“The Ever-Youthful Love of the One Who Makes All Things New”

Sermon for Solemn Requiem Mass for Professor William Peter Mahrt
January 10, 2025; Mission Dolores Basilica
Introduction
It has not gone unnoticed by any of us, I am sure, that our beloved friend, professor and mentor William Peter Mahrt passed from this world on the first day of a new year. That the last day of his life occurred on the first day of a new beginning makes for a very fitting lesson of divine providence for all of us. Professor Mahrt certainly exuded the quality of newness, ever fresh spiritual youthful vitality even in his declining stages of physical old age.
Love Ever Fresh and New
In this we see reflected the one who is ever new, who, indeed, at the end (that is, the end of the story of the Bible), assures us, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). He proclaims this as the holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down “out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2). This is the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the love of a bridegroom for his bride, the love of spouses that becomes ever new as they mature together into old age, when they live their marital covenant in accordance with God’s plan. Yes, he makes all things new, and keeps them new, eternally so. As St. Augustine so poignantly teaches us, he is the “beauty ever ancient, beauty ever new.”
Professor Mahrt also understood that the newness of the love of Jesus Christ is not just a concept, but must be known and lived in one’s life and must be experienced in the Church’s life of worship. That to which he dedicated his whole life makes the eternal newness of the beauty that is God audible and palatable to us. Gregorian chant is ancient in origin, but it never gets old! We will be ever grateful to him for constantly reminding us that, contrary to what so many Catholics seem to think nowadays, music is not something extrinsic to the liturgy, added on to it as if it were a luxury item, but rather is integral to it, and must grow organically out of the previous forms tracing back to chant itself, in keeping with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. As he so wisely states in his landmark work that will remain a testimony to his lasting legacy, The Musical Shape of the Liturgy, “in studying the texts of the liturgy, some have forgotten that while liturgy is regulated largely in its texts, it does not consist of a series of texts to be read, but rather a series of sacred actions to be done” (p.5).
His understanding of the integrity of the liturgy, with music and sacred action, is really a metaphor of his whole life: a man outstanding in the virtues of integrity, humility, generosity, piety and purity. He gave his all to the work of renewal of Catholic worship without any regard for personal compensation – and often did not receive any. That never slowed him down, let alone stopped him, from the pursuit of spiritual excellence through excellence in celebration of the sacred liturgy. His legendary St. Ann’s choir will stand as a lasting reminder of this. So, then, allow me to correct myself. He did receive compensation for his tireless effort, which was the only compensation that he treasured: the joy he derived from handing on the beautiful sacred music tradition of the Church.
Lessons from Living Examples
Thus it must be for us. Jesus Christ comes to visit us in every Mass, the King makes himself present to us, which demands that we give him our best. But not just in terms of liturgical aesthetics, as important as that is. For if it ends there, we will have failed in our response to the love of the King of kings, a response so well modeled for us by the life of William Mahrt. Yes, the liturgy is a series of sacred actions to be done, but not just inside of the church, but with our whole lives. Living in communion with Jesus Christ, living in his eternally new love, transforms one ever more perfectly back into the image in which God originally created us: we grow in virtue, becoming better people in every sense, evermore capable of receiving and sharing God’s love. This is the true fountain of youth, the love of the one who makes all things new.
I suppose none of us feels at this time the lightness of the fresh discovery of new love, as we feel the weight of sadness in mourning the passing of one whom we loved so much and who gave us so much. But that is the point: gratitude. We cannot thank God enough for all He has given us, and at this time especially for what He has given us through Professor Mahrt. So let us not allow the sadness of our mourning to overshadow the brightness of the gratitude we feel toward God, not only for our friend, but for all that God has given us through the beauty of the Church’s liturgical and artistic patrimony, which reflects the beauty of the one who came to save us from the ugliness and death of sin. Let us, then, ask him for the wisdom and grace to steward wisely all of the gifts of time, talent and treasure he has given us, that we might lead the Church in worthy worship of Him, the one true God, with all of these treasures we have inherited from our predecessors in the faith.
The beauty of this patrimony itself speaks to us of the timelessness of the life God has prepared for us. Our gratitude, then, must lead us to a deeper trust in Him – the trust for which we pray in the Sequence of this Requiem Mass. The Dies irae gives us a healthy dose of realism in that it puts right in front of us the stark reality of the finality of death and judgment, bringing us into the scene of the final judgment in Matthew 25, in which our Lords warns us: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, … he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him.”`
Lessons from the Liturgical Texts
This is the stark reality of which the Sequence reminds us, with a chilling description of what it will be like*:
The mighty trumpet’s wondrous tone
shall rend each tomb’s sepulchral stone
and summon all before the Throne.
And the sense of fearfulness continues, with vivid imagery:
Now death and nature with surprise
behold the trembling sinners rise
to meet the Judge’s searching eyes.Then shall with universal dread
the Book of Consciences be read
to judge the lives of all the dead.O what shall I, so guilty plead?
and who for me will intercede?
when even Saints shall comfort need?
But there is the cry of mercy, evoking again the scene from Matthew 25:
Take me from the goats’ cursed band,
o make me with Your sheep to stand,
as child of grace, at Your right Hand.
And so the plea for mercy continues:
O King of dreadful majesty!
grace and mercy You grant free;
as the Fount of Kindness, save me!Recall, dear Jesus, for my sake
you did our suff’ring nature take
then do not now my soul forsake!
And then it rises from the fear of the finality of death and judgment, through the confident pleas for mercy, to the hope that is woven throughout:
In weariness You sought for me,
and suffering upon the tree!
let not in vain such labor be.
As is also the note upon which it concludes, with ever-abiding trust in the all-merciful One:
When the doomed can no more flee
from the fires of misery
with all the chosen ones call me.
“With all the chosen ones call me.” This is trust based in reality, a trust that is also exemplified by the sister of Lazarus of Bethany. I am always struck by the disposition of Martha as described in the Gospel reading for the Requiem Mass. When our Lord appears on the scene after his friend and Martha’s brother Lazarus dies, she does not ask him to do anything. Rather, she simply places her trust in him, acknowledging his power and knowing that he will do what is best: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died: but now also I know that whatsoever [T]hou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.” God is working out His loving plan for us, and as St. Paul reminds us, for those who love Him, all things work out for the good (Rom 8:28). Let us then strive to the best of our ability, with the help of His grace, to please him in all things and leave the rest to Him.
This is His will, and His will cannot be to our detriment. We acknowledge as much in the collect for this Requiem Mass, in asking Him to receive the soul of our brother into paradise, whom He has called out of this world – or, literally, “ordered” (jussisti) to pass from this world to the next. We are under God’s orders, and the trust that is authentic Christian trust will transform us to the point that we can have peace and confidence in what God orders for us, for we will have prepared our soul to meet Him with prayer, penance and a life of virtue lived to the best of our ability with the help of His grace.
Conclusion
Only the best for God: in our worship, with our talents, with all of the blessings He has entrusted to us, in our personal, professional and social lives. Professor Mahrt has taught us the joy and simple goodness of such a life of authentic, generous and lively faith, lived in the ever-new love of God. As we entrust him now to the one who makes all things new, let us ask God for the grace to discover and live in the true fountain of youth, shown to us so compellingly in the life of our friend, mentor and beloved professor, William Peter Mahrt. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.
* I am citing the Dies Irae here from a different translation than that which is in the program guide for this Requiem Mass.