James Lewis Grant: unknown almost hidden in the community

Tuesday, March 15th, 2016

Sunday March 13 at Sacred Heart Cathedral Wellington, there was a full choral mass. The music, like incense, filled the sunlit space above the packed pews, and the gospel reading, as always for this Sunday in Lent, was the story of Lazarus raised from the dead.

Inspiring? Yes. Absolutely beautiful.

But there was something extra that made the morning unforgettable. It was a requiem mass for a man unknown in the parish.

James Lewis Grant lived and died alone in a flat about two blocks from the cathedral.

His death made national news because his body lay in the flat for about two months before it was discovered.

When we read that in the newspapers, many of us felt a twinge for the aloneness that had become loneliness, and a passing that had gone unnoticed.

I don’t think many of us wondered what would happen to his remains.

It seemed that James Lewis Grant had no known relatives, so the parish of Sacred Heart decided to give him a family.

Was he a Catholic? Probably not.

Had he been baptized? No one knew.

These questions didn’t matter in this year of Mercy. Traditional Catholic family values reached out to enfold a stranger, and I’m sure few people have had a farewell so big, so splendid, so full of love.

Parish priest Father James Lyons talked gently about the busyness and brokenness in society that caused isolation. Even in the parish there would be people we didn’t know.

Then he invited us to introduce ourselves to the people sitting next to us, and immediately, introduction became animated conversation. We were already aware of church as family and of the Love that has created us for itself.

We knew that James Lewis Grant’s soul was already in the Kingdom of Love.

The remains of the body that had given birth to his soul, lay in a polished casket covered with flowers, in front of the altar. We filed past it on either side, to receive the body of Jesus, and the mystery of that connection took us beyond words.

Mystery cannot be held in language. The casket was carried out while the choir sang Faure: Chorus Angelorum te suscipit… We walked out with silence and deep feeling.

We were Lazarus. We were also James Lewis Grant. Some small part of us that had lain dead and unnoticed, had come into the light.