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PAGE 5-March 31,1977
After Death: Life?
BY STEVE LAND REG AN
A truly religious person faces death with
tranquility, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has
found, but she adds “there aren’t very many of
them.”
This report made in an address to the Value
Of Life Conference held in Dallas last fall
should not be difficult for a Christian to
understand ... at least the first part. Victory
over death and sin is a central doctrine of
Christianity. The second part of Dr.
Kubler-Ross’ statement, that there are very vew
truly religious persons is a little different. It
appears to indicate that the faith of many
Christians falters in the face of life’s ultimate
crisis . . . death.
Could it be that Christians’ reflect the
desolation of Job who cried out “ . . . I go
whence I shall not return, to the land of
darkness and of gloom, the black disordered
land, where darkness is the only light.” (Job 10,
21-22)
What has become of St. Paul’s triumphant
echo of Isaiah and Hosea. “O death, where is
your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
Death today is something to be fought. It is
not only the ultimate crisis, it is the ultimate
challenge, a challenge that reaches its zenith in
the final act by which men and women order
their bodies frozen immediately after death to
await the victory over death that they are
certain will come from man, not from God.
The legal struggle over the use of
extraordinary means of life support, the
Through Death To Life
BY MICHAEL WARREN
For some time now in my catechetical
ministry, I have been trying to see how various
aspects of human experience are in continuity
with one another and with the Christian
mystery. These relationships are not always
easy to see. Death, for example seems to be out
of harmony with life. After all, it is the
interruption of life, the end. The reality of
death is like a huge, inescapable, confining
stone wall.
Even faith does not deny the reality of that
stone wall. I myself am offended at glib
attempts to explain it away or even bless it
away. Recently, when I stood at the coffin of a
dear friend, dead after three years of suffering
the humiliating paralysis of a stroke, I found
myself angered at some of the inane comments
meant as condolences. “He’s better off now, in
a better place.” “Isn’t it wonderful his
sufferings are over?” “Doesn’t he look
peaceful?”
I wanted to tell these people to be quiet. I
wanted to say that those of us who loved him
had lost someone we needed. I wanted to speak
of the big gap left in my life.
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Christian faith does not turn away from the
mystery of death. It faces death squarely as an
obstacle. In the face of that immense wall, it
offers no slick balm or glib words. Christian
faith offers hope. It is a hope blossomed into
trust and confidence that the promise of Jesus
will not be false. Just as Jesus’ own trust in the
Father led Him through death to resurrection,
our own faith is that we, too, shall go through
death to new life and be raised up by the
Father. Such a hope doesn’t deny death,
doesn’t cancel the pain of death, doesn’t
dismiss the fear of death. It does assure us that
we must go through death to life.
The above considerations seem to say that
death is in fact quite discontinuous with life.
How can a catechist show a continuity between
the Christian view of death and the rest of
human experience. The following is one
approach.
In a sense, the physical death of every
person is the final and definitive death in a
series of smaller, less painful but very real
“daily deaths.” Our experience tells us this.
Christian or not, all persons undergo
continuous struggles and suffering - the daily
deaths that are part of living. For a Christian,
however, these sufferings and “deaths” are part
of the fabric of God’s loving plan for one’s life.
Again, this sense of God’s loving Will doesn’t
take away the pain and struggle of these
“deaths.” What it does is put them into a
category of hope. Our hope is that they will not
be in vain - that they are leading us somewhere.
Instead of a stone in a massive
stone-wall-obstacle, they represent one more
stone that will fit into the mosaic of the total
picture of God’s plan for us.
I have asked many adults over the past five
years if their own experience is the same as
mine. I’ve asked if looking back on their lives
they see that the times of greatest growth have
also been the times of greatest suffering.
The answer invariably is: “Yes, those were the
times when I grew.” What they are saying is
that they came, even in these little deaths, to
new life through death. So they have had some
experience of death-and-resurrection in
everyday life. They have already had an inkling
that the promise of Jesus will not be in vain.
