Homily at the ceremony in Santiago.

His funeral

His funeral, I remind you, was celebrated before 40,000 faithful, Dominicans, obviously, but also people who rushed in from the four corners of the world to pay him tribute. Émilien died on 8 June and it took only five days to organize his funeral service! Several celebrations took place in Santo Domingo and in Santiago. His body was placed in a crypt at the municipal cemetery of Santiago. During a ceremony full of emotion, celebrated in the Cibao stadium of Santiago, on 13 June, Monsignor Juan Antonio Flores Satana, Archbishop of Santiago, delivered the homily. It should be noted that this text, before appearing here, was translated by another great accomplice of Émilien's, the priest Pierre Rancourt. Let us give the floor to Monsignor Santana.

"Dear brothers,

We greet and welcome with affection all the people who have come here from the Cibao, from our country and from the world. We have come to take part in this intense moment of our ecclesial life, and to contemplate the passing of our dear Father Émilien Tardif, with Jesus Christ glorious, into the Father's house. That is the essential newness of the Christian death. "If we have died with him, with him we shall live." 2 Tim. 2, 11. That is why Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus in agony exclaimed with joy: "I am not dying, I am entering into life".

Last Tuesday morning, 8 June, the appalling news of the sudden death of Father Émilien Tardif spread among us and throughout the world at the moment he was getting up to continue directing the retreat of 300 priests in Cordoba, Argentina. The news spread with lightning speed thanks to today's means of social communication. We were not psychologically prepared for this brutal piece of information.

I, like everyone, remained surprised, but I became serene afterwards thinking of the psalm: 116, 1-5: "Precious in the sight of God is the death of his saints." prophet of the whole world. Father Émilien, a Canadian Missionary of the Sacred Heart, Dominican with the Dominicans, and of late citizen and prophet of the whole world. The life, the work and the writings of Father Émilien are known to all. We all know them, and the press and the other means of communication have echoed them. That is why there is no need to list them.

The day before yesterday, I was thinking and asking the Lord for light to see what he was telling us through this luminous death of Father Émilien. And these two ideas came to me that I would like to share with you. Firstly, to what degree of love and holiness a person can arrive when, freely and totally, he opens his heart to Jesus Christ.

Secondly, how God, in eras when faith and the practice of good morals seem to be withering in the world, raises up great prophets who radiate love, light and peace in the Church and in society, and who also shake consciences, inviting people to change their lives and to let themselves be transformed by the same Jesus, the Lord.

Jesus is alive

Certainly, Father Émilien, for whom the Lord worked a true miracle when he was in danger of death by restoring his health through the prayer of a group of the charismatic renewal in Canada, did an apostolic work in line with that movement, inspired by God within the bosom of the Church. He worked with a biblical and theological vision and always in obedience to the authentic Magisterium of the Church. He did it also without neglecting the human and social dimension.

While he was provincial superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, it was the work for social justice and for the poor which, although Émilien was young, deteriorated his health and led him to the brink of death. He himself tells us in his book "Jesus is alive", that he had consumed his time and his life in material activities, the construction of churches, seminaries, centres of human promotion and catechesis, etc., and in looking for money to support these works.

Since we were young, we knew each other very well, and both of us had worked here, in Santiago.

On the one hand, I always noticed in him "the man of God" who lived to perfection his priestly and religious life. On the other hand, he had great human gifts: intelligence, the mystique of work. He was enterprising, he had a great capacity for organization and great tenacity to carry out his evangelical and human projects. With the grace of God, strength of will, wisdom, he could overcome the many difficulties that arose.

Father Émilien, even after beginning to work more in the Christian renewal in the Spirit, in that renewal, he had a great task at the world level with his theological formation and his prudence. He never neglected in his life and preaching "the temporal commitment", especially for the poor.

We have a recent and blinding example of people who bore the economic weight of the construction of the charismatic Catholic Centre of Las Caracas, in the suburbs of this city, and which will become a shrine dedicated to the Holy Trinity on the occasion of the great jubilee of the year 2000 of our Redemption accomplished by the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ our Saviour and Lord.

These people confided to me that they wish to finish this centre of retreat, of evangelization, of spirituality and to devote their lives, as well as the income of their businesses, to the prevention and education of thousands of needy young people of this region.

The strength from on high

Father Émilien is not mistaken when he insists on saying that the most important thing is that God touches the heart of the human being with his light and his grace, that he reveals to him the new world of wonders and messianic gifts, to lead him to change his life, to transform him and to make him "a new man" according to Christ, as he did with Zacchaeus, once his heart was changed, he himself, without Christ expressly warning him, decided to restore the ill-acquired goods and to share with the needy the goods acquired honestly.

On the other hand, a man closed in on himself cannot understand the deep happiness that love, service and the sharing of goods produce in the heart. (Acts 20, 35). The struggle for justice is necessary, but we, the people of the Church, must be aware that it is very difficult to bring a person to abandon his idols without making him know, feel and love the true and living God and then open him to others.

