Sr Pat passed peacefully to Eternal Life on 31st Jan 2026
HOMILY
Camilla Hall, 100 Maxis Drive, Malvern PA 19355, USA
Condolences to all of you on Sister Pat’s death.
Of course, sad as we are, we believe that we are entrusting Sister Pat into the hands of the loving merciful Father.
For her a new phase of life has begun… in the presence of God and the angels and saints.
Did you ever notice how things that are precious tend to be scarce?
Gold is rarer than steel and more precious.
Diamonds are more rare than other rocks.
But as the old man who does commercial announcements for Viking Cruise Lines says, “When you come right down to it, TIME is the most precious thing.”
Sister Pat gave God TIME. She entered the convent in 1956… 70 years of trying to do His holy will.
Better things, much better, lie ahead.
Sister Pat Zandrews was an individual, of course, but she spent the great majority of her years as a Columban Sister.
So today’s mass is an opportunity to express thanks to God and to Sr Pat for a life of generosity and dedication.
For her service to the Church, the Columban community, and innumerable people over the years.
The rich variety of talents and temperaments in the Columban Sisters hint at the richer joys of the Kingdom of heaven that we can look forward to.
As a clinical pastoral education supervisor, Pat not only delivered compassionate care for the people she ministered to, she taught others the importance of bringing their genuine selves to ministerial encounters without letting their own personal hangups get in the way.
In recent years and months, as her own health, especially her eyesight failed, her life became a witness to the weakness, to pain and the loneliness that come with sickness.
These last ten weeks were particularly difficult. The silent witness of patient suffering is a challenge to any sick person, to enter into the deepest meaning of life.
Waiting on God can be a wearying process.
One of the best scripture courses I have had over the years was on Paul’s first letter to Corinthians. The Church at Corinth was a divided community, with a spiritually snobbish in group who saw themselves as more spiritual and endowed with charisms that the rest did not have.
Paul is at pains to remind them that God does not side with the sleek and the strong, but with the simple, the marginalized.
Eye has not seen
Ear has not heard.
What God has readied for those who love Him.
Who know their own neediness and poverty.
If we had to choose one word to describe them, we might well choose the word SIMPLE.
The simple people who admitted their dependence on God were those with whom Jesus made his home. It is about them that he bursts into spontaneous praise in this Gospel.
What was true in Jesus earthly lifetime, remains true today.
At this mass I will be saying is the Fourth of the Eucharistic prayer for various needs.
My personal favorite of the canons.
Its theme is that “Jesus went about doing good.”
And so he did
And so must we.
His first concern was, of course, doing the will of the Father, expressed in care for the sick, the handicapped, the broken, the grieving.
He showed us that God is aware of his suffering servants.
By Fr Burger, PA USA.