This brief Gospel from John 6 contains one of the most consoling promises Jesus ever made. "Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me." For a Catholic funeral, this is the assurance the family most needs. Christ does not turn anyone away. The deceased has come to him; he has not been rejected.
The Gospel's repeated emphasis matters. "This is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me." Christ does not lose his own. Whatever the difficulties of the deceased's life, whatever the questions the family carries, the Gospel's promise is that Christ does not lose those given to him by the Father. The same Christ who watched over the deceased in life is watching over them now.
The closing line is one of the deepest in the New Testament: "I shall raise him on the last day." The Catholic Church holds this teaching firmly: the bodily resurrection on the last day, when Christ comes again. The body of the deceased, present in this funeral today, will be raised by the same Christ who is now receiving their soul. Death does not have final possession of the body any more than it has final possession of the soul.
This is one of the most consoling Gospels in the lectionary, and a particularly fitting choice when the family needs the simplest, clearest reassurance that the deceased has not been lost.