In general the catechetical response to death
must not be to deny it or kiss it away. The
response must rather be to face it. There is no
other way; it must be faced. However, I find
that catechesis and preaching dwell too little on
the dark side of life, on the daily struggles and
pain that are such a part of our ordinary
experience. These “deaths” need to be reflected
on in the light of Jesus’ hope in a loving Father.
My own friend crippled by stroke had
spoken to me of his own death in a similar vein,
in the sense that he had spoken of his coming
death and had looked to it as a Final liberation.
He had the courage to face it; he had the
Christian hope to trust in new life by means of
it. At his funeral Mass, in spite of the pain and
loss, that hope blossomed for me into a true
sense of joy. I realized that the same Spirit
which lived in him through death was present as
promised there in the Eucharistic celebration.
Come, Lord Jesus.
question of by whom and when the cord may
be pulled, both center on the belief that
anything is better than death, even artificially
maintained life as a vegetable. Those who
would maintain a life solely by mechanical
means when all medical hope is gone can hardly
be regarding death in the terms of St. Paul.
Man is faced with his greatest doubt in
regard to death. The public reaction and
publicity surrounding the recent research of Dr.
Kubler-Ross and other scientists into the realm
of life after death is an indication of the hope
that men and women hold out for the time
when the doubt of death can be replaced by the
certainity of science instead of the certainity of
faith.
Any who have not read Dr. Kubler-Ross’
little masterwork, “On Death and Dying,”
should do so. It documents not only the
torment most people go through when they are
facing pain and the gradual enfeeblement of
their bodies but their inability to accept the
prospect of ceasing to be.
Actually, this inability to accept personal
annihilation, comes from an implicit knowledge
that each man and woman possesses that within
human existence is the seed of eternal life. Each
of us longs for a life to come with a longing
that can never be satisfied by all the theological
advances man will ever discover to lengthen the
span of this life.
The only answer is faith, faith in God’s own
revelation that the death which each of us must
suffer because of sin will be overcome when we
are restored to the original integrity for which
we were created. Man and woman were created
for a life with the Father, a life without
corruption and death. Sin separated us from the
Father and our original wholeness. Jesus by His
perfect obedience restored the gifts of grace we
all lost by disobedience (Preface VII for
Sundays in Ordinary Time). This is the Good
News of salvation. It is to faith in this that
Jesus calls men when He preaches “This is the
time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at
hand! Reform your lives and believe in the
Gospel!” (Mark 1,15)
It is in this faith, which by its very definition
can exist only in the presence of doubt, that
the Christian finds the tranquility to face death.
A happy death for the Christian is a faith-full
death. It is a death where we can truly say with
St. Paul, “O Death, where is your victory? O
Death, where is your sting?”
FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
writes that Jesus’ resurrection was
“physical,” “bodily” and “the New
Testament authors went to great length
to make this clear. In the Fourth
Gospel, Jesus ‘showed them his side’
-(Jn. 20, 20), and the story of doubting
Thomas reinforces this evidence (Jn.
20, 24-29).” This painting by the
Italian, Antonio Ciseri is called “The
Unbelieving Thomas.” (NC Photo)
What Will Our Resurrection Be Like?
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
The prayers of any people reflect their
beliefs, their theology. This is certainly true of
the psalms of the people of Israel, even though
we must be aware that they are poetic, not
precise definitions of faith. We must take into
account also that they were composed, edited
and reedited over the span of several centuries.
And so, from a theological viewpoint, they have
to be used rather critically. They are,
nonetheless, fair reflections of the fundamental
beliefs of the people.
