The following homily was delivered by Monsignor Olivier Leborgne, Bishop of Arras, at the funeral of Lola Daviet on October 24 in Lillers.
Lola was a 12 year old girl who held a French national aerobics title.
Her horrific death came at the hands of Algerian woman Dahbia Benkired. Benkired arrived in France in August of 2022, with no passport or plane ticket. She was allowed to remain in France under the controversial ‘self deportation’ policy which Ireland now employs for similar cases, where the state turns a blind eye to the individual remaining in the country illegally while counting them as part of ‘deportation’ statistics.
Irish journalists and politicians have this week tried to cancel Olympic Gold Medallist Kellie Harrington for speaking out about Lola’s murder.
We present here,
"Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died... But Jesus had not been there and Lazarus, Martha's brother, had died. It is a meeting that took place 2000 years ago, and is taking place again today.
"Lord, if you existed, or if you were really good as some say, Lola would not have died... It could be that many of us are going through reflections of this kind and how can we not understand them. Lola. 12 years old. The age of promises that begin to take shape, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes more painfully. It is also the age when we begin to understand the evil of the world. At that moment, Lola, carried away by the savagery of an act that leaves us speechless. Lord, if you had been there... Feeling of a dramatically missed appointment.
Why this violence? Why Lola? How is this possible? Why this evil? What is this barbaric world that lies so close to us? Because of what? What is so broken in our humanity? There are answers to seek to certain questions to understand, judge, take action, make the truth, get up. However, many questions too will not be answered. As if we absolutely needed answers, but as if we also already knew that no answer will be totally satisfactory, will not restore the peace and confidence stolen by these events.
I then hear Jesus in the continuation of the encounter with the Gospel. It is different. I hear it, with Martha, I hear it with you today: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes, even if he dies, will live; Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe that? I also hear the Apostle Saint Paul in the text you read to us a few moments ago: "Jesus, we believe, died and rose again; likewise, we also believe, those who have fallen asleep, God, through Jesus, will take them with him. »
Faith experiences a presence. It is not an answer, it reveals a presence. Even in the odious and worst evil in the world. A presence. The Christian faith is not a vague belief in the immortality of the soul. It is the puzzling experience that God does not play our lives for us or dispossess us of our personal, social or political responsibilities. Confusing because we can think that if he took care of all this, it would go better – except that we would no longer be free people but automatons. But it is an overwhelming experience of what he himself plunges into Jesus, into our humanity, even into what disfigures, devitalizes and kills it, in order to bring forth the resurrection even in the thickness of the flesh. It's not just for tomorrow, it's already for today. God, in Jesus, true God and true man, comes to share our life even in our death so that we share his life and the power of Jesus' resurrection, whatever our situation and how we are confronted with death.
It is this logic of death that Jesus comes to break. The one who claims to lock Lola in the violence of what she suffered and her death. What is unbearable for us is even more unbearable for God. In Jesus, I know that death cannot keep Lola in its nets and that she is welcomed into the arms of the Lord of Life. I know, Thibault, from the depths of your unspeakable pain, that Lola welcomed the "I love you" that you said to her a few moments ago. A young woman of her generation who lives not far from here wrote to me last night: "I would like to express my support for Lola's family for her very special and dramatic funeral... She continued: "I am sure that her arrival in Heaven was wonderful and that she will be at peace with God. »
It is the logic of death that Jesus comes to break. The one who would also like to suffocate us in the violence of Lola's abjectness and death. Unbearable suffering. Jesus also precedes us in what kills us too, because it is indeed a death experience that we too live. It is indeed a death experience that we are all experiencing.
Jesus plunges into death, into what grinds and tears us apart, so that we are no longer alone, so that his presence may preserve us from despair and that, in the grace of his resurrection, we may all together dare to look to the future, and believe in the promises of life. This does not take away from suffering, it does not answer many questions, yet despite the thick fog or the storm, the experience of a path, of a road that continues is there, of the stronger life, of the One who invites us to it.
It is therefore the logic of death that Jesus comes to break. The one that might inhabit some, when they are tempted to respond to savagery with savagery – and beware of subtle forms of savagery. To do so would then be to proclaim the victory of savagery and to prove it right. What Lola's memory absolutely forbids us to do. It is here that the search for truth and the exercise of justice are indispensable. The charity called by the Gospel never makes the economy of truth and justice. They are essential moments. Jesus gives himself in the truth of the Cross to do us justice, to free us from evil and inhumanity, and to restore in us the personal and communal capacities of humanity and fraternity.
"I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus said to Martha, asking, 'Do you believe this?' Dare, I propose to you, the relationship with Jesus at the very heart of the unspeakable. To live. To live as Lola would like us to live. To live, and contribute, each for his part, to the construction of a society that serves life.
I then hear again this appeal of St Paul that you yourself shared with us a few moments ago not to be "shot down like those who have no hope". And I still hear the end of the gospel that has been proclaimed to us. Perhaps in the name of Mary slips each of our first names. Yes, Delphine and Johan, Thibault and Jordan, and all of you present here without exception, your name perhaps slips into that of Mary, to whom Martha says in a whisper: the Master is there, the one who is resurrection and life, the one who gives life, beyond all death and violence. He is there, He is calling you. Mary, as soon as she heard him, quickly got up and went to join Jesus.
Amen
