Mass of Christian Burial

for Margo Anne Schorno

Homily of Bishop John Cummins

It's hard to capture a whole life, but the thought that was on my mind today is the words from the Book of Revelation. That's "Behold! I make all things new." And I think that touches the moment that we are here today, but I think it is also a theme for the life and the service of Margo Schorno. I really offer the sympathy of the diocese to the family and to Brian Joyce and to the parish leadership here and to all of you. And I do that I think appropriately, because Margo was a native of the diocese of Oakland, and formed by that family and formed by the institutions of this diocese for the work and for the vocation that was ahead of her.

I think those thoughts from the Book of Revelation are important for us today because that book writes the story in these elegant poetic terms of the new Jerusalem, of sapphire and gold and the rivers of fresh water coming through. What a heavenly kind of place! And, yet, at the same time, there is no more graphic description of the veil of tears than in that Book of Revelation and the promises, of course, of no more tears, no more sickness, no more oppression, no more depression. And, while we realize that the gift of her life in these last many, many years, of the sickness and the suffering, that is a ministry by itself. And it is not so clear as the preaching and the teaching, but it certainly is from the early history of the Church. It is one of those quiet kinds of service to everybody that belongs to prayer and belongs to suffering. But now that will pass.

But I think "Behold! I make all things new." I want to make reference to her life, that she entered her adult years at the time of the Second Vatican Council and followed on that group of Adrian Dominican Sisters who taught her at Bishop O"Dowd High School. And that was the year of explosive development in Religious Life. And the Adrian Dominicans, under the leadership of a very powerful woman, Mother Gerald Barry, had moved out of Michigan to the Caribbean, to Florida, to the Southwest in very great numbers, and then to the Far West in the 50's and the 60's,
and we all were impacted by the presence of those women and the lives of all of them, and certainly Margo.

But she entered when the Second Vatican Council had made a very brief statement to Religious that renewal is in order. And, without too much detail, it was said, "Get back to your roots. Understand the place of Religious Life in the Church in a new way, but particularly remember that all Religious are different. Dominicans are not Franciscans, are not Holy Cross, and get back to that original understanding of what that service and what that ministry is." And therefore, all things became very new, and the change of habit was not the issue. It was the understanding of how Religious served the Church. And that very, very broad understanding that came from the Church in the modern world, that what is the purpose of religious life. And we are not over that. And when we think of how many different understandings of the meaning of "Church" or how many different ethnic groups translate that meaning of
"Church," these have not been easy years, to probe as to what is the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, and the different interpretations, and the laying of blame that has gone on for the last, many, many years.

I think too that, looking back on the work of Religious women and women in the Church, those are not to be minimized. Major responsibilities in the Education and the Social Mission of the Church, and Health Care. But, for all of those works, those were rather clearly defined. And I think, for all of us human beings who love to operate with habit and not to have to get every morning and start everything all over again and also like the definition of what we are to do so that we know what we are about, Margo moved from that very secure understanding to a life of
the parish and has served a really pioneering in the Diocese for the role of women in the parish. Twenty-two years ago, I gathered a group of those women down at the Cathedral one night to say, "Where do we go from here?" And it was not at all clear. And they basically told me, "Let it ride. Give us a few more years til we have some better understanding of what we are about." But to move at a parish, and to move with the particular disposition and character of Margo Schorno who liked to plan and who liked to have things in order, parish life does not allow that very much. At the administrative level, the sacramental level, the teaching level, the availability level, talk about all of them, I am sure that she, like anybody who worked in the parish, was aware that her daily plans very often did not work out. And she would have many many days and many weeks to remember that not one of her plans for that day worked out because there was the interference.

I think that for her to love that kind of work is a statement of what kind of vocation she really had. The breadth of that kind of embrace, of what it is to serve the human family and to make the joys and the hopes and the griefs and the anxieties of everyone in the world the joys, the hopes, the griefs, the anxieties of the followers of Christ. "I make all things new." We are continuing to make all things new in the Church. And one of the graces and one of the contributions of Margo Schorno's life was to help us understand but also to see the example of what it is to "make all things new."