Carita Kerr was a ‘force of nature’ whose ‘passion was to help everybody be their best’, mourners were told at her Funeral Mass in St. Eugene’s Cathedral.
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00:00What is heaven? is the question that the young Carita Boyle asked the priest when he visited her home.
00:10A question about heaven. And what is heaven? How can we describe heaven?
00:19The easy answer to this question is that we can't. We can't describe heaven.
00:26There are no words that could come close to describing the enormity, the grandeur and the wonder of heaven.
00:36Our minds could never even come close to imagining the magnificence of heaven.
00:44And therefore, in ways, the question defeats us before we even attempt to answer it.
00:53Yet it wouldn't be right to leave it. It wouldn't be right to leave it because the truth is that we know something about heaven.
01:04We know the most important truth about heaven. We know that God is there.
01:13In the midst of all the grandeur and magnificence, God is there.
01:20And it's not a distant, cold, judgmental God. It's our God. The one who is preparing a place for each one of us.
01:31Imagine there is a place being prepared for each one of us in heaven.
01:37And God doesn't have the place prepared for us. He is the one who prepares the place himself.
01:48So we know that God is in heaven. And we know that he is getting a place ready for each one of us there.
01:57And we also know why. We know why God is preparing a place for us.
02:03He wants us to be with him. And he wants us to be with him forever.
02:10So heaven is the source of love and the fulfilment of love. This we know. And we also know how to get there.
02:21Jesus tells us this in the Gospel today. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
02:29Jesus is the way to heaven. And Carita Care, whose funeral mass we have gathered to celebrate this morning,
02:39might not have known what heaven was like as a child. And her life may have been a life of discovery.
02:47And trying to answer that question was that Jesus was the way to heaven.
02:55Faith was the anchor in Carita's life. It gave her the foundation to live the life that she did and to do what she did.
03:07The Mass, Rosary, God. This is where Carita lived from. That the gifts and talents she had
03:15were gifts from God to be used to serve God. Carita described her singing as prayer.
03:25It was the most wonderful and beautiful prayer. And with faith as the anchor in her life,
03:32Carita had a very strong moral compass. And of truth be told, there was very little grey
03:40in her life or her opinions. And you never needed to wonder what Carita was thinking.
03:47She told you. And she told you with great eloquence. In fact, she was so eloquent,
03:53that it's the first time ever in preparing for a funeral, I thought I should have elocution lessons.
04:01And Carita was a force of nature. She was formidable. She was determined. She was driven.
04:09And she never accepted defeat. She always knew that the impossible was actually possible.
04:18And her courage and her energy proved that to be true. And never more obviously
04:24than when, with John, she welcomed President Clinton to Derry the day after she had surgery
04:31for cancer. Carita loved life. And she lived it to the full. And she loved, in a way,
04:40to be on the world stage. And the world stage suited her. She died just one day before the
04:4845th anniversary of her singing for Pope John Paul II in Drogheda. And while the world stage
04:57suited Carita, her passion was to help everybody to be the best that they could be.
05:05At the heart of Carita's life was her family. With John, they were a formidable team.
05:12They were just two lungs in the one body. And when John died, a part of Carita died too.
05:20And I know she was a wonderful and inspiring mother and grandmother.
05:26And then there was the community and the common good. Carita was so committed to the arts,
05:32to music, to those with special needs, to children, to working mothers, to Derry,
05:38even though she had the joy of being born in an Ishone in Boncrana. And Carita served her community
05:45and always knew that things could be better. And she proved that she was right.
05:51Right to the end, Carita stayed involved in the community and gave as much as she could.
05:58The last choir she was part of was the Melodies and Memories Choir, and she loved it.
06:04And they loved her. Today, as we give thanks to God for the gift of Carita's life
06:11and her faith and her passion and her love, we pray that in death she has been met at the
06:17entrance to heaven by Mary, the mother of God and our mother too, who has led her to John,
06:24reunited again, praising and adoring God forever. We continue to pray for you, Carita's family and
06:33friends. We pray that you will be inspired by her life and her faith and her determination,
06:40and that at this time of sadness and grief you will find peace and hope in your faith in Jesus,
06:48who is the way to heaven and who brings heaven to the altar at every mass through his real presence
06:55in the precious body and blood. And we pray for Carita. It's a long time since she asked
07:02the priest about heaven. Today we pray that she has entered the fresh beauty of paradise
07:11where she is free and where her singing voice is as wonderful as it ever was and part of the
07:17heavenly choir, probably doing a solo. And we pray that there in the magnificence and in the
07:25grandeur of heaven Carita has the answer to her childhood question as she sees God face to face
07:34forever and ever.
07:45I invite you to stand for the prayer of the faithful.