When I was new to pastoral ministry and asked to conduct graveside services, I relied on a book of suggested prayers for use at funerals. I was drawn to the prayer that follows here, for it seems a fitting way to conclude a burial. Years later, I learned it was the contribution of an Anglican turned Roman Catholic priest named John Henry Neuman (1801-1890). He attended an Anglican church with his family as a child and learned the catechism, but it was merely a formal adherence to Christianity. He said of that time, “I formed no religious convictions until I was fifteen.”
When he left home for boarding school, a great change came over him. As an avid reader, he became engrossed in the story of Augustine’s conversion recounted in his Confessions. An Anglican priest at Pembroke School served as “the human means of this beginning of divine faith in me.” His trust in God became, in his own words, “more certain than I have hands and feet.”
John sent shock waves through the Church of England when he joined the Roman Catholic Church in middle age and became a priest. His decision delighted Catholics, upset his family, and added fuel to the Protestant Catholic divide. Many wrote that he “converted” to Catholicism. Converted? Every time I encounter this word in Scripture, it is used in relation to Jesus. We join churches; we convert to Jesus. I like what one of his Anglican colleagues, Edward Pusey, said about John’s decision to switch churches. He described it as “being transplanted to another part of the vineyard.”
We close with his prayer that trusts God’s mercy in life and death: