Funeral Mass for Br. Gilbert Cardillo
I think it is always a double grace when one of our brother’s dies. It is a grace of final perseverance for him, in this case Br. Gilbert and a grace for each of us as we look back on his life among us and realize how really good, he was and a time to look at our own life and mortality. St. Benedict tells us to daily keep the thought of death before our eyes. As much as we try such an exercise can be more theoretical than practical. But when you have the actual body before you it brings it out of the theoretical and right down to eye level and real.
We are told that a funeral homily is not a panegyric it is simply to be directed to how the mystery of Christ was played out in the Christians life. As you might know Br. Gilbert was very intuitive. His records show he did not do well in the one fits all school curriculum of the 1950s. Very early on Br. Gilbert felt a call by God to be a religious. His high school was a minor seminary and after high school he tried to enter the Franciscans and for about a year the Benedictines in Louisiana. These were all trials and errors until he discerned a Trappist vocation. Why was this? I think this is what God wanted for him and this is what appealed to him. In a letter to the Abbot expressing his desire to be a monk he stated – and by the way Gilbert could express himself brilliantly in letter writing – in a letter dated Oct. 1960 he concludes by saying, ”I keep you in my prayers Fr. Abbot and the community. Please do the same for me that I may become more united with the Sacred Heart of our Sacramental King. This I so desire. If God wills that I become a Trappist monk, I pray that I may be at least a little like the first Fathers who so earnestly gave their entire self to Him alone.” He adds a PS to this letter: “I just turned twenty on the feast of St. Ursula.” That was Oct. 21st then, in parenthesis he adds,“I am getting old!!”
There is s lively correspondence between Br. Gilbert and Abbot Phillip. We had about 150 monks in the community at the time and Dom Phillip used Fr. Clement to answer all this type of letter. In one letter from New Melleray Br. Gilbert is asked why he left the Benedictines in Louisiana he wrote simply my heart was not there. I find this so insightful. He could have said my heart was not in it but no – “my heart was not there.” Gilbert was a heart person. He discerned things with his heart rather than his head. Our head and our heart do not always agree. When Gilbert said his heart was not there, he is fulfilling the words of St. Augustine that our heart is restless until in rest in God. Gilbert was searching for his heart and a resting place for his heart. St. John of the Cross says our soul lives where it loves more than in the body it animates. Gilbert loved the Trappist ideal. All his monastic life he loved the ideal. We all do but even though our spiritual self does we have to make compromises for the sake of our bodily self. This can be a great cause of our humility. In the long run Br. Gilbert was a humble person. The ideal he loved so much eluded him and his true disposition of kindness and even sweetness became his spirituality. Christ drew him with the strings of love, drew him into the cloister and spoke to his heart, the inner self that is hidden from us and was hidden from Gilbert. Death is when this is all revealed and as Paul says in Colossians, “After all you have died! Your life is hidden now with Christ. When Christ our life appears, then you shall appear with him in glory” Col. 3:3
Jesus said he is going to prepare a place for us and when it is ready, he will come and take us to himself. He did this last Friday for Gilbert and now his heart is revealed and the ideal of giving all to God is fulfilled. His letters reveal a side of Gilbert that not many of us knew. His soul lived where it loved and was restless until it found the source of that love. His ideals are now real and the unreality is burnt away and what was hidden now appears with Christ in glory.