Contemplating Death: Understanding Our Mortal Journey
Introduction: The Discomfort of Facing Mortality
Let's go ahead and start with the first conference. First conference is that of death always a disagreeable and rather terrifying prospect to contemplate. We don't much like to think about the fact that we're going to die. So matter of fact, in the modern world especially, we fight like heck to be able to make sure that we don't die or that we prolong our life as long as possible. This is a this is unfortunate. When I was in college, one of the seniors wrote his thesis and the title was Death Happens. That's Life. And while that is a rather snide way of looking at things very typical of a 22 year olds, it is unfortunately not true. Death does happen. Yes, but that's not how it was supposed to be.
Original Intent: Eternal Life and the Impact of Original Sin
We weren't supposed to die when God created Adam and Eve. It was going to be for a specific amount of time, but they were not going to die after a time here on Earth they were going to pass into heaven. That was the original plan. Then they had to mess it up with the original sin. What we ended up having as a result is the violent separation of body and soul, which is death. It was not supposed to be this way. We are a composite being. We are body and soul. We are supposed to be united. Those two things, those two parts of ourselves are supposed to be united because that is what we are. Being separated. Body and soul is not natural to us. Our nature is to be whole.
The Natural Fear of Death and Its Implications
Which is why at the end, at the final day on the fire, after the final judgment. Before the final judgment, we will be reunited. This is the resurrection of the flesh that we proclaim in the Apostles Creed. We believe that will happen. We know that will happen because Christ has proclaimed it, because that is the teaching of the church and because that is our nature. God won't keep us in imperfect for all eternity. He will reunite us with our flesh so that we will be whole and entire at some point. Because death is not natural states, it is not supposed to be how we are existing. So it is a violence against our very nature, which again terrifies us when we think about it that way.
Facing the Unknown: Particular Judgment and The Fear of the Unknown
It is a terrifying prospect to think that once a way that one day. And we don't know when. We don't know how. We don't know the circumstances around it. Our soul will be violently ripped from our body, and our body here on Earth will be left lifeless. That is a terrifying prospect. And what's even more terrifying is the fact that once that happens, we will be presented with the most perfect and true mirror of ourselves that we could possibly imagine. That is our particular judgment. We will be able to look into the very face of God Himself as our judge. And we will see ourselves in his eyes as we truly are. What a terrifying prospect that is. We'll get into the judgment in just a little bit.
The Unknown Dimension of Death
But then that is all we know about it. We don't know how it's going to happen. We don't know any of the circumstances around it. We know the theory of what our judgment is going to be in what heaven is like and what hell is like in purgatory and all of that. We know of the theory, but in practicality we have no clue. And so obviously we are terrified of the unknown. That is a frightening thing. So it is natural to be frightened of death. It's a good thing to be frightened of death. It is something that is violent, unknown and scary. And so it should be. That fear isn't a bad thing. We need to make that very clear to. Death is not a thing. It is not a positive thing.
Death as an Absence and Reminder of the Temporary
It is an absence of what should be our natural state. It is like sin or darkness or any other thing like it. It is an absence of something that should exist. Should be there. God created us for life and God created us to be alive and God created us living. So therefore, life is the stay as a status that we should always have and our soul will continue. We know this. But once we die, we're not coming back here until the final judgment. Once we die, we reside wherever our soul has been dwelling. Heaven or hell. That is it.
Experiencing Death: A Reflection
That is what death is. It is the ripping apart of the veil between this world and the spiritual world. The spiritual world which we can see only through faith and only through the learning and teaching and the prayer and everything else that we do for the formation of our supernatural life. But death is a sharp reminder to us that this world is not everything. This world is transitory. This life. The physical life. Is not everything. It will end. Our soul will continue, but our body will die.
The Significance of the Soul and Contemplating Death
It's also a reminder to us that the soul is more important than the body, because it continues and the body relies on the soul for its existence, for its life. Once the soul is gone, the body cannot live. Now it's important. How do we contemplate death? There's a lot of different ways. First of all, as a theoretic, we can always think about what it would be like to die. Will it hurt? Will it not? We can always think about the pulse of what death is, why I just described the ripping apart of body and soul, the two parts of ourselves being torn away from each other. We can contemplate what comes after death. We can contemplate any number of things.
