19 — DEATH

Presence of God. — O Lord, who created me for Yourself, grant that I may live and die for love of You.

Meditation

1 — Even today, Thursday after Ash Wednesday, we find an explicit reference to death: “Set your house in order, for you shall die” (Ep.: Is. 38, 1-6). The Church wants to make the thought of death familiar, so that “we may not be caught suddenly and, seeking a delay to do penance, it may happen that we do not obtain it” (MR). It is true that in the Gospel Jesus spoke to us of death that comes unexpectedly like a thief, at the hour in which one least expects it; yet, for the vigilant Christian who puts into practice the “estote parati” (Lk. 12, 40), death will not be sudden, in the sense that it will always find him ready “with loins girt and lamps lit,” similar to those faithful servants who wait for their master “to open to him as soon as he comes and knocks” (ibid., 35 and 36). Then there will be no regrets, no fears and anxieties, because one who has always lived awaiting the Lord does not fear opening to Him when He in fact comes, but goes to meet Him with joy, welcomes Him with great love and with all the impulse of the soul gives Him his final “Ecce venio,” behold I come (Ps. 39, 8).

Besides, death is the final, but not the only coming of the Lord in the Christian’s life; it is preceded by many others that have precisely the purpose of preparing this last one, so that it may be in the fullest sense a coming of grace. From the day of baptism to life’s end, there is a continuous succession of comings, of visits of the Lord; every sacrament received, every inspiration, every increase of grace is a new divine visit to the soul, by which God takes ever more possession of it, establishing in it His dwelling in a way ever more intimate and profound. One who has never delayed opening his heart to all these comings of the Lord, one who has always welcomed with fidelity and love His visits, docilely following the impulses of grace, has nothing to fear before His final coming. Then sweetest in his ears will sound the words of Jesus: “Well done, good and faithful servant... enter into the joy of your Lord” (Mt. 25, 21).

2 — Speaking of persons who have reached transforming union of love with God, St. John of the Cross explains that their death is caused more by the impetus of divine love than by natural causes. “Even though they die during an illness or in full age, [they] are not taken from earthly life by a violent wrench of the soul, but by some very sublime loving impetus or encounter, so powerful as to tear the veil [of the body] and carry away the jewel of the soul” (F. 1, 30). It is the so-called “death of love,” precious and blessed death, true nuptial encounter of the soul with God, which introduces directly into the beatific vision of heaven. It is the death of holy souls, to whom only imprisonment in the envelope of the body prevents seeing God face to face.

Yet beside this death of love, so glorious and blessed, one can say there is another much more modest and humble, to which all of us can aspire, provided we sincerely love God and His holy will. As the essence of holiness consists in carrying out with love every divine will, even when it imposes grave sacrifices and painful renunciations, so the essence of a holy death consists in submitting with love to this supreme sacrifice, accepting it willingly as the final expression of God’s will. The deeper and fuller the resignation and love with which a soul accepts death, the more its own can be called a death of love, precisely because embraced for love of God.

God is the absolute Lord of our life; as we must live for love of Him, seeking to conform ourselves in everything to His holy will, so that this may be in all and through all the supreme norm of our acting, so must we know how to die for love of Him, accepting from His hands death at the hour and in the circumstances established by Him. “If we live, we live for the Lord - exclaims St. Paul - and if we die, we die for Him; whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14, 8). Whether in life or in death we are God’s and, being His, we ought to desire nothing else than to live and die according to His holy will. When a soul throughout life has studied to fulfill with the greatest love the will of God, it can have full confidence that the Lord will grant it the supreme grace of accepting death too with great love.

Colloquy

“O Jesus, agonizing on the cross, be my model at the hour of death. Although You are the author and restorer of life, yet You willed to submit Yourself to death and accepted it wholeheartedly to expiate my sins. You who owe nothing to death, You, source of life and immortality, in whom and through whom all creatures live, willed to subject Yourself to death to make Yourself like me and sanctify my death.

“O death, who can now fear you, since the Author of life bears you in His bosom, and in Him, without doubt, you cannot be mortal, but life-giving? I embrace you, I hold you in the Heart of my divine Savior, and here, like a chick beneath the hen’s wings, I shall await your assaults in peace, quite sure that my most clement Jesus will sweeten your bitterness for me and defend me from your rigors.

“O Jesus, I want to spend all my strength in submitting from now to all the circumstances and pains of my death; from now on willingly I want to accept death in the place, time, and manner that You will please to establish.

“I know very well that I need to suffer and be ground beneath the teeth of tribulations, sorrows, privations, desolations, and pains in order to become bread worthy to serve at Your heavenly banquet, O Christ, on the day of the universal resurrection. I know very well that if the grain of wheat does not rot and die under the earth it does not produce the ear, and therefore with all my heart I accept the annihilation of death so as to be made a new man, no longer mortal and corruptible, but immortal and glorious” (St. Francis de Sales).