Rev. Father Paul Verdzekov is truly dead! He has ceased to live as a human person. But our faith tells us that part of him is alive, that part of him is his soul. Man’s soul does not die. It lives forever; we believe that the soul of Paul is now with God. For a Christian, to die is to be born in heaven. For one who is baptised, his death is the completion of his Easter celebration. The funeral celebration of Paul, like that of any Christian, is in fact, the Pascal mystery of Christ. All Christians who have died have become members of the dead and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. That is what is good about death: it unites the Christian with Christ.
Why then do we pray for our faithful departed?
We pray even for Christians like Paul so that their souls may be perfectly purified. If the Lord had not said that He alone is holy and perfect and that we are all sinners, I would have concluded like that Bishop who, hearing that Father Paul had died said with joy: that was a holy man – he is surely in heaven with him whom he had served faithfully all his life as a Christian, as a priest and as a Bishop. Should we then pray for Paul or to him? God alone will let us know by signs from heaven what we should do. He alone knows the heart of man. We know for certain that our brother Paul was not without the slightest stain of sin. God has said so of every human being.
Father Paul Verdzekov, that good and holy sinner, whom Christ came to save from sin and death was daily conscious of his imperfections. That is why every day he said Mass, and daily he celebrated the Eucharist, and he had celebrated it that fateful day, a day never to be forgotten in the history of the church that is in Cameroon. Paul was conscious, like every good Christian, of the truth that he was a sinner.
At the beginning of every Mass, he recognised that he had sinned against the Lord, but immediately asked the Lord to show him his mercy and love.
In preparation for communion he daily asked the Lord Jesus Christ not to look on his sins but on the faith of his church. And just before receiving the body and blood of Christ, Father Paul Verdzekov would say this prayer “Lord Jesus Christ… By your holy body and blood free me from all my sins and from every evil.”
We have every reason to pray for Paul. While still living with us on earth, he himself prayed for the forgiveness of his sins. When the church teaches that we are sinners, that does not mean that we are all mortal sinners, that we have once committed at least a mortal sin.
The just among us sin at least seven times a day but have never committed a single mortal sin. That is to say, they have always freely collaborated with the grace of conversion that God proposes to each and every one of us.
They are a blessing to the church. Many who have known Father Paul Verdzekov strongly believe that he was one of those in this world who never had any experience of a mortal sin, that sin which excludes one from the kingdom of God. Many are those in the church, and they are the majority, who have sinned grievously, like Saint Peter who denied the Lord Jesus before men but later on wept for his sin or the good thief on the cross who asked Christ for pardon and was admitted by Christ into paradise.
Many of us belong to the group of those who have sinned grievously but have asked the Lord for his forgiveness. The majority of saints in heaven were sinners, but converted sinners. There are those who are conscious of their being in a state of mortal sin but do not collaborate with the grace God gives them. The church continues to pray for their change of hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, into hearts of love of God and neighbour. You can still be a saint whatever the number and gravity of your sins. God gives to each and every one of us enough grace for our salvation.
To be conscious of one’s sin, to acknowledge your offence, and have your sin before you always, is a blessing. It is a sign that the spirit of the Lord who makes known to us our sins is active in us. If the spirit of the Lord does not reveal to us our sin, we cannot begin to be converted.
We are praying for the perfect purification of the soul of Father Paul Verdzekov so that it might enter heaven as soon as possible to live there with all the saints while waiting for the resurrection of his body which was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
We are praying now for the soul of our brother Paul so that it might pass with Christ from death to eternal life.
Dear brothers and sisters, Father Paul Verdzekov’s death took every one of us by surprise, even though Christ tells us to watch and pray for no one knows the hour of his or her death. The day of his death Paul said Mass normally, took his breakfast and lunch normally. On that day of days, everything went on with him as usual. But the unusual hour of death struck for him clearly calling him to eternity. Paul could not imagine when the day started that the slightest thing he did that day he was doing it for the last time and that at the end of the day his body would be lying motionless and ice cold in the mortuary in Shisong Hospital.
I touched that body! It was as cold as a block of ice! It was the body of Paul.
At the death of a dear one, we are face to face with the absurdity of human life vowed to such evident failure. And the temptation of revolt is not so far away: why this sudden death and now? Death is always a shattering experience that puts an end to all human relations: friendship, brotherhood. My friend is no more. My brother is no more… .
The Christian is not indifferent to the human and negative natural effects of death in the name of a stoic faith in immortality: the Lord Jesus himself, at the death of his friend Lazarus wept bitterly.
