I am not sure, but I think the first time I thought about our death as possibly an important gift to others was when I first read Father Ronald Rolheiser’s book, a contemporary spiritual classic “Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity” (Image, Random House, pp. 342, 2014, $25.00). Father Rolheiser wrote the following:
“Like Jesus, we too are meant to give our lives away in generosity and selflessness, but we are also meant to give our deaths away, not just at the moment of our deaths, but in the whole process of leaving this planet in such a way that our diminishment and death is our final, and perhaps greatest gift to the world. Needless to say, this is not easy.”(p. 19)
When I first read those lines a few years ago, I found them powerful and provocative. I knew I had to reflect on them and try to understand Rolheiser’s insight better and also to reflect on how I think our death can be the greatest gift we offer. I suspect that I will reflect on Rolheiser’s comment frequently. There are many ways we can reflect on death. We can consider death biologically and medically. We can analyze our emotional and psychological reactions to death and to our thinking about death. We can look to artistic masterpieces for depictions of death. I think that the most important truths about death are reached when we examine death with the light of faith.
I believe that at the moment of death, the person who is dying is the creation of free choices: the person’s free choices and God’s free choices. Through free choices, we become who we are. Stated briefly I believe how we live will be the cause of how we die.
Rolheiser, using his deceased parents as an example, states that when those we love and those who love us die, we can experience them in a new way. Our relationship with them is transformed and deepened. I agree completely. I believe that when those we love die in union with Christ, their presence to us is deepened and strengthened. I believe that those who die in Christ are present wherever and whenever Christ is present. Of course, I cannot prove that, nor can I completely understand it. This new permanent presence is tied to the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. My parents and my sister showered their love on me throughout my life. It would make no sense to me to believe that now that they are with Christ, they love me less than they did when they were physically present on this earth. When I say they are present in my life, I don’t mean that they are present in my memory. Of course, they are present in my memory, but I also mean that they are personally present in my life though I cannot embrace them or see or hear them. They are loving me and trying to help me accept God’s redeeming love. Being with the Risen Christ, their love is given a new power and permanence.
Noting that through death, we can lose the physical presence of those we love and who love us, Rolheiser writes the following:
“But there is a presence that cannot be taken away, that does not suffer from this fragility, that is, the spirit that comes back to us whenever, because of the inner dictates of love and life, our loved ones have to leave us, or we have to leave our loved ones. A spirit returns and it is deep and permanent and leaves a warm, joyous, and real presence that nobody can ever take from us.”
Perhaps we do not experience or “feel” the presence of deceased loved ones, but I think our faith tells us that they are present. While I was writing this particular column, I was interrupted because the time arrived when I was scheduled to concelebrate a Mass. I offered the Mass for my parents and my sister and for my two closest priest friends who died within the last two years and whose deaths were gifts to me. In next week’s column, I hope to write about the deaths of those two priests and how in their deaths, they were a great gift to me. I did not see my parents or my sister or my two priest friends as I concelebrated the Eucharist, but I believe they were really present at the Eucharist. In fact I believe all five of these loved ones are present as I write this column.
There is no way that I can prove the truth that my faith in the loving presence of deceased relatives and friends expresses, but my faith in their loving presence fits with everything I believe about the mystery of the human person.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. He presents two 15-minute talks from his lecture series on the Catholic Novel, 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday on NET-TV.