Imagining Our Own Death and Preparing for It
But when we think about death itself, it's always important or valuable for us to kind of imagine what it's going to be like. Dying at the moment of death. Now we can imagine that after, shall we say, some sort of a violent ends, like a car accident or something like that Having that split second knowledge that I'm going to die. Or we can imagine it in a hospital bed where we have to sit there and contemplate the fact of our mortality. But whatever it is, we have to come face to face with the fact that we are dying. Our body cannot sustain this. Our soul is slipping away from our body.
The Reality of Transitioning to Eternity
The recognition of that reality. The cold, hard fact. That we are disappearing from this life and entering into eternity. How will we react? What will be our final thoughts? What recourse are we going to have to God? How are we doing with our spiritual life? Are we in a state of grace? Have we been faithful to the sacraments? What about our families, our loved ones that we have to leave behind? There's any number of thoughts that we have running through our head in those moments. What will be our final thought? What will be our final word? How will we prepare for death? We get a diagnosis that we will be dead in three weeks, one week, one day.
Aligning Life with Desired End
How will we react? What will we do? This is a very useful contemplation because it helps us put everything in order in our own mind, because how we live should be based upon how we want to die. How we think about how we are supposed to live our life. It is most fruitful for us to actually think about how we would like to die prepared in the state of grace, with the sacraments, with the help of God Himself. The church standing behind us and helping us with everything we need. Being able to look death in the face and not be afraid. Trusting fully in the loving hands of God. This is how we should want to die.
Benefits and Lessons from Contemplating Death
Are we there yet? Are we at that point where we can say that we can look death in the eye and not be afraid? There is another aspect to death that we should contemplate, and that is the fact that it is actually something that is very beneficial. Death is a good thing. Actually, it's interesting in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and the world of Middle Earth that the elves are immortal. They can be killed, but they don't die. But they consider. Men who are more tall have a certain life span, and that's it. They refer to death as man's blessing. I always found that very interesting. Death is a blessing for us.
The Blessing of Life's Transience
Could we imagine? You know, 200, 300, 500 years of this life. Or more. It would be exhausting on so many levels. Could we imagine no end to anything? The fact that this world is transitory, the fact that we are going to stop living is actually a tremendous blessing for how we perceive this life. It becomes more precious. It becomes more important to live well, it becomes more beautiful that we actually have the opportunity to live it all. And all the good and beautiful things that come along with it are better appreciated. And also, all the terrible and difficult things that we have to put up with become a lot more bearable because of the fact that we know it's not going to last, it's going to disappear.
Adopting A New Perspective on Death
As a matter of fact, we should, to some degree at least, look upon death as a friend. It is coming to remove us from our pain and suffering. Hopefully. We don't go to a place where there's a lot more of it. But the idea is if we are in a state of grace. Then we have nothing to fear. And on the contrary, it is a blessing. It takes us from the confusion and darkness and pain of this life and brings us into blessing and joy and eternal glory. It is something that is good and beneficial to us because among other things, it keeps us on the straight and narrow by knowing that this life is not everything and it becomes all the more necessary for us to believe in God and to follow a life of virtue and to win paradise with the efforts that we put in every day and becomes that much more important for us to drive ourselves toward heaven because we know we have a limited time.
Pursuing Eternity: Wisdom from the Saints
That is one of the reasons why the modern pursuit of immortality is such a such a foolish venture, one that's impossible. Not going to happen. And two, very importantly, very importantly. Because if. We want to live forever. We will never live for we will never live for eternity. We will only ever live for this world. I was just reading in the letters of Padre PIO how he begged God for death all the time and how he was, shall we say, soaked. When his spiritual director told him he could no longer do that. If you want to call a saint sulking, that's kind of what he was doing. He was upset because of the fact that he was forbidden to pray for death, because his desire for death wasn't because he was suffering so much, though he was. His desire for death was because he so longed to be united to God. He so desire to be with God that he couldn't ever be happy, truly happy in this world.