But the Christian, while mourning, must allow the humble flame of his belief in eternal life, spring in his heart and in the heart of those around him.
The Christian believes that the soul of a just man who dies is in the hand of God and in peace. (Wisdom 3, 1.3) Jesus died brutally as a young man. He was killed. But he changed what was terrible about his death into something very good: he made of his death a sacrifice of love for all men. Thus his death gave a new meaning to the death of one who believes in him. A Christian dies to begin to live forever. The death of a Christian like that of Father Paul Verdzekov makes him enter into intimate union with the living God. The death of a Christian is therefore the crowning of his life as one who believes in Christ. Death for a believer in Christ is a crown of glory. It is the beginning of a happy life with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Father Paul’s life we can certify, was lived to the full for the glory of God and for the salvation of all those the Holy Spirit through the ministry of the church had entrusted to his pastoral care.
As a Bishop, Father Paul Verdzekov was a great teacher and preacher. A seasoned intellectual was Paul Verdzekov. But so humble was he, that he would never accept to give a homily even to a very small Christian community if he had no time to prepare it well and with doctrinal clarity. A priest once said of him: I have always learned something new each time I listen to Bishop Paul preach. Father Paul Verdzekov, a sociologist, was considered such a good theologian by Pope John Paul II, that he appointed him member of the Pontifical Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As member of this Congregation Father Paul contributed much in the writing of some chapters in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. He was one of the two African Bishops who worked with Pope John Paul II to produce the post-synodal document, Ecclesia in Africa which is so well known in our Christian communities.
Father Paul Verdzekov was a preacher and teacher who always prepared well what he had to say. A brilliant student of the social and theological sciences was Father Paul Verdzekov, who in his youth was able to prepare for the Cambridge School Certificate in three, instead of five years and had every subject with distinction.
One thing this man, this very brilliant man, Paul, with the memory of an elephant could not do: he could not help anyone to have, like him, the power of remembering with details all one had read. I asked him to teach me how to remember easily and he could not.
Rev. Father Paul Verdzekov was also always very conscious of his duty as a Bishop to prepare every member of the church that is in Bamenda for the final coming of Christ. He said Mass for the faithful of Christ in the diocese every Sunday and days of obligation wherever he might be in the world.
Father Paul’s worry, reading his many pastoral letters to Christians, was to see how to help them grow from day to day in their lives with Jesus who is the life, the truth and the way to God the Father. He brightened up and smiled where truth was told and saddened and very much so by lies. There was a way of talking and doing of which one had to be careful when Paul was present. Paul did not want to contradict anyone publicly.
If he did not agree with what one was saying, he became seriously silent. Silence with Paul on such occasion did not mean consent. It meant non consent or doubt. Father Paul Verdzekov believed and rightly so, that truth alone is eternal and saves, and where it is professed the Lord, the eternal truth itself, is present. As Bishop he was a good administrator. He laid the foundation of the good and transparent administration that the Archdiocese of Bamenda enjoys today.
Reverend Father Paul Verdzekov carried out the three essential duties of a bishop which are the teaching, the sanctifying and the government of the people of God, with exemplary seriousness.
Dear brothers and sisters, to us, Father Paul Verdzekov left us for eternity unprepared. I think he was ever ready to leave this life. Once he told me – citing a spiritual writer – that a priest, and Paul was a priest, should celebrate every Mass with such devotion as if it were his last celebration of the Eucharist on earth.
I think Father Paul could have said in all sincerity like the apostle Paul, who knowing that his death was imminent, wrote to Timothy: “The time of my departure (from this world) is at hand… I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4, 6-7) To wait like Paul for the time of our departure from this world to the next we should gird our loins and light our lamps “and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open (the door) immediately when he comes and knocks. For at the hour you do not expect the son of Man (and the Lord of all) will come. Blessed will be those of us whom the Lord will find vigilant on his arrival. Amen.” (Luc 12,35-40).
+ Christian W. Cardinal TUMI
Archbishop Emeritus of Douala
I read with great delight the writings of cardinal Tumi. This makes me reflect on my own life. Thanks for the great message of hope. We are just here to prepare ourselves for the eternity. May the soul of father Paul rest in the Lord.
Dr. Mike Fonge
Houston, Texas
USA
Posted by: Dr Mike Fonge | March 11, 2010 at 06:55 AM
Cardinal this is a well written piece, that generates loads of self reflection. Your homilies awakes the core of the mind.
Posted by: Ambrosia Mondoa | January 26, 2011 at 11:01 AM