In a stirring homily, Roman Catholic Deacon Rev Ronald Thwaites last Wednesday challenged mourners at the Mass of Christian Burial for Monsignor Richard Albert to embrace mercy and forgiveness, saying let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Following is an edited version of his text:

One of his fellow guests at dinner, on hearing, said to Jesus, blessed is the one who will dine in the kingdom of God. And Jesus replied to him: there was a man who gave a great dinner to which he invited many people. And when the time for the dinner came he dispatched his servant to say to those invited you must come now, because everything is ready.

But one by one they all began to excuse themselves. The first one said to him, I have purchased a field and I must go to examine it. Another said I have purchased five local oxen and I am on my way to evaluate them. I ask you: hold me excused. And then another said, I have just married a woman. I therefore cannot come.

The servant went and reported all this to his master. And then the master of the house was in a rage and told his servant: Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring me in here the poor and the cripple and the blind ones and anyone who is lame. And the servant reported: Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room at the table.

The master then ordered the servant: Go out again to the highways and hedge roads and make people come so that my home can be filled…

It’s Richard’s thanksgiving mass, and he would want us to buss a tune…

The purpose of this message is to extol the virtue of generosity of spirit, and to affirm that the attitude of gratitude and giving, leads us to the coming of God’s Kingdom. And just maybe you and I will be able to relate the lessons of the Scripture read to Richard’s life story, and most importantly, to each of our own lives, applicable for the few days we have left, for every funeral is a rehearsal for our own…

I was struck by the gospel passage that was chosen for today’s occasion. Here is the story of a great man who puts on a feast and he invites all his friends and they find every excuse not to come. All of the cares of this world that are perhaps not even too far in the recesses of our own brains this morning, because we have come from this task or that occupation.

Everyone of them comes up forefront and impinges against us coming to the feast – the feast which is the metaphor of the banquet feast of Heaven, the hope of each one of our lives. And the master of the feast gets angry and he says: go out into the highways and the byways, go and find anyone and everyone, since my guests have let me down. Since the chosen ones who have been favoured in this world, whom I have sent invitations to, can’t come, won’t come, think it secondary in their lives. Go and find everybody and anybody, find the lame, find the crooked, find those who have no ready garment, nothing to offer this world, none of the frills of life. Bring them and fill this banquet hall. Feast, as the riveting prophecy of Isaiah told us earlier, fill the world with a new identify, a new spirit.

God’s word is alive, you know. It’s not dead. I challenge today all of us to think again about what is the purpose of this life that we are engaged in as we go ahead. Jesus moved among all social classes. Is this not a metaphor for the way Albert operated in a highly stratified Jamaican society?

The story that is in the gospel is preceded by the tale of the banquet Jesus went to in the home of a rich man. And in the middle of all of the finery a man with dropsy appears. All of us in the political vineyard and many of you know that sometimes needy people turn up at the most inopportune times. And the guests expected Him to run him away. They watched if He would heal this person on the Sabbath, for so it was. Jesus did not answer their question but He reached out and touched that man and healed him. Because the message that He incarnates is bigger than any social ascription that we can create.

Richard Albert moved between Stony Hill and Riverton with ease and sincerity. He had a social nimbleness which went beyond normal human affectiveness. It was perhaps his most powerful charisma.

From the earliest Christian times we have trouble recognising and seeing God in human form. The problem of the incarnation, the enfleshing of Jesus in human history, not just for the 33-odd years of His physical presence on earth, but for all time, there has been a deep source of doubt and query for people of goodwill. The book of Revelations speaks of the dwelling place of God becoming with men, within men, within all of us.

This morning I suggest to you that Richard Albert’s life demonstrated a radical love and a defence of life in all its forms and stages, from conception to natural death. He affirmed, and so must we if we value our own lives – and there is sublime worth in every human person. He affirmed this in the works of St Margaret’s Home and St Monica’s; in the persona of Sandokhan and Natty Morgan, despite all of the warts and the blemishes and the excesses.

Jamaica today reveres him as a kind person. He was one who cut across all the ambushes created in history, the ambushes of divided religion, of class, of politics, of richness and poorness. He invited us to put all of those aside in order to recognise the fundamental humanity which is greater than all of the divisions that kept us apart.

No wonder, and it’s so good that Bishop [Howard] Gregory is with us this morning because it was with the Anglican Church in Jamaica that the first tangible step towards ecumenical witness and reconciliation took place. And there were so many other instances in Richard’s ministry where this would appear. Thank you, Bishop, and your communion for partnering with us in this regard. And how we pray that the accidents and the incidents of the 16th Century do not continue to keep us apart when in fact the world and this nation cry out for a unified Christian witness.

Thanks too, to you Joseph Matalon. Richard would be happy for a remembrance which was the finest Jewish-Christian eulogy that I have heard.

