Editor’s observe: This essay was initially posted on the CWR web site on Good Friday, March 25, 2016.

O, Loss of life
Gained’t you spare me over til one other yr
Properly what is that this that I can’t see
With ice chilly fingers takin’ maintain of me
Properly I’m dying, none can excel….

These are lyrics from the widely-known music “O, Loss of life” a haunting melody that turned well-known after it was featured within the film, O Brother, The place Artwork Thou? The music, so expertly sung by Ralph Stanley in what is nearly a Gregorian chant to the facility of dying, is haunting exactly as a result of it expresses so effectively the pure human concern of dying.

However is it true that dying one thing that “none can excel”? Is dying actually “the ultimate phrase” over human life? Or is there one other phrase that God has to say on the matter?

Within the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Structure on the Church within the Fashionable World (Gaudium et Spes), we learn that: “It’s within the face of dying that the riddle a human existence grows most acute. Not solely is man plagued by ache and by the advancing deterioration of his physique, however much more so by a dread of perpetual extinction.” Confronted with the fact of dying, we rightly ask: “What’s going to develop into of all that I’ve labored for? What’s going to occur to all these I’ve beloved?” The unavoidable actuality of dying appears to make human life meaningless. “Why am I right here,” we ask, “if ultimately, all of it involves nothing?”

Within the Scriptures, dying is the enemy. It’s the companion of sin, they usually each have to be overcome collectively. Slightly than counseling the devoted merely to simply accept dying as a reality of life, or to welcome dying as a present, Gaudium et Spes tells us that the human particular person “rightly follows the instinct of his coronary heart when he abhors and repudiates the utter destroy and whole disappearance of his personal particular person.” It’s thus a really human and really comprehensible response to dying for the poet Dylan Thomas to beg his dying father to “Rage, rage in opposition to the dying of the sunshine. Go not gently into that darkish evening.” Why? As a result of God has put us within the seeds of one thing everlasting: a craving for Himself.

“Human beings bear in themselves,” Gaudium et Spes tells us, “an everlasting seed which can’t be decreased to the merely materials.” It’s exactly as a result of we aren’t merely materials that we yearn for one thing past the dying of our finite human our bodies. It’s particularly once we have a look at a person or lady in a wheelchair or an aged grandmother whose physique has withered and failed in so some ways, but nonetheless really feel of their presence the facility of their indomitable spirit, that we all know there’s something within the human particular person not restricted to the present weak point of our materials our bodies.

Human beings know they need to face dying, however additionally they have all the time yearned for one thing extra — a life that transcends the restrictions of this world, together with even the boundaries of dying. The traditional Roman thinker Cicero as soon as wrote about his perception within the immortality of the soul that, “If I err in my perception that the souls of males are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I want this error … to be wrested from me whereas I dwell.”

Religious well being includes an acknowledgement of the fact and inevitability of dying, however it additionally includes recognizing in ourselves the need for a life that transcends the life we see throughout us in nature: the form of life that flowers for a time, however then withers and finally dies. As people, we discover inside ourselves a deep and really significant craving for all times within the truest sense, a life free from sin and dying: a life we name “everlasting life.”

However “everlasting life” of the type Christ guarantees us isn’t merely the elongation of years — extra years to undergo “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” extra years to fret anxiously concerning the final finish. That is why, in response to Gaudium et Spes, “All of the endeavors of know-how, although helpful within the excessive, can’t calm his anxiousness; for prolongation of organic life is unable to fulfill the need for larger life which is inescapably lodged within the human coronary heart.”

After I ask younger folks whether or not they wish to “dwell endlessly,” they usually will ask me in return, “Do you imply like this? As I’m now?” “No,” they steadily will reply. Maybe they sense instinctively that merely extending this life wouldn’t but be sufficient. Maybe they’re merely responding to a deep craving for one thing extra: a fuller form of life than even the blessings of youth can present.

