Obedience, Patience, Joy – Funeral of Brother Vincent Cook OP

Religious orders do not exist as an end in themselves. They come and go in the history of the Church. Their purpose is to manifest the holiness of the Church. When discussing the religious vows, St Thomas Aquinas appeared to think that what made the religious was the vow of obedience. Commitment to poverty and to chastity was admirable, but these vows alone did not constitute a religious. It is worth reflecting on this when thinking about the life of Brother Vincent who lived the religious life for 63 years. Vincent was born in 1924 in Blackburn and entered the Dominicans at the age of 24 making his religious profession in 1948.

Why then is obedience central to the religious life? And therefore to the context in which Vincent lived out his Dominican life? Essential to an understanding of Jesus in the gospels is the obediential nature of his relationship to his Father. The giving of Jesus to the world was an act of pure love – unsolicited, unconditional, and unmerited – and whilst it brought us no nearer to an understanding of the divine nature, it brought to us the embodiment in Jesus of the Father’s love for the world. The obediential character of Christ’s love was his self-emptying, a kenosis, in which he kept back nothing not even his life.

Religious obedience then is a reciprocal self-emptying and it can be as painful as it can be purifying. Why purifying? Because in living in close community with others we face ourselves as we are shed of the temptation to denial. Our reciprocal process of self-emptying and its obediential character is the rooting out of anything that obstructs the living and the preaching of the gospel. It is an obedience to the task to which God has called us. Poverty and chastity help to free us from obstacles that get in the way but religious obedience binds us to God as it bound Jesus. Both personally and communally it is crucial to the religious life and is what makes it possible for us,  personally and communally, to show forth the virtues that make the Church holy.

In this connection we can reflect on patience as a concomitant of religious obedience. In a very beautiful sermon on the passion which appears in the Office of Readings for his feast day, Aquinas  comments that the cross provides an example of every virtue and is a model for us in our behaviour. St Thomas looks at the greatness of patience. Two kinds of situation evoke patience, ‘when someone puts up patiently with grievous things, or when he suffers things that could have been evaded but did not’.

It is the former that should make us think of Brother Vincent. He could not evade his loss of sight but had to bear it with patience which he did. We need to remind ourselves of the fact that all his life he walked in darkness and though he sometimes needed support, especially when he got older, he defended his independence vigorously. On holiday with him I marvelled at the way in which he could enter a room for the first time and within half an hour know where everything was. He was to be found working in the kitchen preparing the vegetables and in community life was rarely absent from choir.

We often think of ‘looking after the sick and the disabled’ but we should remember that the sick and the disabled have a great deal to teach us. Isn’t it a fact that their lives are a constant sermon being preached to us? Surely their self-emptying is manifest in their acceptance of a certain dependency? Not because they sometimes have little alternative but because they accept in obedience the situation in which they find themselves. This is surely the context for the religious life lived out by Brother Vincent.

We are in the season of Lent preparing for the feast of Easter so there is no reason why we should not end on a joyful note. Not a note of slick eschatological comfort but a comfort that does not sanitise the reality of death but gives it meaning in the resurrection of Jesus. In the gospel of John, when Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus and shouted out ‘Lazarus, come out’, Lazarus came out still wearing his grave clothes. Why? Because he would need them again. The resuscitation of a corpse is not he same thing as resurrection from the dead. Contrast the scene at the tomb of Jesus where the linen clothes were lying about. It was is if Jesus stepped out of them, as if to say ‘we don’t need those anymore’. Because he didn’t need them again and there is our hope and that of Brother Vincent.

We can also say joyfully of a brother who lived the religious life for 63 years, ‘well done, good and faithful servant; because you have been faithful in little things I will place you over greater’. May he rest in peace, Amen.

Brothers keeping vigil overnight