We celebrate Richard’s life, coincidentally, in the year that Pope Francis has electrified and captivated the world by declaring this a year of mercy. Because mercy is of the very essence of God’s humanity, of His divinity.

For God would be no God if He were not merciful. And each of us would have no hope in life if we could not count upon the mercy of the one who made us, redeemed us and whose spirit sanctifies us through life. Jesus makes the difference by affirming that forgiveness is the highest virtue, that reconciliation is the objectiveness that must determine our lives and our activity. Born of generosity and spirit. These are the heights of human virtue. That nagging, can’t let go, want to see you now, can’t find you, that love that God has for us and that we must have for ourselves, for each other and most appropriately, in the days after Paris, for the whole of creation.

Richard Albert was a mischievous man in his own way. I remember the story many years ago. He was on Bay Farm Road at the corner with Olympic Way and a taxi man bad drove him. And he pulled up beside him, he told me. And he did so (sign of the cross). And the day the taxi man found his way to my office and he told me, ‘Mr Thwaites, you high up in the Catholic Church too. Duh, talk to Fr Albert for me, for I feel when him do so (sign of the cross) him put some spirit on you.’ (laughter) He rolled up his pants and said ‘Look, mi foot start swell aready!’ (laughter)

Four weeks ago on Sunday, Richard asked me to meet him at Tony Ray’s house in Irish Town. He spoke about a clean bill of health that he had got from (Dr) Richard Gomes. And his desire to return to full ministry. And he asked me to speak to certain people and to encourage, and he spoke of a yearning, nagging vision to be fully incorporated in the only life that he knew, that of priesthood.

I remember Richard Albert many years ago, there was an old deacon and he lived in Portmore and [was] assigned in Kingston. A beautiful daughter of his was mercilessly mowed down at a bus stop by a rogue driver on her way to work. The family was in grief.

And the case eventually went to court. The man was convicted (of manslaughter) because he was unrepentant. And there was discourse between Richard and this man who had lost his daughter. And just before the sentence was passed, that man got up in the back of the courthouse and said ‘Please, may I speak. I have forgiven him. I don’t want you to send him to prison. He has a family, just like mine. Please be merciful.’

That was the spirit, not only of that good cleric as he was, but also it was the inspiration of Richard Albert.

I am sure that there are many thoughts and misgivings about him. But I won’t forget the walk that he took with Tony Riley and Forbes to their death on the gallows of St Catherine District Prison. And how he looked in their eyes and bore the gaze of remorse and regret, and with others the protestation of innocence, when I myself could not look in their eyes, so fearful of death was I, so resolute in his understanding of the work of life and the prospect of abundant life after death was this man.

And the truth is that throughout his life and ministry, Richard Albert, as well as many of us, was the subject of what to me is the greatest malady and sin of the church and the nation, and that is of gossip. We love to hear and tell stories about each other. We don’t determine always whether they are true or false.

And even when they are true, do we respond in the spirit of Pope Francis and the year of mercy; do we respond with a full appreciation that anyone who cast the first stone must be without sin? (applause)

St Paul, writing to the faithful people of Ephesus – to the assembled people of Jamaica, right now, because the Scripture is alive – says never let evil talk pass your lips. Say only the good things men need to hear, things that will really help them. Do nothing that will sadden the Holy Spirit with whom you are sealed against the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, all passion and anger, harsh words, slander and malice of every kind. And in place of these, be kind to one another, compassionate and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven YOU in Christ.

We are good at the theory about mercy and reconciliation, but the practice often eludes us. We need generosity of spirit. Jesus never cursed His detractors, never demanded an eye for an eye. The recruits to the great banquet of the kingdom, which the gospel story is all about, they would have had many faults and many crimes on their resume. They would be like me. They would be like oonu (you).

Some, all of us, have serious thorns in the flesh. Richard had them, many he never conquered. He was more as we are, more like those lame, crooked and distorted ones, like most of us here, who despite the pretty clothes, the criss cars, the honourable this and the lady that, included among them the ones at St Monica’s, down at Mother Teresa’s where he ministered to the forgotten and rotting ones in GP and Spanish Town prison while we argue about a humane prison.

Yes, then there are those who have so much money that we become ugly worrying about it, because everything material is destroyed too soon after we get it. At the end, the lesson this morning must be let him who is without sin cast that first stone.

Let the message go out to the corners of Bay Farm Road, of the Sligoville Road and Grant’s Pen. Richard Albert, like many in the crowd in the gospel story, was full of awkwardness and usefulness. He was a capable missionary and a good preacher. He was excellent in raising money for the poor. But he was prone to go his own way. He was an excellent builder, but we know that sometimes he could be uncompromising and brash.

Thank God in the Catholic Church there is no probation bench. We are a community of sinners, desperate people, searching for meaning, weak, pleading, and needing the strength to survive the disappointment of failures, broken relationships, creeping sickness and age.

