"Oh Death"

Have you ever known the bitterness of death; that savage torturer of the human heart, who strips away the greatest comfort that man has ever known; another? Have you seen grown men in dark suits with broad shoulders lean on one another at the gravesite wearing sunglasses to hide their stinging tears? Have you watched the children play, blissfully unaware as they duck under the oaks that shade the grave of their companion? Has your heart ached with the fall of each of the mother’s tears and the fragile comfort of the father’s failing arms?

Death is unnatural. There is nothing truer. If it were not true than God would not be good, and he is a God of infinite goodness. With every cell of our body, we are constructed for relationship. Scientists can better explain than I how we are formed and sustained, cell by cell, first from the products of two other human beings, our parents. This relationship extends farther than even the biological wonders of our bodies to the spiritual realm of the communion of our souls, in likeness of the divine Trinity. It is here, in the spiritual realm, that we encounter other persons in a way that we may know and love them for their friendship, their mannerisms, their temperaments, and even despite their failings and vices. Through our bodies, our souls relate to other souls in other bodies, and each encounter bears us along on our journey through life. Yet, this journey must inevitably pass through death at its final hour.

Then what is death but a separation? I could say that it is temporary, and that would be true, but no truer than the trauma and tragedy of an untimely death for those left to carry on through counted years without the beloved. For better or worse, we can no more separate our own body and soul from one another than we can stop that separation from happening to another. Though there be many contenders, there is no arena in life that equals the bitterness of this inherited lack of control. What would we give to undue this curse of sin and death, I do not know.

But remember, friend, that separation is another word for hell, and it is no wonder. For if we could describe such horror and perpetual sin in a solitary word, it would be thus; separation from God and all friends of God. To exist in hell is a sentence of damnation in which the soul endures perpetual suffering of its separation from goodness itself. As we beg God through the 14th century prayer, Anima Christi (Soul of Christ), popularized by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century, “Suffer me not to be separated from Thee”.

The sweet repose of heaven however is a reunion of the soul with God, and not the harrowing separation of hell. Though this loss may seem a hell within us because of the stripping of the beauty and light of one so beloved from our presence, it is not a stripping of God. It is in these times that we are most called upon to walk by faith and not lean on our own understanding. The veil is thin between this world and the next and though the impenetrable reality of its existence is a relentless vexation, it is one which humanity must accept with startling wonder. For the veil that separates us from our loved ones now, will one day lift for us as well. May heaven meet us there and thus end all separation forever.

This reflection comes in the wake of the untimely death and burial of a two-year-old boy. His family are friends and members of our local Catholic community. His sudden and tragic death shocked all who rushed to their aid with meals, rides, arrangements, and prayers. The overwhelming response was a witness to me of Christian charity and the necessity of community. We held our young children closer that night and wept in consolation with the broken hearts who never would again, until heaven.