French translation
Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.” Like it or not, of course, that is not possible for us. The reality of modern medicine is that relatively few of us will be fully conscious, lucid and full of parting wisdom, up to the very moment of our deaths. We can, however, begin to prepare for it now, even if the actual date is in some unknown future.
From the earliest days Christians — and many non-Christians too — have understood that it is necessary to be conscious of the reality of death. Some of the ways people have done this may strike us as strange, morbid, distasteful. Few of us are wont to pray for long hours in cemeteries. Few of us have or would want to have the opportunity to watch the process of dissolution. We don’t keep skulls on our desks.
These ancient practices, strange as they are, have yet something to teach us. They remind us that we should resist our society’s pressure to deny death or to try to circumvent it or to demand that it come on our terms.
What would I do if I knew that I was dying now, this minute, that I had only a few more seconds to live? What if there were no more time left to prepare or plan, nothing to do or undo. All I can imagine doing in that moment would be to cry out, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
This prayer, of course, is the Jesus Prayer, practiced by Orthodox Christians for centuries and increasingly practiced by Western Christians, as well. The prayer is many things, but it is always about throwing oneself into the arms of God, not only at the end of life, but every day. With daily repetition, perhaps in sessions of 20 minutes at a time, the prayer becomes something that prays us even more than we pray it. Through regular practice the prayer arises spontaneously from the heart. It is a prayer that teaches us our total and fundamental dependence — in life and in death — on the infinite mercy of God.
The mercy of God is not God’s pity for us. It is not something we have to beg for or humiliate ourselves to gain. In his dying, Christ revealed the truth of God’s infinite and unconditional mercy. To ask for mercy is to look towards God with trust and hope. We declare that God is aware of us at every moment of our lives and God’s acceptance of us as we truly are: created in the divine image, destined to share the divine glory, but weak and prone to failure and fear. When we ask for mercy, we are asking for the healing and love that will make us whole again: that will fill us with God.
God in love gently offers us mercy every moment of our lives. Thus, we can trust that God will not refuse us mercy at the hour of our death.
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The Jesus Prayer and Preparing for Death
French translation
Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.” Like it or not, of course, that is not possible for us. The reality of modern medicine is that relatively few of us will be fully conscious, lucid and full of parting wisdom, up to the very moment of our deaths. We can, however, begin to prepare for it now, even if the actual date is in some unknown future.
From the earliest days Christians — and many non-Christians too — have understood that it is necessary to be conscious of the reality of death. Some of the ways people have done this may strike us as strange, morbid, distasteful. Few of us are wont to pray for long hours in cemeteries. Few of us have or would want to have the opportunity to watch the process of dissolution. We don’t keep skulls on our desks.
These ancient practices, strange as they are, have yet something to teach us. They remind us that we should resist our society’s pressure to deny death or to try to circumvent it or to demand that it come on our terms.
What would I do if I knew that I was dying now, this minute, that I had only a few more seconds to live? What if there were no more time left to prepare or plan, nothing to do or undo. All I can imagine doing in that moment would be to cry out, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”
This prayer, of course, is the Jesus Prayer, practiced by Orthodox Christians for centuries and increasingly practiced by Western Christians, as well. The prayer is many things, but it is always about throwing oneself into the arms of God, not only at the end of life, but every day. With daily repetition, perhaps in sessions of 20 minutes at a time, the prayer becomes something that prays us even more than we pray it. Through regular practice the prayer arises spontaneously from the heart. It is a prayer that teaches us our total and fundamental dependence — in life and in death — on the infinite mercy of God.
The mercy of God is not God’s pity for us. It is not something we have to beg for or humiliate ourselves to gain. In his dying, Christ revealed the truth of God’s infinite and unconditional mercy. To ask for mercy is to look towards God with trust and hope. We declare that God is aware of us at every moment of our lives and God’s acceptance of us as we truly are: created in the divine image, destined to share the divine glory, but weak and prone to failure and fear. When we ask for mercy, we are asking for the healing and love that will make us whole again: that will fill us with God.
God in love gently offers us mercy every moment of our lives. Thus, we can trust that God will not refuse us mercy at the hour of our death.
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