Homily

When we think about what it means to be a just person, someone who acts with justice, more often than not we think of someone who corrects or punishes in measure with a particular crime or offense. But if that is the sense of justice we bring to the description of “the just person” we hear about in the Book of Wisdom today, we have a very punitive, myopic and stereotypic notion of what it means to act justly.

For the truly “just” person is one who is less interested in crime and punishment than in acting humanely with the kind of compassion and understanding that enables us to grow and mature into whom we are meant to be. The just person has a genuine knack for finding the good and God-like in us, and a talent for bringing that goodness and God-likeness to light. The just person respects us even when disagreeing with us, affirms us when we expect condemnation, and encourages us when we are discouraged. The just person knows what it means to be weak and vulnerable, and connects with us by identifying with our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Just persons are all these things and can do all these things because they are grounded in one important quality – love: the love that makes our holidays perfect, our birthdays memorable, our vacations great, and all the ordinary days in between, extraordinary.

Just persons are optimists, certain that there is good in every person, but they are also realists who know that all we ever really have in this life is “the present moment,” as the great sixteenth century Bishop and Doctor of the Church, Saint Francis de Sales (also Jesuit educated), expressed it. Every present moment, every here and now bursts forth with the opportunity to bring God’s presence to others through the loving things we do. Just persons live in the present moment knowing, as did de Sales, that the past is gone and the future may never be. And so they live from moment to moment, intent on reflecting God’s love to us through their love for us. Finally, just persons draw from the very source of love itself, Jesus Christ, the quintessential Just Person, whose love and care for the needy, the suffering, the weak they strive to emulate.

Jim McAnaney was wise to all these things, for he was indeed a just person, a just man, one who knew not only how to live in the present moment, but especially how to bless and sanctify each moment with the hospitality, friendship and kindness that make it memorable. As Saint Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, Jim knew that “love never fails,” and that every moment, whether happy or sad, in life, no matter how short that life may be, always brings with it the challenge to love and to love well.

That is why so many of us found a dwelling place, a mansion in Jim’s heart, clearly a heart with many dwelling places, many mansions as indicated by the number and variety of those of us blessed to call ourselves his friends and family. And the secret of Jim’s extraordinary sense of justice? Simply put, it sprang from a single source – Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Just One in Whose House with its many dwelling places Jim now surely abides for all eternity.

But right now, for those of us who mourn the all too brief life of this beautifully just man, that may seem a small consolation, for we have suffered a great loss. Yet believe me, Marian, Tom; believe me Nicole, Tristan; believe me Suzy; Jim would surely have us focus on the legacy he has left us, rather than on our loss. And what a legacy it is – to walk justly with an open heart that makes room for many dwellers in imitation of the Way, the Truth and the Life of Christ Himself. So let us be what Jim McAnaney taught us to be, and what we greatly loved him for – that Just Person who is Christ Jesus to all.

Rev. John A. Gilvey, OSFS
Homilist
Mass of the Resurrection for James M. McAnaney
Old St. Joseph’s Church
Philadelphia, PA
August 27, 2007