Preparing for death

It is somewhat of a cliché to say that we live in a culture that denies death. The opposite, that is, awareness of death, the willingness to face and accept it, is often considered morbid, barbaric, even unbalanced. Even when the unthinkable happens, and death occurs, we speak of it in euphemisms. The dead are not dead, but “passed away”; our funeral establishments are “homes” or “salons” designed to look as mundane as a library or community centre. Funerals have become “celebrations of life”. Increasingly, the body of the deceased is no longer present, because after all, the presence of a corpse is somewhat depressing at a celebration of life.

It is often assumed that people with strong religious beliefs should be able to face the moment of death without fear, that for them the path ahead is revealed and clearly marked, that they know, thanks to their sacred writings and teachings, what to expect on the other side. This may be true for some religions, but it is not the case for Christianity. There is no Christian “Book of the Dead.” Like all of humanity, like Christ himself, when our time comes, we too must enter the darkness of the unknown, relying only on God.

This certainly does not mean that Christians have been exempt from speculation about what happens at death. In both the East and the West, there are accounts of “private revelations” and visions of death and the afterlife. Certain images of death, judgement, and especially frightening descriptions of the torments of hell have become so popular and so ingrained in people’s minds and imaginations that they have become for many Gospel truth.

It is important to remember, however, that these efforts to peer into the unknown are not part of the universal teaching of the Christian Church. As products of human imagination and piety, we must exercise great caution and discernment in how we receive and pass them on to others. The same caution is needed with regard to near-death experiences, the accounts of people who have undergone clinical death but were then resuscitated.

To say that we cannot know what happens to us after death or understand the eternity that awaits us does not mean that no light has been given to us to penetrate the darkness beyond our earthly existence. But that light is not necessarily the light of reason, but the light of faith. Faith is not the passive acceptance of certain definitions or formulas pronounced by some authority. Rather, it is an inner recognition that what we are taught is the very truth that has been sown in our souls and that we can already experience, even if it is “obscurely, as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). This is the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts “burned” within them when Christ spoke to them, even though they did not yet know who he was.

Above all, faith is a matter of love. It is the assent given in the heart, our innermost being, the centre of our being. As the great Father of the Greek Church, St. Basil, wrote in the 4th century

When we contemplate the benefits of faith, even now, as if we were looking at a reflection in a mirror, it is as if we already possessed the wonderful things that our faith assures us we will one day enjoy. (St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto 15, 36: PG 32, 132)

To believe in the “wonderful things” that God has prepared for us for eternity means to believe that they are true not only in a general way – as an historical fact – but true for us, that they are a present reality for us, that they become the form and model of our being.

In this way, we can begin to see that what we call death and what we call life are two aspects of the same reality. Death is only an extension of life. Our death is a means for us to break out of the limitations of our small selves, to ‘lose our lives’ and expand into the infinity of Christ’s life. It is this constant movement from life to death, and from death to life, that allows us to ‘pass over’ and enter into eternity every day of our earthly lives.

From time to time, we cease to be absorbed in ourselves and remember God. We may see him for a fraction of a second in the beauty of nature, in a beloved face, in a work of art. We may hear him in great music, in the song of a bird or in the sound of rain. When we remember that we are in God’s presence, whenever we glimpse him, we realise that there is no other ‘place’ we would rather be. Our mind is quiet and clear, our heart is at peace, our body is relaxed, and we are filled with joy.

This is the spiritual space in which we will find ourselves at the moment of death, when we have left everything behind and stand before God with empty hands, aware of our total poverty, relying only on love.

If we bring every action, every thought, every feeling and every breath into God’s presence, if we surrender ourselves to him, it becomes for us an entrance into eternity. We enter into the divine presence at the heart of all things. We become aware of each moment and learn to let it pass. We throw ourselves into the hands of the living God and learn to die.