Meditations for Layfolk - The Death of Others

I meet death not merely in myself, but many times over in others. At first the hearing of it comes as a shock to me. I know, indeed, that all must die. My pets in my childhood have died and I have buried them with some pomp, and have thought of them as having gone to some place of pleasure. Even so, however, it may well have happened that I did not altogether realize how irrevocable their departure was; in a vague way I said that I should not see them again, but there remained always the hope that in the end they might reappear after an interval. Then I heard next, perhaps, that a familiar friend had been called away, and I learnt later that he was dead. What that meant I did not fully know. Black seemed somehow an appropriate colour; it fitted the temper of my mind; but I was conscious only that I should not see them again, and their name was added to a list which came up each morning and evening at my prayers. That is probably the remembrance of death that comes to me in after years, when I look back on my childhood - a vague notion that there was now a gap where once people stood. But as after a while things went on as though nothing had ever happened, I lost my apprehension of it; it became hardly more than a blur which gathered round certain faces, and it was a subject that on the whole I found it better to avoid. Prayers, of course, were to be said for the dead, and during November I was no doubt busy over my indulgences for the holy souls; but all that was intensely impersonal.

Perhaps the thing that really most seized my imagination and made the idea a thing of reality has been the sight of the dead. There is nearly always something unpleasant in the presence of the dead, something that makes us shrink back from their sight. Our intense love for them may in given cases overcome the feeling of distaste, but that is so clear an exception that it almost revolts the thoughts of those that watch. The very idea of going into the room, for most people, is in itself repellent, partly perhaps from the knowledge that they have no business to be afraid. The dead can do us no hurt, yet we have instinctively a dread of them, lying so still and silent. The drawn features, their waxlike glaze, the curious odour of death, haunt the imagination. We kneel and say a prayer, then hurry out as soon as we can with decency. Then suddenly there comes the thought that the fear of death is really a fear of the separation that it causes. Life and love go hand in hand, but death casts a shadow on the plumes on youth, and brushes into disarray the elaborate ornaments with which friendship decks out its lovers. Death, indeed, means separation, divorce made absolute. Why should God, I ask complainingly, take friends from me? What have I done that He should thus crush my one consolation in life? Hostility to Him is often the first result of the death of a friend. The loss is always sudden in the end, and the poignancy of my regret finds its simplest outlet in a declamation against the Ruler of Life.

Whither, then, shall I now turn for comfort against this terrible peril? To my crucifix. That is, indeed, the sole refuge for those who are in distress against the ways of God, for His manner of dealing with the children of men has not been to turn to us and beg us to have blind confidence in His love. He has never made so heavy a demand upon my faith and love; He has never put my trust so severely to the test: for like the kind Father that He has ever been to me, He first gives definite proofs of love, and then only ventures to ask something of me in return. He waits for signs of my affection only after He has Himself given pledge of it. Now it is just in the crucifix that we find best of all the whole summary of this method with which He deals with me. There, indeed, I can look and see how He has first died for me. Then He can speak to me from that seat of love, and bid me see, if I can, whether greater love than that could be shown me. There is no question, be it observed, of blind faith, of closing one's eyes to see what God will send us, as children play among themselves; but it is with our eyes wide open to His wonderful display of love that we can turn again into the path of life and go forward with courage and trust. He has given Himself as a hostage to us for His good behaviour. Yes, of course I am disturbed when those I love are taken from me, I should not be human if I were not; but at the same time I must allow that God is wiser and more loving than I am, for His wisdom and love are of eternity. I must, therefore, go on in perfect trust: His death and the remembrance of it stills the fear of my soul. Though those that I love have gone down into the valley of death, neither for myself nor them shall I fear evil, for He is with us.

- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.