FUNERAL LITURGY
Sister Georgeanne Sutherland, OP
August 28, 2007

In the words of John’s Gospel we have just heard the way that Jesus prayed for his disciples.  We heard how He asked for holiness and deep faith for them.  Jesus asked that  his friends be close to God. 

Our sister, Georgeanne, talked to God about us all the time.  She believed in intercessory prayer.  She believed in bringing us all together when she prayed: her God and her loved ones.  Just as Jesus did, so she too wanted us all to be one.  How many times have we heard her end a phone call, or seen a note from her close with the words: “God bless you now,” or “I love you.”  How many times have we seen her sitting at her desk in the regional office, or on the chair at home, saying her rosary for someone she’d promised to remember?

We Dominicans, the Sutherland family and the Denzik family, along with Father Charles Dolan, a lifetime friend, can all attest to Sister Georgeanne’s caring nature.  Unfortunately neither Father Dolan nor her brothers Bud, Andy and Robert, nor her sister Marjories’s family, could  be here today.  But they are here in spirit and want us all to know that they join us in our sorrow and our celebration of Dottie’s (Sister Georgeanne’s) life.  Sisters Eleanor Tierney and Marilyn Pierson also called to say how they would love to be here to pay tribute to their “sweet secretary.”  Parishioners, especially from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, remember Sister Georgeanne fondly.

When we live our lives as Christians we say that we want to live as Jesus did.  We resolve to be as good a person as we can.  Sometimes we slip up, sometimes we are not a good match for the model Jesus gives us in the Gospel.  But that is our goal.  To do as Jesus did.  Over the years Georgeanne taught this to her students and made it her life’s work:  to be like Jesus.  As a practical person, she also knew the wisdom of today’s first reading from Ecclesiastes: there is a time for everything under the heavens.  She could be witty and she could be solemn.  Georgeanne could listen to adults and she could be very attentive to children.  Though a rather private woman, she could surprise us on occasion with her talkativeness.  Friendly, organized, compassionate, classy and loyal.  This was our Georgeanne.

During the last weeks of her life, when she was not herself in most ways, there was one habit that she continued.  She called out “Hello” to everyone she saw, and when no one was there she still called out Hello.  A lifetime of friendliness ended with her repeating her greeting over and over.  What does hello mean?  Oddly enough, it is hard to find the root for this word.  The dictionary says that it means several things: a greeting to a friend, or even a verb which may mean distress or need for attention.  When one is trying to connect with a person and they are not sure they are getting through they may say “Hellooo.”  What was Sister Georgeanne telling us with her steady stream of hellos? 

It was a characteristic of Sister Georgeanne to greet visitors at the regional office with the phrase she used when she happened to run into someone she knew at Our Lady of Mount Carmel or at Kroger's.   She’d say:  “Well HELLO, look who’s here!”   Her tone and her face told us how glad she was to see us.  Even when she was no longer able to call us by name, she greeted us in this same warm way.

She knew the wisdom of timing.  She knew that there was a time to be born and a time to die, a time to embrace, to forgive, a time to pray for us without asking too many questions about why we needed prayers.  She revealed, as Jesus did, the name of the One who loves us beyond imagining.  She would want us to see the glory she now has.  Georgeanne would want us to long for that same glory, to renew our resolve to become holy.  Our Georgeanne would want us to pray for one another, as she has prayed for us and will continue to do.

One of the definitions of hello that the dictionary gives is “a cry of elation, of joy!”  Can’t you just picture Georgeanne seeing God for the first time?  She and her sweet God,  greeting one another with embraces of joy and cries of elation.  Together at last.   And when we come to our time of glory, our moment of eternal rest, won’t it be wonderful to know that our Georgeanne will be there to greet us with “Well,  Look who’s here!”

Her prayer for us today, is likely the same as Jesus' in today’s Gospel, “Abba, I ask that those You gave me may be here with me (someday), so they can see this glory of mine, which is Your gift to me.”

--Sister Rosemary Rule, OP