Either it can happen that being perfectly healthy, we fall fulminated by cardiac arrest or we lose victims of a fatal accident. In the end, one way or another, WE WILL ALL DIE. No one will absolutely escape death. It's the most irrefutable reality in the world. Since we are conceived in our mother's womb, we are by definition mortal.
Death is the ultimate trance of life. Before her comes all her realism, the weakness and helplessness of man. It's a moment without a trap. When someone is dead, there is the dispossess of a deceased: a corpse.This situation causes a very complex climate in family members and the Christian community. The dead man's body generates questions, unbearable questions. It confronts us in the face of the meaning of life and everything, it causes acute pain in the face of separation and annihilation. Anyone who has contemplated the dramatic immobility of a corpse does not need dictionary definitions to find that death is a terrible thing.
That loved one, from which so many memories we
have, who interned his life with ours, is now an object, one thing to remove
from the middle, because death follows decomposition. We have to bury him. And
after the funeral, as we retreat from the grave, we go thinking to Becquer: How
lonely and sad the dead remain!"
What is Death?
The definition given by a very in vogue dictionary is:"The definitive cessation of life". And it defines life as "the result of the play of organs, which is the development and conservation of the subject". It must be recognized that these or other definitions of both life and death do not express all the beauty of the former and all the horror of the second.
Death is tragic. Man, who is a living being, meets
death, which is the contradiction of all that a human being yearns for:
projects, future, hopes, illusions, perspectives and magnificent realities.
Instinctive Attitude to Death.
No wonder, then, the horror of death. And not only
to the mysterious moment of the "cessation of life", but perhaps more
so, to the painful process that leads us to death.
We have the wonderful instinct for conservation
that makes us defend and fight for life. We know that life is a formidable gift
and humanity loves life, spreads life, defends life, prolongs life and hates
death. In many cases we fight for life even if this is a real hell.
If there are people who at the top of hopelessness resort to suicide, we usually don't want to die and we are willing to go through all the suffering and spend all our fortune to heal a sick person. We fight him to death a loved one at the expense of anything, from time to time even against the will of the interested party. Life is life! Thanks to the advances of science and technology, we can now resort to sensational methods in the fight against death.
A formidable example of this is organ transplantation, including the heart. Unfortunately, on some occasions, this struggle is not really an extension of life, but of a painful senseless agony. We feel compelled to remove from the body of the dying sick, until the last beating of a heart that alone would stop, totally exhausted. Sad spectacle to see our loved ones full of tubes everywhere and surrounded by sophisticated gadgets in an intensive care room. Let's not resign ourselves to letting him die.
Worthy Death
The question now arises of the right to a
"dignified death." We must understand for this reason the right of
the person to decide for himself the treatment of his disease. When the body
has already fulfilled its normal life cycle, there is no obligation to resort
"to extraordinary methods" to prolong life, as defined by the Church.
The sick person has the right to ask to be left to die in peace.
The time may come when it is not fair to artificially keep a person alive, at the expense of the same person. The sufferings of prolonged agony by a misconception of what life is or what death is, make no sense. But it is one thing to dispense with those extraordinary methods and another is to provoke death positively, a crime that is called euthanasia. Nor can we call suicide "dignified death." Nor are we obliged to painfully postpone the moment of death, nor can we provoke it.
Do we know anything about the more there?
Since man is a man, he has had the intuition that life somehow does not end with death. The oldest archaeological testimonies of humanity are precisely the tombs, in which we can discover the idea that different cultures had from beyond. Similarly, man has always tried in a thousand ways to come into contact with the deceased. Various kinds of spiritualism, apparitions, ghosts, souls in sorrow, have been a vain and superstitious attempt to transpose the lintels of death and know something from beyond.
How many theories man has invented! How many experiments you've done! Books, novels and magazines proliferate from the most innocent to the most terrifying, to science fiction that appearing to be scientific solidity, only discover its falsehood. The reality is that our efforts to investigate what happens after death are otherwise frustrating. We can say that everything is left in speculation, some totally wrong or fraudulent, that explain nothing or comfort anyone. We know practically nothing.
Death and Resurrection.
Thus, the Christian knows that death is not only not the end, but on the contrary, it is the principle of true life, eternal life. In a way, since we enjoy divine Life on this earth through the Sacraments, we are already living eternal life. Our bodies will have to pay their tribute to Mother Earth, from which we leave, because of sin, but the Divine Life we already enjoy is by definition eternal as Eternal God is.
We carry in our bodies the sentence of death due
to sin, but our soul is already in eternity and in the end, even this body of
sin will be resurrected for eternity. St Paul (Rom.8:11) expresses it
magnificently:
"But you are not of the flesh, but of the
Spirit, for the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever did not have the Spirit of
Christ would not be Christ's. On the other hand, if Christ is in you, even if
the body goes to death as a result of sin, the spirit lives because it is in
God's Grace. And if the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead is in
you, he that raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to their mortal
bodies; He will do so through his Spirit, which already dwells in you."
The Christian enlightened by faith therefore sees death with very different eyes from those of the world. If we know what awaits us once the threshold of death has been transposed, it may become desirable. St Paul himself, in love with the Lord, complains "of the body of sin" asking to be released from him. "For me life is Christ and death gains" (Fip.1:21) "When the one who is our life, Christ, is manifested, you too will be in glory and come to light with Him" (Col.3,4).
