Mass of the Resurrection: Margaret O’Gara
St. John’s Abbey and University
August 25, 2012
Homily by Rene McGraw OSB
Scripture texts: Isaiah 25:6-10; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14,18; John 14:1-7
Margaret was excited about singing hymns: For eight years I was privileged to be part of consultations at the Ecumenical Center, with Margaret and Richard Mouw of the Dutch Reformed Evangelical tradition as co-chairs. The picture that remains the strongest for me was our Sunday night hymn singing. We would gather at Patrick Henry’s house or at the Ecumenical Center itself and after supper, the hymn singing would start. Paul Bassett of the Church of the Nazarene was there with his keyboard. Long after everyone else had decided “enough already,” Margaret was still calling out a number for another hymn. Maybe it would be a rich harmonious Lutheran hymn. But more than likely she would call for one or two or three or ten of the good old Wesleyan hymns, “Oh For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” “And Can It Be that I Should Gain,” or revivalist hymn, a Baptist song, an Eastern Orthodox chant, the hymns popular in Catholic churches.
Whatever it was, Margaret believed that the holy mountain of the prophecy of Isaiah would resound and reverberate with the song of hymns, not just Catholic hymns surely, but hymns where all God’s people would process to the top of that holy mountain and all would harmonize – not all singing the melody line, but all in perfect pitch, in perfect harmony. Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, Evangelicals of one sort or another, and in these latter years, especially the Mennonites. All in perfect harmony. All enriching the sound of the music. All coming to the holy mountain. All together.
All the Christian people. But the Lord does not just invite the Christians to come to the mountain. To see that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life did not mean for Margaret that all those other people beyond the Christian contingent, walking to the holy mountain, were unimportant. The Jewish people, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs and all those others walking to the holy mountain – Margaret welcomed them to the holy mountain, but her mission in life was to get the Christians singing in harmony, the high sopranos of one religion, the rich bass of another group of Christians, all these must be coordinated and brought to sing together. The Christians could not welcome all those other groups until they had learned themselves to sing in harmony.
But each section – the tenors and sopranos, the altos and the basses – must learn their own part perfectly. Otherwise, no harmony can occur, until each group sings perfectly its own song. The basses can’t sing soprano. To have altos singing baritone does not result in the best harmony. The truth, that Jesus is, demands that those who come to him must know their music – the music of their theology, the pitch of their prayer life, the rhythm of their moral life. They will all touch the melody from time to time, a melody rooted in the Incarnation and Resurrection. But then their voices will explode into the richness of harmony. Different voices, different timbres, different shading. And to do that each section must know perfectly what their voice is. Ecumenical work demands that each voice be true to its own tradition, until it sees where it has gone astray from the message of Jesus or over-emphasized one part of the harmony, singing too loudly, so that a perfect harmony is not possible. The way up the mountain does not come about because a particular melody line dominates. The way up the mountain demands that the voices blend.
All of that is what Margaret’s work meant to me. But I also learned another side of Margaret: her parents and the struggle they had as they grew older. She was at long distance and had to travel down to the States to be involved in their care with her sister. There were the times that Margaret and Mike would be here on campus, teaching, spending a year at the ecumenical center, visiting, inviting people for a meal in their apartment. And there were times when unaccountably Margaret would agonize a bit over whether she was coming across too strongly at one or another time in the consultations. She was one with whom it was possible to talk about the status of women in the church, but also to feel her strong love for the Catholic church and her equal love for the Ecumenical movement and all the people she met who were singing another line of the Christian melody. And then there were the postcards from wherever she was. These postcards always gave me comfort because it said that there was someone in this world with handwriting that was as difficult to read as mine.
There is an old commercial for Coke that became popular back in the seventies and turned into a hit song, which I think characterizes for me what Margaret longed for in her teaching, in her ecumenical work, in her friendships, in her church: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” I like to think that in family, in friends, in Toronto, at St. John’s and St. Ben’s, there is a bit more harmony because of who she was. As we all struggle to leave aside our prejudices and walk toward the top of the holy mountain, I think I can imagine Margaret standing there directing everyone to sing, “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing.” All in harmony. All in beauty. All walking the holy mountain where Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
I want to end with two stanzas of a poem of Emily Dickinson
GOING to heaven!
I don’t know when,Pray do not ask me how, –
Indeed, I ‘m too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven! –How dim (and far away) it sounds!
And yet it will be doneAs sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd’s arm!Perhaps you’re going too!
Who knows?If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to those I lost!The smallest “robe” will fit me,
And just a bit of “crown”;For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.
Margaret, you are home. Help us all to find Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, and to sing his song.