Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Wandering in the grounds of the Community of the Resurrection, I found myself in the Community's cemetery. I was planning on simply cutting through it en route to sitting down in the quarry, but I paused. I read a name at the centre of one grave marker. These stood in rows:wooden crosses with a pitched mini-roof with lead sheets on top to keep them from rotting, these roofs giving the impression of each brother pointing up towards heaven.

It suddenly felt right to look at each grave and name each brother out loud. It only took five minutes or so, but I systematically walked through the graveyard saying out loud each name as I passed. It became quite a moving roll call, around a hundred years of passing on into glory being declared.

At the end, I just stood, seeing myself not in a place of the dead, but amid a living community of witnesses to life in the Risen Christ, a true community of the resurrection: a living reality.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them.
May they rest in peace and rise in glory. Amen.