Longing for Eternal Unity with God
And for us deaths, it needs to be that doorway. It needs to be a pathway for us to find true happiness, true joy, true blessedness, true glory. That is the purpose for why we die. Because we don't belong here. We belong in heaven. God created us not to be happy here on Earth. He created us to know Him, love him, and serve him on Earth so that we can be happy with him in heaven, but eternally happy and in heaven. This Earth, all he can give us is the barest taste of what the joy of Heaven will offer to us. Nothing else. It's like trying to. Analyze the entire ocean by just looking at a single drop of water. It can't happen. We can't get an idea of what the ocean is if we're just looking at a single drop. We can have some better idea. We can have some possibilities in our mind, but nothing else. Our desire for for for God should be so great that we should longed for death.
The Role of Divine Providence in Our Lifespan
That's the ideal. Now, obviously, this doesn't ever mean that we take that into our own hands, as it were. That is not for us to do. We put it all in the hands of God. He is the only one who can dictate our death to us. And to try to do otherwise is selfish and is an act of utter presumption and despair. It belongs to him and him alone. It is his gift to us. It is his punishment as well. Every punishment, every cross, every suffering that he gives us. Even the most violent things like death, they are blessings from him, which are supposed to elevate us and direct us. We are supposed to be directed to him because we know that this world cannot exist without him. Our life means nothing without him. And now we could possess everything that this world has to offer. But without him, without eternal joy, with him in heaven. It would be a complete and total waste.
Embracing God and Eternal Joy
We could savor every joy, delight, pleasure, whatever else that the world has to offer. And we would still end up feeling empty and hollow if we don't actually have God with it. If it ends up that we don't go to heaven, we will spend eternity regretting the missed opportunities. But if we live in the grace of God, and if we pursue God above all things, and if we learn to love Him above all things, death is our greatest blessing. It's the weird dichotomy of humanity. Death needs to be the scariest specter that we could possibly have. It needs to be this threatening shadow that looms over us to force us to convert, to force us to turn to God and to force us to scare us away from sin and from hell itself.
The Transformation Power of Death
But it is also the gateway to heaven and glory in paradise. It is also the path for us to actually achieve holiness and sanctity, but confirmed in the grace of God. That is the purpose we are supposed to be striving for. That is why we exist. We are coming to this world so that we can go to heaven. And in the end a re a real fact of the matter is the only way to heaven, except for the Blessed Virgin Mary is through death. She was the only one who was given the possibility. We don't know for sure of being exempted from the rule of death. As a matter of fact, one writer says that she was assumed into heaven by the desire to be reunited with her son again. And that is the kind of desire that waiting to have consuming us each and every day.
Preparing for Our Mortality with Urgency
So in one aspect, yes, we should be scared enough of death. Scared enough that we will not want to die until we are ready to be true, to see God and to be seen by Him. We should not want to die until we get our affairs in order. But at the same time, that means we need to hurry up and get our affairs in order so that we can be ready for and longing to die as Padre PIO and as so many others. Because this is not our home. This is not where we belong. Death is an essential part of our cycle of salvation. Death is an essential part of our spiritual life. Death is a part of who we are. And we have two ways of facing it.
The Tomorrow Fallacy and the Urgency of Now
We can try to run from it because it is scary or we can confront it, use the fear that it inspires at first to embrace the reality of it so that we can transform our lives into one great waiting room of heaven. Which one are we going to choose? And here's part of the problem. The question of tomorrow. I'll deal with it tomorrow. I'll go to confession tomorrow. I'll fix this problem tomorrow. I'll change my life tomorrow. I'll convert tomorrow. But as the old adage says, tomorrow never comes. It is never tomorrow because the future cannot be.
Lessons from Literature and Recognition of Our Mortality
By the way, this is one of the masterful pieces of the this the short work by Charles Dickens Christmas Carol is the ghost of Christmas future. He's a terrifying specter. You never see his face. He's completely unknown. And what does he reveal? He reveals death. Which is why all the other things that Scrooge had building within him were able to come to a culmination with that revelation of his own death, recognizing his own mortality. He forces his he is forced to convert, is forced to change his life. Not perfect by any stretch, but at the same time it is brilliantly done. And it is something that we need to contemplate a lot more often.
