Tag: <span>Death</span>

April 19, 2021March 31, 2021

Face like an Angel

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“I do not want to be a martyr,” you may very reasonably think.

As our world becomes increasing militant in its secularization, what was once unthinkable begins to emerge as a possibility on the horizon: martyrdom again rising in the Western world, the world that we call free.

When considering the martyrs, we may think of bloody tragedy; of frightened Christians thrown to the lions and ripped to shreds, or of St. Sebastian’s entire body pierced with arrows before he finally succumbed. We may think of the loss of life, and of all that we hold dear in this life. And all of this we may interpret as failure, disgrace, chaos, destruction.

In today’s first reading, we are presented with the scenes leading up to the first Christian martyrdom, and the picture drawn is very different from what we might imagine. St. Stephen is strong, filled with the Holy Spirit, confident, and victorious. Even his enemies see his face as like to that of an angel.

Sometimes we forget that, as cruel and chaotic as their perpetrators may be, martyrdoms don’t occur at random, or casually. Because the persons in question are God’s chosen ones, the events are hand-choreographed with the greatest tenderness and attention to detail by the Creator of the Universe Himself. The martyrs themselves sense it, and they are filled with joy, even at the hour of their death.

And so, if we have nothing to fear in martyrdom, what can be said of the other, smaller tragedies that befall us? If we belong wholly to God, will He not choreograph the more minor occurrences of our lives with similar tender care? And if He is with us, who can be against us? (cf. Rm. 8:31)

As such we must heed the words of Jesus in today’s gospel: “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

Along with the grace of their martyrdom itself, the martyrs received a profound consciousness of the value of earthly life vs. eternal life, and had their hearts set on the latter. Whether or not we become martyrs, they provide a relevant message for our earth-centered age.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to plant your heart firmly in heaven. Ask Him to teach you to spend your life and your love on offering every moment to Him, seconding His Cross, that more persons may arrive there.

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March 17, 2021March 17, 2021

Remember Death

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In many respects, Christianity is an earthy religion, staring the less savory aspects of human existence straight in the face.

One of these realities is death. “Memento mori” is a Christian expression dating back into the mists of time: “Remember [your] death.” It is a fitting expression for meditation during Lent. At our death, all the pleasures we have heaped upon ourselves will be for nothing; all the praises of men, mere vanity. “You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter,” says St. James in the fifth chapter of his letter. This is quite an image: To the extent that we focus our lives on passing pleasures and vanities, we fatten ourselves for the slaughter of eternal condemnation.

We should remember our death, not in fear, but in hope. Christianity is able to face death because death does not destroy the source of the Christian’s joy.

In today’s gospel, Jesus faces death head on. He associates the essence of His work with and for His Father with the calling of the dead to life.

Consider in passing how His enemies were so deaf to His message, that they did not pick up on this key lesson for their lives, but rather only on the claim that inflamed their envy: The claim that God was Jesus’ Father.

Just as occurred with the envious Pharisees, in our smug modern time, when the travails of life have been beaten back a bit by medical advancement and technology, there can be a vain, academic tendency to reduce all Jesus’ words to allegory and metaphor, to read into them too much out of mere academic curiosity.

But when speaking about the resurrection, Jesus was not sitting in some ivory tower classroom in the halls of academia, pontificating vainly about overcoming our little challenges in life and assuaging our psychological boo boos.

He was talking about real death–the kind that comes to us all, putting our bodies six feet underground as food for maggots. And He was talking about resurrection, real resurrection, from that death.

And in similarly plain language, He makes it clear that some rise to life, and some to condemnation–the latter, those who have “fattened their hearts for the day of slaughter.”

Memento mori. Remember death. It comes soon; live with an eye to ensuring resurrection to life, for yourself and as many others as possible.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine the stage of your own death. Maybe quietly in your bed at home, maybe in a hospital bed, maybe in an accident–one way or another, one moment you are here, and the next, you are standing before the Lord, rising either to life or to condemnation. As you look at yourself there, beg Jesus to protect you in His mercy and Providence from sin, and ask Him to make your life fruitful according to His wishes for the salvation of others.