Indicative of their attitude of life in the
hereafter is Psalm 30. The author sings the
thanks to God for having cured him of a mortal
disease and snatched him from the jaws of
death: “O LORD, you brought me up from the
nether world;/ you preserved me from among
those going down into the pit . . ./ To you, O
LORD, I cried out; with the LORD I pleaded:/
“What gain would there be from my lifeblood,/
from my going down into the grave?/ Would
dust give you thanks or proclaim your
faithfulness?” (Ps 30, 4, 9-10)
These same sentiments are echoed in the
much later book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth).
Musing on the enigma of human existence, the
post-exilic author wrote: “Indeed, for any
among the living there is hope; a live dog is
better off than a dead lion. For the living know
they are to die, but the dead no longer know
anything. There is no further recompense for
them, because all memory of them is lost”
(Eccl 9,4-5).
Such was the general attitude toward life
after death throughout the greater part of the
Old Testament period. In the very late book of
Daniel (c. 165 B.C.), there is a glimmer of hope
flashing for a brief instant, then fading: “Many
of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake;/ Some shall live forever, others shall be
an everlasting horror and disgrace./But the wise
shall shine brightly like the splendor of the
firmament,/ And those who lead the many to
justice shall be like the stars forever” (Dn. 12,
2-3). Any view of the afterlife, dim or bright,
would have involved the whole human person,
body and soul. Biblical psychology, if we can
call it by so modem a term, was monistic. It
envisioned man as a unit, not as composed of
two distinct, separable entities, one material
and the other spiritual. This division was
commonplace in Greek thought, which was
basically dualistic, but this outlook affected
only some few very late books of the Old
Testament, which were written in Greek circles
outside of Palestine and were subsequently
(first century A.D.) rejected from the Hebrew
canon of Scripture. Such was the book of
Wisdom (c. 75 B.C. in Alexandria), which
speaks so beautifully about the “souls of the
just” being “in the hand of God, and no
torment shall touch them,” etc. (Wis 3, 1-12).
The first Christians were not Greek, they
were Jewish, and their innate view of the
human person was the one reflected in the Old
Testament. A person is a unit, and if there is a
question of resurrection at all, it must involve
the whole person, not just his “soul,” not just a
spirit, but the integral human being. And of
course, for the first Christians there was more
than a speculative question of “a” resurrection;
there was the fact of “the” Resurrection, a fact
of experience. There is no denying that the
accounts of the appearances of the risen Lord
are bristling with difficulties. It could hardly be
otherwise, really, given the fact that they are
attempts to translate into earthbound human
language unique experiences never before
expressed by that language, experiences, in fact,
which defied such limited expression.
Whatever the exact nature of those
experiences, whatever the number or the locale
of the appearances, several sure data seem
inescapable. One of them is the unshakable
conviction of the first Christians that the same
Jesus they had known in the flesh had been
raised from the dead by the Father that His
resurrection affected not just His “soul,” but
His whole human nature. It was a real,
“physical” resurrection. It was not physical in
the same sense as that of Lazarus, who returned
to ordinary life only to await death once more.
Unique though Jesus’ resurrection had been,
it was still “physical,” “bodily,” and the New
Testament authors went to great lengths to
make this clear. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus
“showed them his hands and his side” (Jn 20,
20), and the story of doubting Thomas
reinforces this evidence (Jn 20, 24-29).
Luke underscores His eating with the
disciples (Lk 24, 41-42). Paul lists all the people
by whom the Lord had been “seen,” of whom
he was the last (1 Cor 15, 5-8), and this whole
wonderful chapter treats of our own
resurrection, which will be patterned after that
of Jesus, and will involve our bodies, too. “This
corruptible body must be clothed with
incorruptibility, this mortal body with
immortality” (1 Cor 15, 53).
“DEATH,” Michael Warren writes, “seems to be quite totally
out of harmony with life. After all, it is the interruption of life,
the end. Death is the ultimate absurdity. In fact the reality of
death is like a huge, inescapable, confining stone wall.” At a
church in the Ukraine, family and friends gather for a funeral of
a loved one. (NC Photo by Kenneth Murray)
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1 977 by N.C. News Service)