Thanks be to God, I’ve not buried any of my own people since my dear father died (RIP), six years ago last April. But I did just go to a funeral today.
It wasn’t anybody I knew, but, like all funerals, it affected me deeply. Contemplating death, and especially encountering it, always does. After all, as St. Thomas More once correctly said, no one who frequently contemplates death can possibly avoid pursuing holiness.
Life on this earth is filled with joys; the joy of love, of play, of the birth of children, of the feast, of the rest. Life is also plagued with sorrows without number; those of pain, those of crime, those of sickness, those of want, and those of death. We rejoice in the joys, and we weep for the sorrows; but truly the sorrows outweigh the joys. For all of our joys must necessarily end, and not only end, but end in sorrow. For the feast will end in hunger; the game will end in loss; the rest will end in toil; and even the greatest joy of life, loving another, will end in incredible sorrow when that other dies. In the long run, death, the greatest sorrow of all, destroys all joys; we truly live, without doubt, in a vale of tears.
Is this really a Christian way of looking at things, though? Doesn’t the Christian believe in joy that has no end? Absolutely, we do; but not the joy of this life. All the joys of life must end with death; it is only other joys, outside of this life, that can survive that most final of sorrows.
But doesn’t the Christian rejoice in death, since by death one passes into life? He does not. Certainly, we cannot come to life but by death; but death is nothing other than the punishment for sin, and still an enormous sorrow. St. Paul teaches us, “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Even Christ Himself, Who above all others truly knew what awaited the believer in the world to come, experienced tremendous sorrow at the horrible monster that is human death:
Jesus, therefore, when he saw her weeping, and the Jews that were come with her, weeping, groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself, And said: Where have you laid him? They say to him: Lord, come and see. And Jesus wept.
Jesus wept. The Lord of Heaven and earth, Who was fully aware that He was within moments of restoring poor Lazarus to life, still wept. Nor was He weeping only at the sorrow of the living; the Gospel notes that He did not weep until He came before the tomb, and only then did His tears flow.
Personally, I will never forget the wake of my own father, whose death was quite sudden and unexpected. The wake, of course, is normally the time when one celebrates the deceased, the weeping being held for the funeral. Yet upon entering the room, and seeing the lifeless body of he whom we all loved laying cold and dead, the sorrow and misery hit us like a wall of bricks, so thick as to be nearly tangible. Women swooned and fell; grown men, men I’ve never seen crack under any pressure no matter how great, wept openly like children. I’ve not really wept for many, many years; my father, ever a strong man, taught me that strong men do not weep in our culture. But it was truly an effort on that day, such as never before or since.
When he actually died, I was the only one with him. It was Easter Monday, A.D. 2003. His heart simply stopped beating, for no readily apparent reason, in between taking one boot off and unlacing the other after working outside. I was making lunch, getting ready to return to school. When I saw him in the chair, I thought he was asleep, and went to wake him. But of course, he didn’t awake. I could feel no heartbeat, hear no breath. So I called for help and began pumping his heart for him, as best as I could; I believe I probably didn’t pump hard enough, not that it was likely to help in any case. Eventually, emergency arrived, and had no better results from their efforts, assisted by equipment, than I had with only my hands and my own breath.
But watching them, with my father’s body completely lifeless, the limbs flopping like overcooked noodles at every charge of their machine, I knew that he was dead. And that death is horrible.
Does this contradict Christian joy and hope? Absolutely not; it only serves to emphasize it. After what I saw that day, if I didn’t believe that better things awaited me beyond the grave, I would’ve killed myself immediately, on the spot. Why burden myself with the endless sorrows of earthly life, if those sorrows have no life at the end?
And after death, what awaits us in this earthly plain? Nothing. Literally, nothing; on earth, death is truly the end. Surely, those who loved us—we who are blessed to have those who love us—will remember us, for a time. But slowly, inexorably, their memories will fade; and then they, too, will die; and before long, a few lifetimes at the most, we will be nothing but names in a family Bible and dust in a wooden box. No one will remember us; no one will grieve for us; no one will speak praise for us in the centuries to come. We will be gone; purely and simply, we will be no more.
Yet the Christian knows that there is more than merely earth; he knows that there is not only death here on earth, but also life after death. Surely, even for the blessed there will likely be Purgatory, in which the many failings of this short, hard life will be purged from the soul by fire and pain. But after this, which next to eternity will last for only an instant, there is everlasting joy, a joy intermingled with no suffering, and a love that has no end.
How can we focus on this earthly life so much, when even its joys are so mixed up with sorrows, and which is filled to the top with misery and death? Why do we not turn our eyes to the joy which has no sorrow, the land which has no tears, and the life which goes beyond and scorns cruel death?
I don’t know where my father is right now. I don’t know where I will go after I die. But I do know that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, loves my father, and loves me, and will help me every step of the way. Our Lord Jesus Christ, help me always to keep my eyes turned toward Thee; help me always to do the good which Thou didst teach us; help me always to believe in Thee and love Thee, having only contempt for what goes against Thee, enduring the miseries and sorrows of this present life for the sake of the everlasting joy I hope to have with Thee in the life to come. Amen.
Praise be to Christ the King!
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