect upon our own inherent yearning for answers to our questions and fulfillment of our desires, we can arrive at something of the character of the ultimate. Studying the notches in the shank of any door-key can bring to light certain features of any lock which that key can open, namely, the arrangement of the tumblers inside that lock. Similarly, studying the character of our intelligent, reasonable, responsible, and loving yearning can bring to light the features of ultimate intelligibility, ultimate reality, ultimate goodness, ultimate lovability, as whatever would totally satisfy our wondering minds and restless hearts.
It is this dynamic orientation to the ultimate that provides the fundamental meaning of the word “spiritual.” And it is whatever would completely, entirely, exhaustively satisfy that orientation that provides the fundamental meaning of what some spiritual people label “God.” Or, from the other side, spiritual living is essentially nothing other than fully human living. I suggest that to overlook or deny this is to overlook or deny something utterly basic about ourselves. The fact that such denials are quite common in present-day culture cannot save them from being at least implicitly self-contradictory.
Part II
To live not just as a spiritual person but as a religious person is to have taken a further step. It is to have supplemented one’s interior orientation to the ultimate with the judgment that this or that event or person is an appearance of the ultimate in human history, and with the decision to live in accord with what that appearance entails. Of course there are many distinct religions in the world, many distinct communal judgments and communal decisions about the ultimacy of various events or persons.
In the context of what I have just maintained, to be a Christian is to judge that Jesus of Nazareth is the concrete historical self-manifestation of the ultimate, and to strive to live in accord with that judgment. Or, in language more familiar to some of us, Jesus is God’s unique historical self-gift to humankind. We Christians think we have definitive evidence (not in the data of sense but in the data of our consciousness) that, in the life of Jesus, God both shows us concretely what fully human living really is and invites us concretely to live in that way. The Christian stance is far from a blind leap. Rather, it is a response to a gift of knowledge and love that we cannot reject without rejecting what is best in ourselves.
The Bible recounts this divine lesson and invitation in some detail. It is basically an account of and a call to wholly self-transcending love. Think of Isaiah’s story of the servant who suffers willingly on behalf of everyone, a story that Christians interpret as foreshadowing what Jesus himself did. Think of Jesus’ many stories, such as the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican. Think of the embodied parable that is Jesus’ own life, a life spent entirely in teaching others, encouraging others, healing others, and ultimately dying willingly for others.
The Bible passages read earlier by Cathy, myself, and Father Dan are regard key element of God’s lesson and invitation to us, an element that is especially important as we gather today for Margaret’s funeral. Death is not the greatest evil. The greatest evil is nothing other than the failure to love. Conversely, if we love as Jesus did, God will raise us from the dead and bring us to eternal life with Godself, just as God did with Jesus.
Part III
Margaret’s vigorous Christian commitment owed much to her parents. Joan Smith and James O’Gara first met in a discussion group that was organized by the Catholic Worker movement. For ten years Joan had worked as an administrative assistant in the local Catholic Action movement. And after marrying Joan and producing two baby girls with her, James eventually served as managing editor and then editor of Commonweal magazine for more than three decades. This familial milieu oriented Margaret quite early not just to devout Christian living but also to thoughtful reflection on that living. That is to say, it oriented her toward doing theology.
Margaret’s personal and then professional interest in specifically ecumenical theology was sparked by many factors, including her enjoyment of serious discussion, her delight in problem-solving, and her temperamental disposition toward overcoming disagreements. But she was fond of recounting the particular event that triggered her decision to become an ecumenist. She happened to be the only Catholic in a large class during the first of her two years at Yale Divinity School. The professor spent a long time elaborating what he judged to be the severe theological problems of Catholic spiritual practices in the late medieval period. Then, suddenly and without warning, he turned to her and said, “Margaret, perhaps you would like to offer a word in defense of indulgences!”
Part IV
Let me conclude by highlighting three of the many features that stand out for me as I think about Margaret’s 37 years of professional work as an ecumenical theologian. Although she did not ordinarily express these features quite in the way that I will now do, I have reason to believe my interpretation is an accurate one.
First, Margaret was a thoroughly spiritual person in the sense I discussed earlier. She had a lifelong commitment to live in fidelity to what was best in herself. She had a lifelong dedication to making each of her particular judgments and decisions accord with her inherent striving for the ultimate answer to her many questions and the ultimate fulfillment of her deepest desires—a striving that she (like many other Christian theologians today) interpret concretely as the action within her of the Holy Spirit.
Second, Margaret was a thoroughly religious person in the sense that she supplemented her interior orientation to the ultimate with her evidence–based judgment that the ultimate has entered human history. More specifically, she was a thoroughly Christian religious person in the sense that her evidence-based judgment was that Jesus of Nazareth is the entry of the ultimate into human history, and in the sense that she strived to live the life of totally self-transcending love which that judgment implies.
Third and finally, Margaret was fervently committed to overcoming divisions within the community of Christians not just because serious disagreements made her uncomfortable—though they did. The basic motivation for her ecumenical passion was her recognition that serious disagreements between Christians are a counter-sign to others, an obstacle that tends to prevent others from grasping the truth about what God intends in Jesus. Margaret was radically eager that Christians overcome their serious disagreements in order that the Christian community as a whole can more effectively display Jesus as God’s lesson to everyone all that fully human living is totally self-transcending loving, and as God’s invitation to everyone to live in just that way.
This radical motivation of Margaret’s ecumenical commitment is captured neatly in the prayer that she herself selected for the back of the card that was available at yesterday’s visitation and again here this morning, a prayer she invites all of us Christians (in our own ways and at our own times) to offer as well:
“Father of all, you call us to be one flock in our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. In following him, may we so care for others that all see in us the love of the one true Shepherd, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”