Saint Peter says that one must "abandon our way of living and the idols to savour how good the Lord is; and conversely, one must make savoured how good the Lord is to leave our way of living, the idols." We all sadly know priests who have failed while cherishing the noble ideal of justice in the world, without first disarming hearts with the strength that only the Lord possesses. (1 Peter 2, 1-3)

Lets himself be possessed by Jesus Christ

His father superior, thinking that Father Émilien had exhausted himself by his work for the Church and the poor, wanted to send him to Europe to renew his theological, biblical and social studies. He wanted that to serve him as rest and as renewal of his physical and spiritual strength. But Father Émilien humbly answered that if he were sent under obedience, he would go, but that in conscience he felt a great urge to leave for the whole world to proclaim the love and wonders of the Lord for us and to renew in the name of Christ the call to conversion so that all might taste the goods of the Kingdom of God.

In a silent and peaceful discernment the superior realized that this was the will of God and that he could not prevent it. Émilien told that, in his childhood, he had heard a Dominican missionary speak ardently of the love of God and that his spirit had been stirred.

I will make you a witness of my love

He said to himself: "One day, I will be like that missionary." Everything that Jesus did with the heart of Paul, of Émilien and of so many others can be realized in a more or less great degree in each of us. Everything depends on our attitude, on our response, on our fidelity to continue in the intimate encounter with the Lord from whom come light, strength and grace. "Without me, you can do nothing." (John 15, 5) And when Jesus enters the heart of a person, peace enters with him.

Then the crosses and the real or apparent difficulties that come disappear, for as Saint Augustine says: "Where there is love, there is no pain," but joy despite the difficulties. The second idea is how the Lord in all the eras of History raises up great prophets, so that "his message reaches the whole Earth and even to the ends of the Earth his word." (Psalm 19, 5) The Lord said of Paul: "I have chosen this man so that he may bear my name to the pagans, to the kings and to the sons of Israel." (Acts 9, 15).

And he said to Émilien: "I will make you a witness of my love".

Only a person possessed of the Spirit of Christ, like Father Émilien, can carry out so many works and evangelize so many peoples on the five continents of the world. He directed retreats for priests, religious, laity; he preached missions everywhere in the world. He began his apostolic journeys in the world in 1973 and he evangelized in 71 countries. He visited some of these countries several times. He found time to write books.

He founded the communities of the Servants of the Living Christ, which direct houses of prayer and schools of evangelization in Spain, Italy, Poland and in other countries of the world. There are six here and fifteen outside the country for a total of twenty-two. The purpose of these communities is contemplation and, by that means, to arrive at the evangelization and transformation of persons into "new men" according to Christ.

Prophet of the whole world

We consider Father Émilien one of the great men of the Church in these last decades. But why does he reach so high and do so many works of universal dimensions? He could not have done them if he had not been, as he was, "humble of heart", letting himself be docilely guided by the Spirit of God and attributing nothing to himself, in the image of the Virgin Mary, as she expresses it in the Magnificat. (Luke 1, 49-50) No, he did not boast of his great successes.

In travelling throughout the world proclaiming the Gospel, he described himself as the donkey that carried Jesus from Bethphage to Jerusalem. (Mark 11, 1-10) A person told me that, the day before the inauguration of the House of Evangelization of Santiago, there were still many things to settle. Even though he had to spend much time preparing his conferences, his meditations and his books, with his own hands he helped to clean and to load objects. He did not accept that others do it without him cooperating with them. Moreover, he had a great devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

That shows a great deal of humility, for one experiences human powerlessness and the deep need to have recourse to her so that she may obtain for us the graces to accomplish our duties and so that she may lead us to her Son and her Son to God the Father. Blessed be Father Émilien, who faithfully accomplished his mission in this world.

It is normal that with the departure of Father Émilien to the Father's house one feels a great void in the congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and in the whole Church. But God will make the congregation flourish; he will raise up new prophets in the congregation and in the whole Church and he will make grow the works that he founded. We end with the words that Saint Dominic de Guzman, in agony, said to his brothers and that we can apply to our dear Father Émilien: during my life "Do not weep, I will be more useful to you after my death and I will help you more effectively than during my life."

"So be it." This homily demonstrates beyond all doubt the importance of Émilien's work for the Risen Christ.

He who, all his life, gave thanks to God who, he said, acted through a character so little eloquent as himself, well he will have accomplished an almost incredible task: spreading the Good News throughout the world and making Pentecost continue in times when, as some say, religion does not have the "fashion". Today, Émilien is seated at the right hand of the Father. He must be enjoying himself up there, knowing so many things that, here, always escape us. According to Giovanna Manzo, member of the community of the Servants of Christ in Italy, Émilien always said that at the moment of his death the first thing he would ask the Father would be: "Why do you heal some people and not others?" That is proof of the humility of this priest who never sought to be anything other than the servant of God, the humble instrument of his love for those who suffer.

Blessed be you. Émilien.

Extract: p. 86-95, from the book "A prophet named Émilien. A tribute of friendship to Father Émilien Tardif" Jean Ravary, priest. Edimage inc. 2000