Do read Father's Born Toward Dying.
Death is the most everyday of everyday things. It is not simply that thousands of people die every day, that thousands will die this day, although that too is true. Death is the warp and woof of existence in the ordinary, the quotidian, the way things are. It is the horizon against which we get up in the morning and go to bed at night, and the next morning we awake to find the horizon has drawn closer. From the twelfth-century Enchiridion Leonis comes the nighttime prayer of children of all ages: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray thee Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my soul to take.” Every going to sleep is a little death, a rehearsal for the real thing.
Such is the generality, the warp and woof of everyday existence with which the wise have learned to live. But then our wisdom is shattered, not by a sudden awareness of the generality but by the singularity of a death—by the death of someone we love with a love inseparable from life. Or it is shattered by the imminent prospect of our own dying. With the cultivated complacency of the mass murderer that he was, Josef Stalin observed, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The generality is a buffer against both guilt and sorrow. It is death in the singular that shatters all we thought we knew about death. It is death in the singular that turns the problem of death into the catastrophe of death. Thus the lamentation of Dietrich von Hildebrand: “I am filled with disgust and emptiness over the rhythm of everyday life that goes relentlessly on—as though nothing had changed, as though I had not lost my precious beloved!”
The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. Worse is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter. There are pills we can take to get through the experience, but the danger is that we then do not go through the experience but around it. Traditions of wisdom encourage us to stay with death a while. Among observant Jews, for instance, those closest to the deceased observe shiva for seven days following the death. During shiva one does not work, bathe, put on shoes, engage in intercourse, read Torah, or have his hair cut. The mourners are to behave as though they themselves had died. The first response to death is to give inconsolable grief its due. Such grief is assimilated during the seven days of shiva, and then tempered by a month of more moderate mourning. After a year all mourning is set aside, except for the praying of kaddish, the prayer for the dead, on the anniversary of the death.
The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. Worse is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter.
How true.
About ten years ago, I had two friends who died within a few weeks of each other. One had been diagnosed with breast cancer and went through the ups and downs of treatments and surgery for three years. My friend Richard had a shorter warning. I sobbed for weeks and was numb for several months. Deep loss takes years to process. It's not just the loss, the pain, the grief -- it's the metamorphosis of your character, your faith, your strength. You don't just find out how much you loved the person dying, you find out how much you love Christ - and how that love manifests itself in the crucible.
As I get older, I seem to miss more all the people who touched my life and have died. The history is bittersweet. I'm more attune to the preciousness of life and all its encounters. I work harder to leave the kind of legacy and mark on the people I love without compromising duty or what is real and true.
Fr. Neuhaus did not suffer foolishness of dissent gladly. He was in tune with the pain dissent causes the victim and worked to free us from the bondage with a shield and a sword. There was no fear. I can imagine the reception at the pearly gates for this shepherd. I'm looking forward to the power he will have as an intercessor.
No comments:
Post a Comment