The Sky
Unfortunately, we are so carnal, so earthly, that we cling to this life. After all, that's all we know, the only thing we've experienced. From the use of reason, we learn to discern between the good things of life and the bad, between the beautiful and the ugly, between the pleasurable and the unpleasant. And we work hard to get the best for us from life. All man's cares are motivated to accommodate us on earth as best we can.
Not being able to deny us that life can offer us
precious things. Enjoy the beauty of the prodigious world, open the senses to
the whole cosmos, the intelligence to the secrets that matter encloses, learn
to love and be loved, create works of art, finish a work well, see the fruit of
our struggles, have what we call "satisfactors" because they
precisely satisfy our tastes, know other cultures, read a good book, etc...
It's not easy to relativize all of this or downplay it.Our relatives and friends, our possessions, our projects, are all we have and have worked for all our lives. We've spent on it, investing all our strength. And so we don't even think about the afterlife. Not in Heaven or Hell. Neither Heaven attracts us, nor hell frightens us. We live immersed in time, as if we were immortal. Talking about Heaven or Hell may even seem ridiculous. And yet it is, one thing or another, our inescapable destiny!
We can say that all the enjoyments or all the
sorrows of this temporal life, are not so important, they are not so much. St
Paul, who was taken away in ecstasy to have a glimpse of those who await us,
cannot describe in human words his experience: "Neither the eye saw, nor
the ear heard, nor came into the mind of man what God has prepared for those
who love him" (1 Cor.2:9). And in 11 Cor. 12:4, he entrusts us that he
snatched from paradise, where he heard words which cannot be said; are things
that man would not be able to express."
Faced with the ephemeral of the enjoyments or sufferings of this life, the Apostle himself recommends us in the letter to the Colossses 3:1-4, "Look for the things above, where Christ is located; think of the things above, not the things on earth".
The way and the Goal.
This way of thinking can be compared to a journey:
however charming the landscape of the road is, that is not the important thing,
but the arrival of the destination. It would be awkward to wish that the road
would never end and forget that at the end of this, we are waiting for for a
delicious holiday by the sea.
There could be a possibility that we would change
our minds and decide to stop in a more beautiful place than the same purpose
planned above. But in life this cannot happen: we go to death unfailingly; we
can't stop time, we can't "change plans." And if we make fatal
progress at the end of the journey, it is wise to set our sights on what can
await us.
Someone might say that thinking "about the things above" as advised by the Apostle is detrimental to humanity's progress and the development of all human possibilities. That's why Marx said religion was the opium of peoples. And he was not right to study certain religions, especially Eastern ones, in which it seems that all human effort lies in leaking from everyday reality. Christianity doesn't fall into that position. History demonstrates this extensively by seeing what it has been like precisely in Christian countries where the greatest steps have been taken in the well-being of the human being.
The danger lies not so much in 'running away' but on the contrary in clinging in the temporal, losing sight of the eternal. The true follower of Jesus Christ, while working to make this world more livable, nevertheless loses sight of it, that this is but the way to eternal and boundless happiness that God promises us. We live with our feet well seated on earth, but with the yearning to obtain at the end of our day, the crown of eternal glory.
Getting older is Wonderful.
The instinct of conservation and the lack of faith, make us have horror of irretrievable aging. We've made youth a myth. "Youth, divine treasure, " said the poet, and losing youth we consider it a drama. It is worth seeing mature and post-mature people, trying to defend against baldness, graying, wrinkles... They fail, of course, to deceive anyone, let alone stop time.
All the plastic surgery operations they suffer, neither preserve the youthful beauty, nor subtract a single day from their advanced age. All these vanos attempts to drink at the source of eternal youth only show that we have lost our sense of life and death. Age not only makes us put temporal things to their right extent (which young people have not yet learned) but bring us closer and closer to God, our last end. The elders take advantage of the boys. They are already reaching their full realization, they are reaching the finish line.
The great St. Paul writes to us: "That is why
we are not discouraged. On the contrary, as our exterior is destroyed, our
inner man is renewing every day. The light and soon passing test prepares us
for eternity a wealth of glory so great that it cannot be compared. We, then,
do not look at what is seen, but at the invisible, for visible things last a
moment and invisible things are forever." (II Cor.4:16-18)
And it's not that we meekly resign ourselves to the inevitable. It is on the contrary the jubilant awareness that we are being called of God. Grays and wrinkles are the signs of this joyful call. And diseases and blames tell us the same thing: the goal is already close. You'll see God soon.
The great St. Ignatius of Antioch, old man and on the way to martyrdom, progresses joyfully to the encounter with God and writes to the Romans: "My love is crucified and the fire of the land desires is no longer in me; I only feel within myself the voice of a living water that speaks to me and says, 'Come to the Father. I can no longer find delight in the material food or pleasures of this world." How wonderful to come to understand that death is the beginning of true life and that all this has been but an essay, a path, an invitation!
"Death is the companion of love, which opens the door and allows us to reach the One we love."St Augustine "Life has been given to us to seek God, death to find him, eternity".