And but I additionally fear that this response may stem from an unlucky weariness with life. Too lots of our beloved younger folks in addition to our invaluable aged contemplate taking their very own lives. As a Church group united within the mystical and dwelling Physique of Christ, we mustn’t ever enable this unhappy weariness of life to beat us. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote passionately in his nice encyclical Evangelium Vitae concerning the significance of life and of building a “tradition of life.” “The Gospel of life is on the coronary heart of Jesus’ message,” wrote the Pope. “Lovingly obtained day after day by the Church, it’s to be preached with dauntless constancy as ‘excellent news’ to the folks of all ages and tradition.”

“Man is named to a fullness of life which far exceeds the scale of his earthly existence as a result of it consists it consists in sharing the very lifetime of God,” says the Pope. And but this calling to union with God should on no account trigger us to de-value human life on this world. Slightly, because the Pope emphasizes:

The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable worth of human life even in its temporal part. Life in time, the truth is, is the basic situation, the preliminary stage and an integral a part of your complete unified means of human existence. It’s a course of which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the reward of divine life, which can attain its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 John 3:1-2).

Certainly, it’s exactly as a result of of this supernatural calling — as a result of the occasions of our life now haven’t merely temporal, however everlasting ramifications — that, in response to John Paul II, life “stays a sacred actuality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a way of accountability and dropped at perfection in love and within the reward of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.

And but, what can provide us hope within the face of the utter blackness of dying? We can’t see past that veil of darkness. Loss of life stays a thriller, and its ceaseless presence can fill us with what is usually known as “existential dread.”

However at my again I all the time hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying close to
And yonder all earlier than us lie
Deserts of huge eternity.

So wrote Andrew Marvell “to his coy mistress.” Marvell could solely have been serious about a romantic tryst when he wrote these strains, however they’re highly effective (even when improperly used) exactly as a result of they witness to one thing genuine within the human situation: an inescapable consciousness (“However at my again I all the time hear”), generally dim, generally much less so, of the inevitable strategy of dying. Loss of life … after which what? “Deserts of huge eternity?” “The grave’s a positive and personal place,” Marvell warns his younger paramour, “However none, I feel, do there embrace.”

Getting old and dying could make us really feel deeply alone within the universe. It appears as if it’s a burden we should carry alone. Nobody undergo this course of for us. Nobody can take our place in dying. It’s one thing we ourselves should do.

However are we actually alone? Our Christian religion tells us that Christ died for us, and thus we’re by no means actually alone. We learn in Gaudium et Spes:

Though the thriller of dying completely beggars the creativeness, the Church has been taught by divine revelation and firmly teaches that man has been created by God for a blissful function past the attain of earthly distress. As well as, bodily dying … shall be vanquished … when man who was ruined by his personal doing is restored to wholeness by an almighty and merciful Savior. For God has known as man and nonetheless calls him in order that together with his total being he could be joined to Him in an countless sharing of a divine life past all corruption. Christ gained this victory when He rose to life, for by His dying He freed man from dying. Therefore to each considerate man a solidly established religion offers the reply to his anxiousness about what the longer term holds for him. On the identical time religion offers him the facility to be united in Christ together with his family members who’ve already been snatched away by dying; religion arouses the hope that they’ve discovered true life with God.

God made us for Him — to like and serve Him and our neighbor on this life and within the subsequent. Maybe one purpose we weep on the dying of our family members is as a result of we expect they’re “going away.” Too usually we consider heaven merely as a place: a spot distant, like New York or Paris or the moon. We consolation ourselves by saying: “They’ve gone to a greater place.” And but, we nonetheless miss them.

As Catholics we consider within the communion of saints. We’re promised that the love we now have for God and in communion together with his Son within the Physique of Christ, the Church, can by no means die. We don’t lose our family members, nor they us. Relaxation assured, our Christian religion tells us, your family members usually are not merely “gone.” They abide — with God, and thru God, with you. They proceed of their essence as earlier than — loving us, praying for us, being with us. Certainly, in union with the everlasting Divine Love, their love for us might be much more intimate. They’re not merely “beside us” or “throughout the desk” from us. Now they are often additionally “above us” and “inside us” — figuring out us, as God does, “higher than we all know ourselves.” And we are able to rejoice in that love and proceed to be comforted by it even throughout the darkish instances, whether or not we face dying or somebody we love.

