The Gift of Myrrh: In Memoriam – J.D. Trainor

There are few things harder to bear than the news of the death of a student. We are all deeply saddened by the death of J.D. Trainor. Our hearts are broken and our prayers go out to him and his family and to all who knew him at KES as part of the School community and the hockey team.

We remembered him to God in the mercies of Christ in Chapel this week. Epiphany focuses on the gifts of the Magi-Kings as we have seen in Chapel. They are gifts that teach. Among those gifts, one speaks profoundly to the suffering humanity and death of Christ which embraces all our sufferings and loss. It speaks, in other words, to the universality of suffering, something which other religions also recognize. It is the gift of myrrh, an ancient burying spice. It symbolizes Christ’s sacrifice. Thus, that gift belongs to the deeper meaning of Christ’s coming captured in his question as a boy of twelve in the temple at Jerusalem. “Did ye not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Jesus asks. The question points us to his sacrifice and death out of which flow the grace of resurrection and new life, the hope and comfort for those who mourn. That gift is given for us as mourners who face the loss and death of J.D. Trainor, the gift that places him and all of us in the mercies of Christ.

May he rest in peace.

For more information, please read our tribute to J.D. here. 

Rev’d David Curry