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November 15, 2020October 29, 2020

Talented

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul cautions us that the day of our accounting before the Lord will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. The children of the night, of darkness, will be caught unprepared, asleep; the children of light, of the day, by contrast, will be ready.

Jesus talks about that day of reckoning in the gospel. It can be perhaps a bit frightening to realize that it will not be enough merely to have avoided sin to enter the Kingdom of God. We actually have to produce something through the investment of our talents. Having produced is what readiness for the Lord’s coming means.

So, what does fruitfulness mean? The word talent is used: Do we need to develop our talents for athletics, music, art, learning, etc. to the maximum in view of that day? Many do this, but are not on the path to which Jesus refers.

Let’s look at the ideal disciple of Jesus, the Virgin Mary. How did she embody today’s gospel? She did not focus on the development of all her human potential in terms of skill development. She simply looked to give herself fully to the will of God: “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” She was conscious of the exalted nature of her mission, but most of her activities and days were quite ordinary.

What are the talents to which Jesus refers? The greatest gifts we have are the faculties of our soul, our intelligence and will. These come in different shapes and sizes, just like the different numbers of talents in the gospel. But whatever our inventory, this is what we are called to give to God and to His will every day, by which they are sure to bear fruit. We are to give Him our freedom wholeheartedly with our will. We are to give our intellect to His truth. If we do this, it does not matter how spectacular our activities or achievements in the world’s view. Also, it doesn’t matter if we die with our “talents” (potential for developing skills) not fully tapped in this or that area. God will bring fruit for souls, as He did with the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Thus it is that in the first reading, the value of a virtuous wife is extolled. It’s not about whether she sits home weaving flax or succeeds as a Fortune 500 CEO. Either of these is of equal value if she undertakes it in virtuous, loving obedience to God’s will. And the same goes for husbands, for men.

“Seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.” (Mt. 6:33)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Reflect on the most mundane activities in your life, as well as the most stimulating and interesting stuff of your dreams. Place them at the feet of Jesus and ask Him the value He places on each. Ask Him to help you dwell in His Heart and His will through your daily gift of self renewed in your moments of contemplative prayer, so that your gift of self opens the door for Him to bear the fruit He wants in so many souls.

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November 2, 2020October 17, 2020

The Day of the Dead

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

All Souls Day. On this day we commemorate specifically, as can be seen from our readings, all those Christian souls who have passed on from this life, who have gone before us. We think of and pray for the dead.

The readings are not all about Purgatory. They are about the dead, and how their hope in God is not in vain. The readings are all about hope.

The readings are not all about Purgatory, but this day is. If it were not so, there would be no All Souls Day–only yesterday’s feast, All Saints Day. The definition of a saint is one who is in Heaven. If all faithful Christians who passed were in Heaven, All Saints Day and All Souls Day would be the same thing.

Yet, this is not “Purgatory Day,” but rather, “All Souls Day.” The focus is not on the difficult purification that souls must undergo after death prior to reaching Heaven but rather, appropriately, on the value of the faithful Christian soul itself, how God cherishes it, and how He holds it in His hand.

As such, we could thing that Purgatory is something of an eccentric, even embarrassing doctrine, one that no one really understands and no one knows what to do with.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. The first reading underscores the meaning of Purgatory perfectly: “As gold in the furnace, He proved them.”

Purgatory is actually critical and central to what is essential to Christian doctrine: Namely, the process of salvation and sanctification.

Jesus came to shed His blood for us. This was a big deal. He wasn’t going to do that and leave us in a state of half-baked mediocrity.

No, Jesus came for the big prize. He came for our complete purification and sanctification in order to realize–as the object of the game–our complete exaltation. He wanted nothing less for us than a true and transforming participation in the divine nature. You don’t get that unless your free will is completely and totally centered on Him, purified from any other attachments. The big prize.

