Br. Mark Filut Funeral Homily

Br. Mark Filut, 1933-2019

On September 25th, we buried our dear brother, Mark Filut, and here is Abbot Peter’s Homily for the occasion.  We deeply appreciate your prayers for our deceased brother.

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Funeral Homily for Br. Mark Filut: 9-25-2019 

Time after time I came to your gate

with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.

You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.

I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands;

some I made into playthings and broke

them when tired; till the wrecks and

the hoard of your gifts grew immense,

hiding you, and the ceaseless expectation

wore my heart out.

Take, oh take – has now become my cry.

Shatter all from this beggar’s bowl:

put out the lamp of the importunate watcher;

hold my hands, raise me from

the still-gathering heap of your gifts

into the bare infinity of your

uncrowded Presence.

My Brothers & Friends,

The poem – the prayer- poem – is from the well-known Bengali poet  Rabindranath Tagore. In 1913 he became the first non-European to win the Nobel prize for Literature. But more significantly, for our purposes this morning, Tagore was a favorite wisdom figure  of our (Br. Mark’s & my) Novice Master (later to be Abbot) Fr. Bernard.  I must warn you…this memory goes back 45 years ago…this poem posted on our novitiate bulletin board & my standing next to Mark as we read it together…we were fascinated by the intense energy in the poem…I would even hazard we were attracted to the prayer….AND we didn’t have a “clue” really what the poet was talking about! I look back on that shared lectio, all those years ago, and I see it now as a “defining moment” between us. What I truly mean by that statement only became clear to me over all these years between Mark’s novitiate and Mark’s funeral this morning.

Mark would be the first to tell you that he was that type of personality that had an immense space within him which had no words. As he grew older it became more awkward & frustrating for him not to have a vocabulary to express this mysterious interiority so he tried desperately over the years through Progoff Journal workshops and Enneagram studies (among other tools) to become more familiar with his inner life. These efforts resulted only in a growing awareness of his utter poverty because nothing was able to touch the haunting, longing-emptiness at his soul. His increasing struggles with depression wove themselves around this inability to “find” an articulated meaning in it all. He would reflect -quite gently- on my growing frustration with his almost haiku-like responses  to my simple question: “Mark, what is wrong?” “Peter, you think I’m hard to understand; you should see it from my side…I don’t have a clue!”

I want to suggest this morning that our scripture readings for this funeral Mass & our Poet’s Prayer, offer us a very consoling clue into the life & longing of our beloved Br. Mark. We can begin with our Gospel setting from the 14th Chapter of John: the great scholar of our Rule of St. Benedict, (Fr. Adelbert De Vogue) tells us that this scene of the disciples gathered in an intimate  circle around Jesus & listening to his words is the very archetypal-image of Benedict for his term schola that is his definition of a monastic community. 

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.

You have faith in God; have faith also in me.

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.

If there were not,

Would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?

So, who is Jesus speaking to here?  Fr. De Vogue would answer Jesus is speaking to the first monastic community. And who or what are these first disciples? They are, in the Poet’s vocabulary, just like our Br. Mark,

Each one, a beggar’s bowl.  

Each one, according to his intimacy with Jesus, could echo the intense longing of our Br. Job (first reading) my inmost being is consumed with longing. From the very beginning of our gospel passage Jesus is consoling his most intimate disciples who are slowly discovering that in drawing close to Jesus they have become homeless beggars.

My Sisters & Brothers,  Anyone who has ever been in Love will tell you that Love at its most intimate is, first & last of all wordless, a de-construction of my all too familiar self-reliance…it is embracing often in grief & deep darkness, the beggar’s bowl that is my Soul. This is the Pearl Beyond Pricehidden in the field of our daily lives. Mature Love will always lead us into the shadow of the Cross & it is under the shadow of the Cross  we pray to trust with St. Paul (in our 2ndreading; 2nd Corinthians) that

 this momentary ( light) affliction

is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,

as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen;

for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.

The precious gift of Br. Mark’s life among us was that he walked this De-Construction of Love as honestly as awkwardly as authentically as he experienced it. His life, his way of dying, points to this Immense Mystery of Mercy waiting for us, within the Beggar’s bowl of our Soul.

I end with these words from Mark’s final journal; from his favorite Pastor,  Frederick Buechner.

Listen to your life.

See it for the fathomless

mystery that it is.

In the boredom and pain of it,

no less than in the excitement and gladness;

touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it,

because in the last analysis,

all moments are key moments, and life itself is Grace.

+ Abbot Peter McCarthy