It is clear that when a person dies, eternity knocks at his door. Yet doesn’t it knock for each of us, all the time? If we are elderly or ill, this isn’t hard to imagine. It is much harder for those of us who are in good health, or in the prime of life. Then we are far more likely to see death as a negative thing, and to push it away as an unwanted reminder that not every dream of a long, happy life comes true. But even if we push it away, we can never know, when we get up in the morning, whether we have decades in front of us, or only days.
Just weeks ago my 32-year-old niece Carmen, a second-grade teacher and mother of four, was busy balancing the demands of parenthood and work; in the meantime she’s been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and can neither stand at a blackboard nor give her baby a bath. Just weeks ago she was playing her viola at my youngest daughter’s wedding; now she is so weak she can barely raise her head. Given the nature of her illness, Carmen could be on her feet again soon. But she could also find herself wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life.
Then there’s my cousin Ben, sixty-eight, who was recently stricken by cancer. It spread so aggressively that by the time he was diagnosed, both surgery and chemo were ruled out as ineffective options for treatment. Though stable at the moment and buying time with painkillers and hormone blockers, he could go downhill at any time – something he’s painfully aware of, especially on bad days. At the same time he is generally so upbeat that one would never guess what he is dealing with privately: nausea, fevers, restless nights, and moments when the thought of being separated from his wife of forty years becomes too much to bear without tears.
Because of Ben’s medical condition, he is daily forced to confront the thought of death – and, when it attacks him, the demon of fear. But even if someone like him is far more conscious of his mortality than you or I, aren’t all of us equally fragile in God’s eyes? Given the uncertainty of any life from one week to the next, shouldn’t every illness, every death speak to us and challenge our complacency? As Joseph Conrad reminds us in Lord Jim, our days are numbered whether we like it or not, and there is “never time to say our last word – the last word of our love, or our desire, faith, remorse…”
To watch someone die is always a shaking experience. But death need not have the final word. And if it seems like it does, perhaps that is because we spend too much time focusing on our fear of it. Like animals frozen in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, we are so mesmerized by death that we forget the promise of eternal life that follows it. Bonhoeffer rightly admonishes:
We pay more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as the last enemy. There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection. It’s not by virtue of ars moriendi – the art of dying – that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. Only the resurrection of Christ can bring that about. Here is the answer to Archimedes’ challenge: “Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth.” If only a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed…That is what living in the light of resurrection means.
Bonhoeffer, a modern martyr who refused to bend his conscience to fit the demands of Hitler’s Third Reich, went to the gallows fearlessly, and to me, these words contain a key to his boldness. They also contain a vital kernel of wisdom: the thought that the best way – the only way – to truly overcome the fear of death is to live life in such a way that its meaning cannot be taken away by death.
This sounds grandiose, but it is really very simple. It means fighting the impulse to live for ourselves, instead of for others. It means choosing generosity over greed. It also means living humbly, rather than seeking influence and power. Finally, it means being ready to die again and again – to ourselves, and to every self-serving opinion or agenda.
In Dickens’s Christmas Carol, the bitter old accountant Scrooge provides a memorable illustration. Tight-fisted and grasping, he goes through life dragging a chain that he himself has forged, link by link, with each miserly deed. Having closed himself to human kindness, he lives in a universe so calculating and cold that no one escapes his suspicion. Before long he begins to despise himself and look for a way out of his misery. But he cannot find one. He is trapped – trapped in the prison of self. Worse, he is haunted at night by dreams of death and dreads its approach.
Then he changes. Loosened by those same dreams, the scales fall from his eyes, and he sees a way out: “It is time to make amends.” No longer consumed with his own needs, he is free to love. And as he runs from one old acquaintance to another, he rediscovers the world around him with the unselfconscious happiness of a child.
Such happiness can be ours, too, if we live for love. By “love” I am not speaking simply of the emotion, nor of some grand, abstract ideal, but of the life-changing power Jesus speaks of when he says:
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. (Mt. 25: 35–36)
Love is a tangible reality. Sometimes it is born of passion or devotion; sometimes it is a hard-won fruit, requiring work and sacrifice. Its source is unimportant. But unless we live for love, we will not be able to meet death confidently when it comes. I say this because I am certain that when our last breath is drawn and our soul meets God, we will not be asked how much we have accomplished. We will be asked whether we have loved enough. To quote John of the Cross, “In the evening of life you shall be judged on love.”
As my great-aunt Else lay dying of tuberculosis, a friend asked her if she had one last wish. She replied, “Only to love more.” If we live our lives in love, we will know peace at the hour of death. And we will not be afraid.