My very own mom died on a chilly clear evening shortly after the Easter Vigil mass would have completed, though I used to be at her bedside as an alternative of mass. I used to be an grownup convert, and this was my second Easter as a Catholic. I used to be stuffed with deep sorrow at her passing, at the same time as I used to be satisfied by my religion that the Lord can be along with her. “Yea, although I stroll by way of the valley of the shadow of dying,” sings the Psalmist, “I’ll concern no evil, for Thou artwork with me.”

And but, nevertheless a lot we consider in Christ’s promise, we weep on the dying of a beloved one. That is actually human. On this life we should stroll by religion and never by sight. We can’t see what’s on the opposite aspect of the nice darkness. However we all know that God is there, and that He —with all His saints in whose lives His love was mirrored upon us as gentle is mirrored by a transparent mirror — shall be there to accompany us, as He has been with us our total lives, even throughout these instances when He appeared most absent.

There’s a beautiful little poem written, it’s stated, by Sir Walter Raleigh in his Bible as he was in jail awaiting execution. It goes like this:

Even such is time, that takes in belief
Our youth, our joys, our all we now have,
And pays us however with earth and dirt;
Who, in the dead of night and silent grave,

When we now have wandered all our methods,
Shuts up the story of our days:
However from this earth, this grave, this mud,
My God shall elevate me up, I belief.

We start the season of Lent with the ashes of Ash Wednesday, and we hear the priest recite the phrases: “From mud you will have come and to mud you’ll return.” We finish the season with the celebration of Easter, with Christ’s victory over dying, whereby we’re raised up with Him to that superb communion of saints who rejoice within the loving presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sharing their divine nature and their everlasting communion of affection. Throughout this season, we reenact your complete journey of human life, “from mud to mud” after which past, within the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, starting on the liturgy of the Easter Vigil as we sing the strains from the nice Exsultet hymn:

That is the evening
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of dying
and rose triumphant from the grave.

Sure, we’re mud and to mud we will return. We can’t (as we so usually do in our youth-obsessed tradition) ignore the fact of ageing and dying. It’s a part of the fact of human life. And to dwell lives which might be totally human, we should face the human actuality of dying. Too usually we attempt to maintain it away from us: we disguise it away in hospitals and hospices, not protecting it at house. A tradition that has not confronted as much as the fact of dying will normally fail to grasp the significance and valuable nature of life.

Mary weeps on the foot of the cross, and we weep along with her. However we additionally should not cease there. For past the cross of Good Friday is Christ’s Resurrection on Easter morning, His ascension to God’s proper hand, and His continuous sending of the Holy Spirit to steer us again to Him. If we die with Him, we’ll dwell with Him. And the excellent news is, we are able to start that resurrected life with him now. However provided that we put to dying in ourselves all that brings religious dying — cruelty, hatred, selfishness, and pleasure — and dwell in Christ with the brand new life made attainable by the grace of the Holy Spirit by which “charity is unfold overseas in our hearts.”

Socrates advised the buddies with him at his execution that every one of a life is a preparation for dying. Socrates was proper, however not in the way in which he thought. Life is a preparation for dying; however not merely the dying of the physique which liberates the soul, as Socrates appears to have thought. Life ought to be a continuing death-to-self in order that we are able to develop into in our personal approach, like Christ, a selfless reward of self to others. Christ’s promise is that that is the kind of life that even dying can’t overcome.

If we spend our lives within the love of God and neighbor then, as St. Paul tells us, “neither dying, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor issues current, nor issues to come back, nor powers, nor top, nor depth, nor another created factor, will be capable of separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “In all this stuff,” St. Paul assures us, “we overwhelmingly conquer by way of Him who beloved us.”

Loss of life, be not proud, although some have known as thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou artwork not so …why swell’st thou then?
One quick sleep previous, we wake eternally
And dying shall be no extra; Loss of life, thou shalt die.

Such a message is nice information certainly, for these keen to simply accept it, to these of us who dwell, as we do, “within the valley of the shadow of dying.”

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