Death

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, You have created me for Yourself; grant that I may live and die for love of You.

MEDITATION

1. Today, the Thursday following Ash Wednesday, we find in the liturgy another reference to death. “Take order with thy house, for thou shalt die” (Is 38,1-6). The Church wishes us to become familiar with this thought, “less being suddenly surprised by the day of death, we should seek time for penance and not find it” (RM). In the Gospel Jesus spoke of death as coming like a thief in the night, when we least expect it; but for the watchful Christian who lives according to the words, “Be you then also ready” (Lk 12,40), death will not be a surprise, because it will always find him “ with his loins girt and lamp burning, like those faithful servants who were waiting for their master, “that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open to him immediately ” (ibid. 12,35.36). At that moment there will be no complaint, no fear or anxiety, because one who has always lived in expectation of the coming of the Lord will not be afraid to open the door to Him at His arrival. He will go to meet Him with great joy, give Him a loving welcome, and with all the ardor of his soul pronounce his last “Ecce venio,” behold, I come (Ps 39,8).

Although death is the last, it is not the only coming of the Lord in the life of a Christian; it is preceded by many other comings whose special purpose is to prepare us for this last. Death will then be for us in the fullest sense a coming of grace. From the moment of our Baptism until the end of our life, we experience a continual succession of comings or visits from our Lord; each Sacrament we receive, each inspiration, each increase of grace is a divine visit to the soul, by means of which God always possesses it more and more, dwelling in it more fully and intimately. One who has never hesitated to open his heart to all these visits from our Lord, who has always welcomed them faithfully and lovingly, who has followed all the impulses of grace with docility, has nothing to fear from this last coming. Then the words of Jesus will sound sweetly in his ears: “Well done, good and faithful servant. ..enter thou into the joy of thy Lord” (Mt 25,21).

2. St. John of the Cross, in speaking of those who have reached the state of transforming union by love, declares that their death is caused more by the impetus of divine love than by natural causes. “ Although they seem to die from an illness or because of old age, their spirits are wrested away by nothing less than some loving impulse and encounter, far loftier and of greater power and strength than any in the past, for it has succeeded in breaking the web and bearing away the precious jewel of the soul” (ZF 1,30). This is indeed “ dying of love,” a precious, blessed death, the true nuptial meeting of the soul with God which brings it immediately into the Beatific Vision. It is the way holy souls die, those souls who are prevented from seeing God face to face only because they are still imprisoned in their body.

Closely related to this death of love which is so glorious and blessed, there is another, accessible to all who sincerely love God and His holy will. As the essence of sanctity consists in always doing the will of God lovingly, even when it imposes great sacrifices and painful renouncements, so too, the essence of a holy death consists in submitting oneself lovingly to this supreme sacrifice, accepting it willingly as the last expression of God’s will. The deeper and more wholehearted the loving resignation with which we accept death, the more truly can it be called a death of love, precisely because it is embraced out of love for God.

God is the absolute master of our life; as we should live for love of Him, striving to conform in everything to His holy will, so that it becomes in everything and for everything the supreme norm of all our actions, so should we know how to die for love of Him, and accept death from His hand at the hour and under the circumstances ordained by Him. “For whether we live, we live unto the Lord,” said St. Paul; “or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14,8). Whether we are in life or in death, we are the Lord’s, and because we are His, we should have no desire but to live and die according to His holy will. If during our life we try to carry out God’s will with the greatest love, we can surely hope that God will give us the final grace to accept death with great love also.

COLLOQUY

“O Jesus, agonizing on the Cross, be my model at the hour of death. Although You are the Creator and Restorer of life, You willed to undergo death and accepted it willingly in order to expiate my sins. Death had no claim on You; You are the fountain of life and immortality, in whom and by whom all creatures have life; yet You willed to subject Yourself to death in order to resemble me and to sanctify my death.

“O death, who will henceforth fear you, since the Author of life bears you in His bosom, and without doubt, everything in Him is life-giving. I embrace you, I clasp you in my divine Savior’s heart; there, like a chick under the wing of the mother hen, I shall peacefully await your coming, secure in the knowledge that my most merciful Jesus will sweeten your bitterness and defend me against your rigors.

“O Jesus, from this moment I wish to employ all my powers in accepting all the circumstances and pains of my death; from this moment I desire to accept death in the place, hour, and manner in which it may please You to send it. I know very well that I must suffer and be ground by the teeth of tribulations, sorrows, privations, desolations, and sufferings in order to become bread worthy to serve at Your celestial banquet, O Christ, on the day of the general resurrection. I well know that if the grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and die, it brings forth no fruit; therefore, with all my heart, I accept the annihilation of death in order to become a new man, no longer mortal and corruptible, but immortal and glorious” (St. Francis de Sales).