To insist, however, that this purification come to complete fulfillment in this broken world, full of the fruits of sin and constant temptation, would be harsh. Most of us who are striving to choose God consistently, and keep away from the complete rejection of His path for us that is serious sin, will, however, die with some attachment to creatures and some habits of lesser sin that we have not shaken. These habits constitute weaknesses and impurities that would cause undo suffering in the presence of God.

“As gold in the furnace, He proved them.” There are some who posit that the purifying fire of Purgatory is the presence of the fullness of God’s love itself, which causes suffering in our souls due to their unworthy attachments. That this love itself is what burns away the impurities in the gold.

Whatever the case, Purgatory–purification after death–is a mercy, both because God does not allow us to be condemned due to our minor attachments, and because He allows us a finite period after death by which our souls reach the fully sanctified state for which He created us. It is a mercy because, despite minor faults with which we may die, we still come to reach the fullness of the elevated destiny won for us in Christ–the glory of which we cannot even begin to fathom here on earth.

There is a further mercy about Purgatory: The Church teaches us that we can lighten/shorten the time of souls’ purification through our prayers for them. One can infer here that our prayers bring special grace to fortify these souls, as protein does a body builder, as they go through their spiritual “workout” after death. Prayers for the dead are our way of participating in mercy of God by which He prepares them for profound eternal union with Himself.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think of persons you have loved, who have passed. Speak to Jesus about them, about the reasons He loves them so much, what He loves about them. Ask Him to speed their period of purification, if it is still ongoing (and if not, to apply your prayers to another soul in need). Consider visiting a cemetery today or in the next couple of days. If you do and you pray for your special departed friend there, fulfilling some basic requirements you will find here, you can win for them immediate culmination of their purification and entry into Heaven. Also: Read through the readings for today again, and praise God for the hope He gives to us for eternal salvation and sanctification.

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September 26, 2020September 8, 2020

“Memento Mori” (“Remember Death”)

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s first reading starts with the word “Rejoice,” but the rest of the reading is more sobering than it is exultant.

The reading encourages the young person to enjoy the benefit of youth and put off unpleasantries while still able.

But also to remember God, for youth is fleeting…and then the reading goes on to use beautiful poetic metaphors for the aging and death that await all of us.

Aging: “Guardians of the house [one’s limbs] tremble”; “Grinders [teeth] are silent because they are few”; “they who look through the windows [eyes] grow blind”; “the sound of the mill is low [hearing loss]”; etc.

Death: “the silver cord is snapped, the golden bowl is broken”; “the broken pulley falls into the well”; “dust returns to the earth as it once was,” “life breath returns to God who gave it.”

As so often is the case, the Psalm response puts the point of punctuation on this message: “You turn man back to dust, saying, ‘Return, O children of men.’ For a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past, or as a watch of the night.”

The great spiritual masters of the Church are unanimous in advising us actively to meditate on our deaths–to imagine what the circumstance might be, to close our eyes and place ourselves there. This meditation, for example, forms an explicit part of St. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. And the practice is depicted in much medieval and Renaissance art, wherein monks as they write are shown with a skull upon their desk, which is aimed at reminding them of their eventual death.

This is not some sort of macabre practice to spook us or make us sad. Rather, when we meditate on our deaths, if we do so vividly and aided by God’s grace, we may take on some of the mindset which, as our impending encounter with eternity increases our lucidity, could be useful for informing our priorities for today. Mindfulness of the rapidly passing nature of our lives will inform the wisdom with which we live each day.

Jesus had His own death always before His eyes, and today He speaks of it. He was well aware of the story arc of His life, and its conclusion. While we do not know the exact circumstances of our deaths, we can orient our lives as Jesus did toward those things that will matter for eternity, and wisely order our days according to the fleeting reality of our lives.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Unlike the disciples in today’s Gospel passage, let’s not be so afraid of the topic of death that we hesitate to ask Jesus questions about it. Close your eyes, and imagine your last moments, with as much vivid detail as your imagination can muster. Then, ask Jesus questions. How happy is He with the life you have lived, as you prepare for your definitive encounter with Him? How would He ask you to prioritize differently?

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