Symbolism and Reminders of Death
There's a reason we have depictions of death as a real entity. There's a reason why the Grim Reaper exists and the mythology and the like. There is a reason we have images and specters of death hovering over people. Because it is a constant reminder of the fact that this is something that is outside of our power, that has control over our lives and is something that should be terrifying to us. But it is something that is inevitable. This is why it's so important for us to have what's referred to as a memento mori, a reminder of death. Every Ash Wednesday we get the ashes on our forehead or when we can't get to the missions for that on the sun anyway. But the ashes on the forehead represent that.
Reflecting on Mortality as Liberation
And we say that, remember, man, that's our dust and hunter dust. Thou shalt return. We are. We are born to die. But that recognition of the finality of death of the assailant, the the essential nature of death should be a liberating fact. The fact that it exists, the fact that death is a reality for our life, should it should free us from the slavery and the bonds that this world holds over us. The world of flesh and the devil lose power when we recognize our own mortality. One of the reasons that it's important to have a crucifix in our house so that we can see the truth.
Embracing Christ's Victory Over Death
Excuse me. The triumph and the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ over death. Death no longer holds power over us. As Saint Paul says. Or death. Whereas like sting. It has gone. It is gone. If we are true followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, in fact, and in virtue. In practice. If we truly appreciate the reality of death, if we truly appreciate the good that death is supposed to give to us, then it holds no power over us. And on the contrary, that's when you can become a friend. Death means liberation from all the woes and cares of this world.
Eternal Life and Closeness to the Divine
Death means that we will actually be closer to our loved ones than we are here in life. Again, provided we're in heaven. Because that is the crux of the matter. Living here in this world is to be able to die for the next. Being born into this world is too is so that we can be born into eternal life through death. But it demands that we pay attention to why we always want to understand where we are going. If we want to know why we do something that is the most essential thing that we can possibly do.
Living with Purpose and Eternal Perspective
We need to know why. Why was I born? I was born to know love and serve God and be happy with Him in heaven. Why do I go to work? Why do I go to school? Why do I pay my parents? Why do I do anything? Because one day I will die. And I will have to face God. Because one day this life will end. And whatever I do in this life. Will resound in my final judgment. I will be judged by what I do, by what I say, by what I think, by everything else. Ken will get into the judge more tomorrow. But death means judgment. Death means a reckoning. An account of how we lived our life.
Mindful Living: Preparing for Judgment
And that means every thing in our life is all the more valuable. Every detail, every thought. Every moment. How many wasted minutes of our lives? How much time did we waste on trivial frivolities? On inanities. On things that make no importance. Do not change the cycle of salvation even a little bit. How will we use the gifts of God? How we use as creatures the things that He has given to us in His goodness. How have we used our families? How have we used our children? How have we used our parents? How have we used the commandments of God? How have we used the church and the sacraments?
Recognizing Life's Purpose Through Death
All of these things. Need to be recognized as being gifts from God for the purpose of dying well. One of the reasons that when we steal something, it is important that it is essential for our for our forgiveness that we make restitution is because there is an imbalance in justice. We gave something to the loss of someone else to the detriment of someone else. But if we think about it, that is the case in every part of our lives and every particle of our lives. When we die, there is a balance. And how is that balance inclined? Is there demerits or credits in our account? The time to think about that is not when it's too late.
Evaluating Our Lives with an Eternal Goal
The time to think about that is the here in the now. We want a good death. The best way to start preparing ourselves for a good death is to live a good life. To change how we perceive everything. How we go to mass. How we pray, how we spend our days, how we spend our hours, how we speak to people around us. How we interact with the world. How we look upon people or think about them or speak of them. How we treat all the good things that God has given us. How much we waste and throw away and treat like nothing. How much we utilize and conserve and protect all of these things now need to become issues.
