Father Conrad Kimbrough, RIP
Father Kimbrough and friends. Born 10 May 1927 Ordained 11 February 1978 Died 5 July 2011 Here is the text of my homily for the Mass of Christian Burial celebrated on 8 July 2011 at Sacred Heart Church, Salisbury. In the Temple at Jerusalem, a veil of cloth separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the sacred precincts; this was a token of the distance between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. This is the veil that was torn in two at the death of the Lord Jesus (Luke 23:45), signaling that the types and figures of the Old Covenant had given way to the reality of the New Covenant. But even in these last days, sinful man is still separated from the holiness of the living God, and to glimpse his glory, the veil must be drawn back. The task of a priest, Father Kimbrough used to say, is to draw back the veil between God and man and then hide himself in the folds. And so he did, first as an ordained minister of the Episcopal Church and then as a priest of Jesus Christ i