Margaret Nutting Ralph - A Parents Death: A Biblical and Spiritual Companion

A Parents Death

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ralph, Margaret Nutting.

A parents death : a biblical and spiritual companion / Margaret Nutting Ralph.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-4327-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-4328-6 (electronic)

Religious aspectsChristianity. 2. Ralph, Margaret Nutting. 3. DeathReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4906.R35 2015

248.8'66dc23

2014038248

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my parents:

Mary Agnes Flannagan Nutting and
Charles Bernard Nutting.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate. (Mark 10:79)

My father died over twenty years ago. So, the story you are about to read did not happen recently. However, the whole experience seems recent to me. Why? Im not really sure. Perhaps it is because I think about, pray for, and pray to my parents so regularly that it seems impossible that I havent talked with my father face-to-face for twenty years. Perhaps it is because some unusual events occurred surrounding my fathers death, not events that I would call miracles, but still events that seem to me to have bordered on the supernatural. By that I mean that I cannot explain the events without resorting to attributing them to something beyond what we presently know about the natural order. I now understand why people who have had the privilege of accompanying someone to deaths door often talk of a veil or of thin places between this life and the next. As years have passed, these events have had a rippling effect on my life and in my work.

I have worked in the field of religious education for fifty years, sometimes in catechetical settings (Church settings in which we echo the good news) and sometimes in academic settings (settings in which we not only teach beliefs, but we critically examine the evidence for those beliefs). In both catechetical and academic settings, my area of expertise is the Bible. The goal in my studies has been to understand what the original inspired authors intended to teach their contemporaries. In addition to that goal, but firmly rooted in that knowledge, my goal as a catechist/teacher and author has been to understand, and to help others understand, what the living word of Scripture is teaching us today.

For a number of years I was a Diocesan Director of Evangelization. It was part of my responsibility to serve parish evangelizers. In that capacity I helped parish leaders reflect on their experiences of God acting in their lives and learn how to share those insights with others. As Paul VI says in Evangelization in the Modern World (Evangelii Nuntiandi), Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers it is because they are witnesses (par. 41).

In this book I would like to be a witness to the truths I learned because of the events surrounding my fathers death. Initially, I simply found the events remarkable. However, as the years have passed, I have realized that experiencing these events has opened my eyes to see meanings in many biblical passages that I had not seen before, passages such as Pauls admonishing the Corinthians for their divisive behavior at the Lords supper (1 Cor 11:1734), the postresurrection appearance stories in which those who know and love Jesus fail to recognize him, and the prologue in Johns Gospel in which all of creation is attributed to the Word who became flesh. All in all, the insights have had a theme: The risen Christ has been saying to me, I dont think you recognized me.

It is my hope and prayer that sharing these experiences will have the same effect on the reader that experiencing them has had on me. After all, God is powerful and present in each of our lives and is inviting each of us to grow in love. What remains to be seen is whether or not we will recognize the presence of the risen Christ in our midst and whether or not we will accept the invitation. When we believe Gods self-revelation that God is love, and we accept the invitation to live in that love, we see more and more clearly the absolute importance of breaking down all the walls we have built that separate us, one from another: walls between classes, races, nations, and religions. We begin to understand the unity of all creation and our own role in maintaining that unity.

Chapter 1 sets the stage for all that follows. In it I describe the original wall that I believed existed between my father and me: I was being raised Catholic and he was Presbyterian. In addition, I describe a remarkable occurrence that paved the way for my having the privilege of teaching Scripture. This experience persuaded me that God, on occasion, still intervenes in events in powerful ways, a conviction I share with inspired biblical authors. I conclude this chapter by explaining the distinction between events in which we experience firsthand Gods power and presence in our lives, and events that we would call supernatural. We can know the proximate cause of an event, therefore not claiming that the event is supernatural, and still experience the event as a marvelous occurrence.

Chapters 2 and 3 describe my fathers death and funeral. My experience of these events affirmed once more my belief that God intervenes in events. When, on occasion, I have shared what happened with loved ones, colleagues, or students, I have realized that some people are overwhelmed with emotion because my experience reminds them of similar events in their own lives and confirms their interpretation of those events as times when Gods power and presence were clearly manifest. On the other hand, some suspect I am exaggerating to make a point. I assure the reader, the accounts of these events are as accurate as I can describe them.

Chapter 4 explores the effect that these overwhelming experiences have had on my understanding of Scripture passages that deal with recognizing the presence of the risen Christ in Christs disciples, the Church. When one has had the privilege of teaching Scripture for many years, one has some confidence that he or she understands what is being taught. However, gradually, over years, I have found my perception of a number of passages changing and deepening, especially those passages that deal with recognizing the risen Christ or recognizing the body of Christ, the Church. This chapter ends with a discussion of how both the Gospel According to John and Pauls letters emphasize the absolute priority of the gift of love in the Church and in all that we do.