LONDON - 9 April 2008 - 300 words
Text: Tribute to Anthony Minghella
Fr Gerard Sheenan, Parish Priest at St Thomas More's Catholic Church in Swiss Cottage gave the following homily at a memorial service for Anthony Minghella.
A couple of years ago I was taking a class of teenagers who were preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. Encouraged by a survey I had heard about that dealt with the dreams and aspirations of young people in Britain, I tried a question which I thought might engage them: "what is most important for you when you think of your life in the future, what are you most hoping for?" I asked. I was met by a row of heads with their faces all looking down at the floor. Only slightly perturbed at that point I pressed on, trying to open it up a bit more. "How do you see yourself in ten years time? What would you like to have achieved?" In the end, probably to put me out of my misery, one girl plucked up enough courage to tell me. "Fame", she said. Now, that was not part of the script that I had written in my mind as I had prepared the class, but I was struck by her honesty, and it rang true. Yes, I said, God has made us for eternity, and we have a longing for immortality in our very nature. Each of us is unique and we have all been created for a specific purpose; the life of each one of us has a meaning and there is a yearning within for that sense to be revealed. The desire for fame is a reflection of the hope for an immortal life, which makes sense of our lives: we want to live on. The promise of the Resurrection of Christ, which we are celebrating these weeks, tells us that baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ, we shall be raised up and we will live on.
On the other hand, St Paul would possibly have wanted to say more. And I sense Anthony would have wanted to back him up. St Paul would have said, "fame; well, ok. But be ambitious for something even higher, even greater. There is something that is more powerful than fame; be ambitious for love: it is a much better way." Anthony tried to live that better way in practice, but he had a keen understanding and compassion for those who find the road to true love so hard to find, or so tortuous to follow. Still, no matter how challenging, there is no other journey in life so important. St Paul makes it plain that the love he is speaking about has nothing to do with selfish desire for physical possession, though these are passions we have to recognise in so far as they are a part of us. Nor, says St Paul, is this love restricted to mere philanthropy. Love is so closely tied up with sacrifice. Indeed, in practice, love comes down to choosing the good of someone else, the good of others. It is the effort to be patient, slow to anger, to respond with serenity in the face of injury. Kindness is the inclination to do good to others, to share with others, and we could go on considering the qualities of love marked out by St Paul, many of which you may personally have experienced in your friendship with Anthony, whether it was brief or extended.
Did he have his faults? Who does not? If we are honest enough to weigh up our days in an examination of conscience, we all have moments we regret when we choose ourselves first in ways that can be self-destructive and harmful to others. Is it right for us to pray for him now? It would seem unloving not to want the very best for him from the love of our merciful Father. Is it not uplifting to hear how St Paul tells us the true love endures? Do we not feel impelled to continue loving Anthony now in a practical way? Is it not striking to see how in the Gospel we have heard Jesus command us to love? If love were just a feeling, how could we be commanded to keep this feeling going? Perhaps it helps us when we think of love as a choice: the choice of another; the choice of others. We notice when a person enters a room and chooses to engage with us: we recognise that that person has chosen us even if it is for a brief moment: we have been an object of their love, of their choice. Many of you have experienced Anthony's choice of you as someone he loved. Allow that love to endure though your choices today and always.
In the first reading of the Mass we have heard how those who die take their deeds with them. Anthony, I am sure, will have left so much of his work for others to continue to enjoy and develop, but perhaps in that moment of giving an account of his life, and whispering into the ear of our loving Father all the aspects of his own journey, his own pilgrimage through life, he will be able to say 'I have tried to help people to look at their lives, and reflect on how they love. I have tried to get them to look at the world around them and the people they meet and to stand in awe of the goodness that is in the world, and once more as individuals to choose love, truly to choose the good of others.' Ask yourself what Anthony would want to be his last message to you. Could it be an encouragement to be ambitious for something more, something greater, a more excellent way?
Yesterday evening, one of you sent me a poem, some lines of which seem fitting now as we continue today's journey of reflection and prayer. Allow me to leave you with these lines:
"When it's over, I want to say:
all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
Or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having
visited this world."
(Mary Oliver, b. 1935)
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