The week before Mother’s Day, Innaloo/Karrinyup parish priest Fr Nicholas Perera’s mother died in Sri Lanka. He reflects for The Record on her deep spiritual life.
This year, during the season of Easter every now and then we came across in our daily Gospel readings Chapter 14 of John’s Gospel. It started on 30 April, the Friday of the 4th week of Easter, continued on a few days in the fifth week of Easter, on the sixth Sunday of Easter and also on the feast of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Church instituted by our Lord.
Obviously this chapter is of much importance to Our Lord, to His disciples, and to all of us. In this chapter, Our Lord says that He was going to prepare a place for us in His Father’s house where there are many rooms.
We have His “I am” statement which He states with a lot of authority that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We have His assurance repeating in verses 13 and 14, “If you ask for anything in my name, I will do it”. We have another “if” statement repeated in the verses 15 and 23, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments, you will keep my word”. We have also the promise of His precious Gift, the Holy Spirit in verses 16, 17 and 26.
This Chapter 14 was my mum’s favourite. She recited by memory or read a few verses from it up to four times a day. I believe it is beyond doubt that she was a beloved disciple who loved our Lord much and kept His word, daily.
My mother lived a saintly life.
She daily got up at 4am to read the Scriptures. She read different Scripture passages; meditated, and made some of those Scripture verses her own and put that Word of God into practice in her life.
About 5 o’clock, my father joined her to read and meditate the daily readings and the Gospel before they attend morning Mass. She was receptive to God’s word in many other ways too; attending Lenten retreats and Marian retreats, Bible Seminars and Seminars for mothers, Charismatic rallies and numerous prayer gatherings. Unless she was very sick, she didn’t miss Sunday Mass. She was a very loving and a responsible Catholic mother who accomplished her motherly duties to all her five children especially greatly supporting them in their Spiritual life.
She was a faithful and good Catholic wife to my dad, looked after him so well and led a respectable family life for 53 years with him in 80 fruitful years.
My mother died a Saintly death
This is how God was gracious to my mum and rewarded her with a peaceful and happy death. It was the first day and the first Saturday of the month of May, a month dedicated to Our Blessed Virgin Mother. As usual, she got up early, finished all her Scripture reading, meditating and praying God’s word, then got ready to go for Mass.
In my home parish in Sri Lanka, if the weather permits, every first Saturday they celebrate an outdoor Mass at the altar of the huge Our Lady of Lourdes grotto.
Mum, whose name is Mary Quinta, had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She attended the Mass at the Grotto in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and I’m sure that she prayed to Mary asking her powerful intercession and protection for me her priest-son living here in Australia, and for her four other children and their families, living in London, Dubai and Sri Lanka.
She received Holy Communion and after Mass she chatted to the parish priest and his assistant. That’s how she began the last day of her life.
Returning home after Mass she had breakfast, did some household work and responded positively to a request to prepare a student for an English exam.
I’m sure she did a lot of talking during that teaching session about an hour, and she was very healthy that morning. My mum was glad that she was able to help that student. She taught English for more than 40 years in government schools in Sri Lanka before her retirement.
It was God’s time for my mum to go
I was able to talk to my mum over the phone the day before she died. She told me she’d had a good check up and the doctor had said she was having great health.
My sister in Dubai, her husband and her daughter had taken turns in talking to mum and dad for a long while just half an hour before she died.
After that conversation, my brother-in-law had gone shopping and received a text message saying our mother had died. Immediately he started his way back home to give the message to my sister.
When reaching home he saw my sister was praying though it was not her usual time of prayer, and he even wondered whether she came to know about her mother’s death. She hadn’t. As she saw him she asked “Why did you come back?” He replied, “You finish your prayers first.” “I have just finished, what’s the matter?” she asked. “If you don’t get disturbed I have some sad news.” “I’ll be alright because I’ve just finished praying”, she told him.
She was shocked to hear the sudden loss of her dear mother to whom she spoke just half an hour ago. Something amazing also happened to teach us that this one incident was connected to the other and that the Finger of God was present throughout the whole incident.
She told her husband: “During my prayer I experienced a strange chest pain I had never experienced before. My whole body was aching and I thought I was going to die” – at exact time of our mother’s death in Sri Lanka.
She was not the only one praying at that time. Near my mum’s death bed in Sri Lanka, my dad and the younger sister were also praying. Just before she died, my mother told my younger sister and dad: “I just want to lie down a bit, I have a slight pain in my chest.” After a short time of silence she said: “I’m going to die”.
Then came the last words out of her mouth – two complete Scripture verses from John 14, her favourite Gospel chapter, by which Jesus was explaining about the precious gift that He was going to bestow upon His disciples who keep His word.
My dad then knew that she was dying and offered her soul to Jesus, saying: “Jesus, please take care of her.” The next moment she breathed her last. What a peaceful and happy death it was. Coming to know the way she died, one Bishop who came to our home to pay his last respects to mum said: “The transition from life to death is a moment of great human struggle. If she recited a Scripture verse that time, it was a good indication to know that she died a saintly death. It is a very rare occasion. Even in the lives of the declared saints of our Catholic Church, only a very few saints had recited a Scripture verse when dying. The final words of that bishop to my sister were, “Your mum went straight to heaven.”
Special privileges my mum enjoyed on the day of her funeral
Being the mother of a priest, she had the privilege of having her funeral Mass celebrated by me, her own priest-son, while dozens of other priests concelebrated as well.
Twenty-two priests on a retreat who could not be present for her funeral Mass, celebrated a memorial Mass for the repose of her soul almost at the same time her funeral Mass was celebrated, at the chapel of that retreat centre in Sri Lanka.
Mother’s Day 2010
The sudden loss of my mother the week before Mother’s Day made it difficult when the time came for me to deliver my Mother’s Day homily.
But God gave me strength necessary to give a powerful Mother’s Day message and the courage also to include a few above-mentioned words about my mum to my parishioners here.
I was sad that I could not make a phone call to Sri Lanka to greet my mum on the Mother’s Day, but I felt that my mum was watching over me and living closer to me than when she was still living. At the same time I found much comfort on the Mother’s Day this year that I now have a mother of my own in heaven.