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Father JaVan Saxon (1950-2021)

Diocese of Raleigh: Funeral Arrangements

Rorate Caeli Purgatorial Society

"For most people the claims of nature are sufficient to awaken a prayerful remembrance for relatives and friends, but it is for another call which is too often forgotten that we would bespeak your charity here. It is for the souls of your dead priests. How few there are who think to pray for them!

When November eve comes around and the names of the dead are handed in; when the priest looks over the list, and that often with dimmed eyes, seldom does he find mention of the priests who have gone before. Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, distant relatives, even strangers, but the dead priest's name is not there. Is it because he is forgotten? No, his memory may be still fresh, his words quoted, his example cited. Is it because the people whom he served are ungrateful? No, that is not one of the failings of Catholics.  Why, then, is his name so seldom found upon their lips in prayer, or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is never asked in his behalf? We have often heard people say of their dead priests, "They do not need prayers," "If they do not go to heaven who will?" Ah, my brethren, that may be very flattering for the living, but it is poor consolation for the dead. The priest himself feels no such assurance. He knows better than any one else how much he needs the prayers of his people. If Saint Paul asked his brethren to pray for him, lest while he preached to others he himself should be cast away, with how much more reason can the everyday priest, far from the holiness of saint Paul, ask his brethren to intercede with God for him?
 
It is true that the priest is the channel through which grace comes to the souls of men for their salvation. But he is only a human channel withal, and that grace may pass by and leave him barren and dry. He receives special graces from God, it is true, and helps for sanctification which others do not share, but his accounting will be the greater for that, "To whom much is given, much shall be required," and what priest is there who does not tremble at his responsibilities? The fact that he is a priest does not imply that his salvation is assured. And even though he save his souls, how many defects have entered into his work! He has been dealing with souls, and God's graces have been the talents entrusted to his care. Can he say, " Of those whom thou hast given me I have not lost any one?" Though God, in His mercy, may save him in the end, yet, his reckoning will be great and his punishment severe.

What claims has the dead priest upon your prayers?

He was your father in Christ. He it was who engendered you in the Lord, he who poured the saving waters of baptism upon your head and made you children of God, with the right to heaven. He it was who cleansed you again and again from sin, in the Sacrament of Penance. He it was who broke for you the bread of Life. In sickness he succored you, in sorrow he consoled you. He blessed your marriage, instructed your little ones in their duty towards God, and lighted the dim vision of your dying with the glory of heaven beyond. He prayed for your dead and lightened your bereavement. Who can count his many offices for you? and are not all these so many claims upon your Christian charity? How can you better repay them than by the tribute of your prayers? Ah, your poor dead priest will prize these more than anything else earth can bestow. It matters little to him whether a costly monument be raised over his last resting place, or that his form be molded in imperishable bronze. A place in the hearts of a grateful people and a memento in their prayers he prizes more than these. It is for this reason that many a great and holy bishop has asked to be buried, not in the crypt of a cathedral church, but in the chapel of an orphanage, where the little ones will see his simple monument and offer a prayer for his soul, or, like the late bishop of Portland, whose wish was to lie in the common cemetery with the hope that his name would find place in the prayers of the people who came there to pray for their beloved dead.

If you, the sheep of his fold, do not pray for him, who will? Father and mother, he has none. They have gone before him. Children, he leaves none behind. Family and friends he forsook for your sake. Surely you will not turn a deaf ear to the voice of his petition coming from the grave: "Have pity, on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends, the hand of God hath touched me."

Source:  The Life and Writing of Right Reverend John Bernard Delany, D.D. Second Bishop of Manchester N.H. 1911

Prayer for a Deceased Priest

O God, Thou didst raise Thy servant, Father JaVan Saxon to the sacred priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the Order of Melchizedek, giving him the sublime power to offer the Eternal Sacrifice, to bring the Body and Blood of Thy Son Jesus Christ down upon the altar, and to absolve the sins of men in Thine own Holy Name. We beseech Thee to reward his faithfulness and to forget his faults, admitting him speedily into Thy Holy Presence, there to enjoy forever the recompense of his labors.This we ask through Jesus Christ Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

St. Eugenius, Source: wikipedia

"His virtue gained him the respect and esteem even of the Arians; but at length envy and blind zeal got the ascendant in their breasts, and the king sent him an order never to sit on the episcopal throne, preach to the people, or admit into his chapel any Vandals, among whom several were Catholics. The saint boldly answered that the laws of God commanded him not to shut the door of His church to any that desired to serve Him in it. Huneric, enraged at this answer, persecuted the Catholics in various ways. Many nuns were so cruelly tortured that they died on the rack. Great numbers of bishops, priests, deacons, and eminent Catholic laymen were banished to a desert filled with scorpions and venomous serpents. The people followed their bishops and priests with lighted tapers in their hands, and mothers carried their little babes in their arms and laid them at the feet of the confessors, all crying out with tears, "Going yourselves to your crowns, to whom do you leave us? Who will baptize our children? Who will impart to us the benefit of penance, and discharge us from the bonds of sin by the favor of reconciliation and pardon? Who will bury us with solemn supplications at our death? By whom will the Divine Sacrifice be made?" The bishop Eugenius was spared in the first storm, but afterwards was carried into the uninhabited desert country in the province of Tripoli, and committed to the guard of Antony, an inhuman Arian bishop, who treated him with the utmost barbarity. Under (Thrasimund) Saint Eugenius was again banished, and died in exile, on the 18th of July, 505, in a monastery which he built and governed, near Albi." Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints

Prayer for Holy Bishops

Lord, according to Your promise that the Gospel should be preached throughout the whole world, raise up men fit for such work. The Apostles were but soft and yielding clay till they were baked hard by the fire of the Holy Ghost. So, Good Lord, do now in like manner again with Thy Church Militant; change and make the soft and slippery earth into hard stones; set in Thy Church strong and mighty pillars, that may suffer and endure great labors, watching, poverty, thirst, hunger, cold and heat; which also shall not hear the threatenings of princes, persecution, neither death but always persuade and think with themselves to suffer with a good will, slanders, shame, and all kinds of torments, for the glory and laud of Thy Holy Name. By this manner, good Lord, the truth of Thy Gospel shall be preached throughout all the world. Therefore, merciful Lord, exercise Thy mercy, show it indeed upon Thy Church. Saint John Fisher (Sermon in 1508) from Saint John Fisher Forum