On this day, about what are we to keep silence, and of what are we to speak?

If I followed the pattern of many memorial homilies, I would be silent as to the departed's shortcomings and speak only of his or her accomplishments. Most of the time, we can get away with this because it is nicer and easier to remember and recount only the good stuff. "Accentuate the positive," as the old song says.

But with a man like Landon Reeve, to ignore his shortcomings and only speak of what a charming and sociable person he was would ring hollow, for it would be denying who he really was: a complicated man, a man who could be a gracious host and a delightful raconteur, and a man who to his own family could be vindictive, nasty, and mean. A man whose sense of humor was as keen as his anger was sharp.

The outside world mainly saw the lovable Landon: the postmaster, the horse trainer, the tennis champ. His family saw the darker side. Not that he was a complete Jekyll and Hyde-in his family life he was a good provider and an avid reader, someone who encouraged the love of poetry and education-not bad for someone who had received only a 5th grade education himself. But all too often, his anger overshadowed his love, so much so that oftentimes his children wondered whether he cared more for his horses than for them.

In his later years, Landon mellowed a little. Yet even in the throes of dementia, he could be ornery toward a family member. At the same time, he was the gentlest soul in the world toward visitors and the nursing staff. The nurses all loved him. I saw for myself how he flirted with them and showed them the utmost courtesy.

Landon was not without his redeemable qualities, and it is right to mourn his loss. But we gather to mourn, too, the losses that he inflicted, and the pain he left in his wake. For such a complex man as Landon was, his legacy is a mixed one. And we must face up to this legacy in its entirety, with all the ambivalence and ambiguity that comes with it. We cannot remember only what we would like to remember. It would be dishonest to acknowledge only the good, thereby denying the reality of the bad. To do so would be tantamount to complicity in neglect. It would be trivializing the experience of those who were closest to Landon. Rather, it is the role of the Church to proclaim the truth: that in the wake of Landon's death, there are wounds that need tending to; only then can the light of Christ enter human hearts and disperse the shadows of sin and death.

The author of Ecclesiastes speaks both of "a time to die" and "a time to heal." Landon's time to die has come and gone. Our time to heal has just begun. Yet how shall we begin to live into this sacred time, this opportunity for redemption and reconciliation that the closure of death presents us? Where and when shall this pilgrimage of healing begin? I believe that it begins in the cemetery, not as we look down at the freshly-dug grave, but as we turn to peer into the empty tomb.

For you see, the strength of the Christian tradition is that one man's death puts all men's deaths into perspective-the empty tomb stands as a monument to God's love for all of us, from the gravest sinner to the most heavenly saint. Through Christ's triumph over death and the grave, we can all begin to hope that we will also share in Christ's victory.

The bad news is that as long as our hearts are burdened by bitterness and resentment, by anger and perhaps even hatred, the powers of sin and death will seem to have a greater claim on us than Christ. Our journey towards health and salvation will seem all the harder the more we cling to these burdens, insisting that they are ours to carry and that we are even entitled to them. If we see ourselves as victims, after all, our burdens can appear to endow us with a peculiar power: the power of righteous indignation.

The reality, I believe, is that whatever burdens we may bear are at best temporary, though we may carry them to the grave. Yet just as Landon's life was only temporary, but the effect of that life both for good and for ill is still with us, one effect of these burdens is that as long as we hold onto them, the less able we will be to seek and to embrace the source of healing that will free us from them.

Let me be clear that what I am talking about is not equivalent to the advice that when we have been injured by someone, it is our ultimate duty "to forgive and forget." May we never forget the truth of the past! Yet may that past never have such a hold on us that we are unable to move on in our lives with faith and hope. May we never forget that true forgiveness is not an act, but an intentional way of life. That is, every day I must choose to embody Christ's love if I am to share in Christ's victory. I must learn to do so even when every fiber of my being cries out for vengeance. It is strange, isn't it, how our hearts can desire revenge even when our minds know that there is no way to satisfy that desire? The truth of the matter, however, is that the victim who seeks in vain for vengeance will never find vindication. Only when we participate in the life and love embodied in the Victim of the Cross will we find true vindication: freedom from sin's dark clutches.

You see, the problem with burying someone whose relationship to us was fraught with pain is that unless we do something about it, it will always feel as if the departed is reaching out to us from the grave. We will always feel somehow haunted by the ghost of that pain, rather like the soldier whose amputated arm still aches in its absence. For when we bury someone, we bury a part of ourselves, and we will always suffer ghost pains until we choose to allow the Holy Ghost to remove them from us. Again, this is a daily choice and a slow process, a choice that is terribly hard one day and somewhat easier the next. Yet it is a choice only we can make; no one can choose it for us. Time and time again, we must make this choice if we are to choose life, wholeness, health, and, ultimately, salvation.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." What time are you dwelling in right now? A time to plant, or a time to pluck up what is planted? A time to kill, or a time to heal? A time to break down, or a time to build up? A time to seek, or a time to lose? A time to love, or a time to hate?" Only you can answer the question: What time do you have? Whatever the answer, just remember that, like Landon, like all human beings, we don't have all the time in the world, so we had better learn to use it wisely.