The Gift and Limits of Life: A Call to Action
Why? Because I will die. One day I will die. And all of these things have been given to me for that moment. Every minute of my life. Is building up for. And building up to. And preparing me for that instant. Every good thing in even every cross and suffering and sickness and difficulty. Is building us up for that moment. Is preparing us for that moment. So knowing that we are going to die, recognizing the violence that it represents against our very nature, recognizing just how transient this life is and how short compared to eternity. All of this needs to inspire us to make one simple decision.
Commitment to Living for Heaven
I will live for heaven. I will live for eternity. Not for this short life. I will live giving myself entirely to His grace and nothing else. I will be faithful to his call and no one else's. I will put him first and everyone else well behind him, everything else well behind him. I will live each and every minute of every day for him. I will appreciate what he has given me. I will thank him for the many things he asks of me and demands of me and commands me to do. Because it comes from him. And this is my one opportunity, my only opportunity to do it.
The Irrevocability of Time and Our Immediate Actions
We cannot turn back time. We cannot go backwards and try to make reparation. We cannot fix the mistakes we make. But we can do better next time and we can change our lives. But one of the most essential ways for us to change our life is to recognize the very simple fact I am going to die. This life is going to end. And it may be. And the next instant. It may be 50 years from now. Maybe 100 years from now. Our life is a gift. But it is a gift so that we can achieve perfect happiness.
Using Life as Preparation for Eternal Glory
It is full of gifts from God. Even the more disagreeable ones. The ones which cause friction with our human body. My human mentality. But even those are to help us, to disengage ourselves, to detach ourselves, and to make this life subservient to eternal life. We must start seeing the hand of God in this life. You must start seeing the blessing of every moment and instant of this life. Not so that we can become slaves of this life. Or so that we can be happier in this life, but so that we can find eternal glory and use these things well. So that we can find eternal glory. So that we can use them according to the command of God, according to His will.
Embracing the Inevitability of Death
We weren't supposed to die, but let's take full advantage of the advantage of the fact that we will die. Let's utilize it. Let's use it to transform our lives into one of service, because give ourselves entirely to him so that we can die. Well, if it's an inevitability. Well, then let's prepare ourselves for it. Let's contemplate how we're going to die, what that last instant is going to be like. And whatever we would do in that moment to prepare ourselves for death, let's start doing now. Let's make that the guiding principle of how we're going to live our lives from this day, from this instant forward.
Saint Joseph: Patron of a Good Death
I was practicing, Joseph. He's the patron saint of a good death. And that is the person we need to turn to most. We want to learn how to die in the embrace of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. He's the only one we know who did. What a beautiful thing. Today, literally. In the arms of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Aiming for Holiness and Eternal Life
We need to have such a desire for that kind of a death. We need to have a desire and a longing for eternal life that is going to transform our temporary life so that we can become images like Saint Joseph of the life and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Death has the power to transform us from mindless slaves of this world and the flesh and the devil. Into the great saints of eternity.
Conclusion: Transformative Nature of Contemplating Death
Do people who are long in heaven with our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the power, that contemplation of true contemplation of death has. Let's take full advantage of it.
Summary
This text serves as a reflection on the inevitability and theological significance of death. It begins by confronting the natural discomfort and fear associated with mortality in modern society. The narrative progresses to reveal that death was not part of God’s original creation plan, referencing biblical teachings and the impact of original sin. Emphasizing the violent separation of body and soul, the discussion presents death as an unwelcome event, yet an inevitable part of human life. It stresses the importance of recognizing death's inevitability to inspire a deeper commitment to spiritual preparation and living a life aligned with eternal goals.
Furthermore, the reflection delves into how contemplating death transforms perspectives on life. It calls for self-assessment and recognizing the blessings of life's transience, urging individuals to appreciate and utilize the gifts of life in preparation for eternal life. Through allegories from literature and religious teachings, the text underscores the liberation found in accepting mortality and committing to spiritual growth. It concludes by emphasizing the role of saints and the Church in guiding believers toward a good death, with an eternal focus on holiness and union with God, ultimately turning death from a fearsome end into a blessed transition.