Listen to me. Prejudices because of my colour, your hair, or my sexual orientation, if wi true to ourselves, we are hungry people. Not only from the fringe itself, whatever town and village the great banquet was held, but people from Seaview and Riverton and Grant’s Pen and Cherry Gardens, yearning for that bread and wine, which became in Richard’s flawed, trembling priestly hands, Jesus’ real body and blood, food for the feast, open to all, enough for all. Not free, just paid for by precious blood, making it possible for weak, compromised people – I don’t know about you, but I know about me – to become the very one whose flesh we eat, whose blood we drink.

I’m told, is it by you Daryl (Vaz), that Richard’s last coherent words were regret that he couldn’t say the mass that evening, that he could not once again offer you and whoever else was there, offer for me his prayers although I wasn’t there, and all the others whom he loved and cared for, the true sacrifice of the Risen Lord, made available then so often by his hands during his years of priesthood and once again on this altar today.

Oh Lord, there is no guest list. There is no RSVP or bring this invitation with you notice to see if you qualify. Just an open heart, a spirit thirsting for more, for a higher meaning for life, for a hope in things unseen.

It was because he knew what he was doing as a priest that he could not leave the priesthood. He couldn’t abandon his people. He checked for everyone. I know for certain of at least two attempts by different political administrations to get Richard Albert out of Jamaica. Don’t test me, I know what I am saying. He wasn’t going to go to any monastery or any other place. He wanted to stay with his people and there is virtue in that.

Ruby Martin, God rest her, in her final days asked me to do whatever I could, little as it would be, to ensure that the value of Richard’s ministry would not be lost.

George Minott, how do I remember him, found in the gully at Cassia Park Road, half of his face already eaten off by the worms, begging to be left there to die. It was Richard who called me and said ‘do what you can, bring somebody, because everybody, all the officials who are supposed to suffer people in that condition, wouldn’t touch him because his condition was so bad’.

But he went. The Salvation Army came. We took him to the Missionaries of Charity on Tower Street, years ago now, and the doctor came and cleaned him up and the sisters hugged him and loved him, because they saw worth and value in his life, however distorted and deformed it had become.

He couldn’t live because his condition had gone so bad. But the death he had prayed for was not a death of disgrace and abandonment. It was a death of honour because he was baptised into the Christian faith, into the redemptive blood of Jesus, by Archbishop Carter, and Richard was his godfather. I remember those things.

And sometimes those who make accusations and they themselves can prove nothing, where we judge people on suspicion, where we fail to see the bigger picture of life or the worth. I remember that.

I remember standing beside Richard at the morgue of the Kingston Public Hospital… As we looked at the body of Fr Ron Peters bludgeoned and shot to death. I remember his grief, Richard’s distress, praying out loud as we stood, ‘Why Lord? Why?’ – the cry of a human person, a cry of a faithful man, but one, like all of us if we are truthful ask God that question every time. And yet had nowhere to go but to hang onto the hem of his garment because it was the only purpose that could give meaning to life.

When he could not say mass in public for a deceased relative or marry a special couple or bring Christ’s life into a friend’s baby at baptism, because of his sins, real or imagined. Denied natural justice, he remained faithful to the authority of his church. He hung on to the hem of the Master’s garment.

He might have been disappointed, but he was never bitter. There was no price tag for Richard’s affection and service for our people in Jamaica.

There is no ticket needed to come to the Lord’s banquet at this altar today or any time. Generosity of spirit means being open always to human and thus divine healing. It is the highest virtue in our society. And its pursuit is the surest route to personal joy.

This zany baldheaded man showed us a glimpse of that struggle. This is worthwhile enough for us to follow each with our own talents.

So what and where is the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is not Caesar’s kingdom, whether the colour of Caesar’s robe is green or orange. The kingdom we hope to dine at and to live forever in, is what this world would be when we put aside our selfishness and live the way, the truth and the life of the Son of God whose advent we are celebrating.

The kingdom of God is about now. We forget when we say the Lord’s prayer: Give us this day our daily bread, not in heaven…Your kingdom come now on earth as it is in heaven…When God’s justice reigns in contrast to the systemic injustice of the kingdoms and systems of domination of this world. And the challenge we must take from Richard’s life is to commit to follow this path, radically, truthfully, wherever it takes us.

Richard Albert knew more about the serious sins of many of us, even more than we knew or thought we knew of his. He was a gentle confessor. I know that. He was no saps. He would tell you of his struggles and ask for your prayers, even as he counselled and absolved. But he didn’t berate and shame us in the way many of us vilified him.

And yes, he had strong political views. They didn’t always or even usually coincide with mine. (laughter). But I never knew him to lard with cynicism or snide gossip those who engage in political service as often we do to each other and wonder why people sneer at us.

Richard Albert never posed as a saint, but he was always available, he was always encouraging…He always sought out the good in me. Let us give thanks for his life and pray that the God of mercy, the host of the great banquet, will find him and us a place at the feast which has no end.