In this series we have explored together various aspects of ageing from a Christian point of view. Now it is time to reflect briefly on dying and how to face it, ‘so that we may not grieve as others do who have no hope’ (1 Thess.4:13). Death can be terrifying to many people because they imagine it as an endless falling into darkness, but we are offered the ‘sure and certain hope’ that Jesus, our life-companion, will be waiting there to welcome us. I will use a good deal of Scripture in this chapter, so that you can feel secure that my ideas are based not on naive optimism, but on the unfailing promises of God.
Welcome!
As I come towards my final days in this world, Love bids me welcome. Love drew me out of nothingness when the universe began. I was chosen even then to be holy, and to live through love in God’s presence (see Eph.1:4). St. Elizabeth of the Trinity says: ‘There is a being whose name is Love, who longs for my company’. This mysterious Lover, who has smiled on me all the days of my life, gazes now on me in my pain, confusion and weakness, and still smiles on me. I will be safe in this love, this welcoming smile. God does not change. I am the always ‘God’s Beloved’ (Rom.1:7).
Saying ‘Yes’ to God
God smiles on me. I try to smile in return, though I may be in great distress. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh’ (Lk.6:21). Death involves tears, but here we are given the promise that joyous laughter will follow soon after it. My dying should be a self-giving: a total handing over of myself into loving hands. They are loving hands, for on their palms my very own name is inscribed (see Isa.49:16). And recall Chardin who says that with one hand God shapes the universe: with the other hand God holds me carefully.
Let me then in good time say to God, ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’ (Lk.23:46). Jesus said this just before dying, but he lived thus always. The whole dynamism of his life was turned toward his Father. He was made over to him from the beginning. Perhaps this prayer of Jesus has been your prayer since you began to notice that you were not as young as you used to be: if so, that is good. But perhaps you will be helped by beginning to say it now. While death is inevitable for us all, Christians are meant to imitate Jesus and voluntarily hand themselves over to God in a free personal act of self-giving.
Thus a Christian spirituality of ageing merges into a spirituality of dying. A smile, inward but also outward if possible, can capture my loving response to God. I am to be ‘an everlasting gift to God’ (Eucharistic Prayer 3). A living gift should smile! This is the time for my final self-donation. ‘I give myself to you!’ Towards the close of King Lear the devoted son Edgar tells his father, Gloucester: ‘Ripeness is all’. Ripeness indeed is all. Ripeness of heart is an acceptance of what is to come. To die well is a task, a hard task for some, but Jesus gives us his example to follow.
The Jesuit Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, was disabled by a severe stroke ten years before his death in 1991. He composed the following prayerful farewell address to his brother-Jesuits in 1983, by which time he was unable to speak. The words were read aloud for him. They have helped many senior Jesuits and others to hand themselves over to God in their later years, and they may help you!
‘More than ever, I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life, from my youth. But now there is a difference: the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.’
God Comes, Comes …
For me as a Christian, dying is an inter-personal event, the most sacred event of my life. My dying is not simply a ‘systems failure’. I know who my future is! I do not die alone and only later find myself ushered into the presence of God. Rather, God comes for me, God makes a journey of love to my bedside. He hurries, like the father who ran toward his prodigal son and caught him up in a loving hug. God comes for me as a bridegroom comes for his bride. God guides me ‘through the darkest valley’ (Ps.23:4) into his own wonderful light. His promise is firm: ‘I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also’ (Jn.14:3). Could Jesus do more to ease my fear of dying than this? My beloved will say to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone’ (Song of Songs 2:10). God then comes for me, takes me by the hand and leads me home.
C. S. Lewis said of his wife, Joy, as she died: ‘She smiled, but not at me’. Many people smile as they die, they smile at God who is there, but whom only they can see. They smile because they recognise God and what God has prepared for them, which passes all imagining (see 1 Cor.2:9). Around my bed will be some family members and friends, perhaps a nurse too. But behind them will be the three divine Persons, who are radiating love beyond all telling. They are proud of me, wasted and worn though I am. They know my heart, they are delighted that I have grown in love. Their work in me is nearing completion, the work of art which I am is now close to perfection. I am almost ready to enjoy the company of all those blessed ones gone before me, who already experience the multiple overwhelmings of God’s gracious love.
Sure and Certain Hope
Christians have an unique perspective on death. I spoke of the ‘sure and certain hope’ that Jesus offers, the promise that indeed, all will be well. But the shadow side of death looms large. People rightly ask: ‘Will I wake up after dying?’ Our Christian faith is founded on the belief, based on Jesus’ own resurrection, that death is not the end. With the coming of Christ an unquenchable light shines in the darkness of death (see Jn.1:5). We say at Mass: ‘Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life’. The Gospels are all about the hard-won victory of Jesus over sin and death, which enables us to enter with him into the divine blessedness where love reigns and all is restored.
Francis Thompson writes in The Hound of Heaven: ‘All which thy child’s mistake / Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home. / Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’ Hopkins urges us: ‘Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver’. We are promised entry into the joy of God, and joy, as C. S. Lewis says, is the serious business of heaven!
Conversation with Jesus
I wait for Jesus to come today, aware now that each of these comings is a prelude to his final coming for me. I pray: ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ (Rev.22:20).
And he does come, smiling and welcoming. He says: ‘Thank you for wanting me to come. Some day I will come and take you to myself forever. I promise you that, and I will not fail you.’
Perhaps you sit together in comfortable silence for a while. Perhaps you cry and he comforts you. You simply want to be with him whom you love, and he wants to be with you. You might say: ‘You are my God, for you I long!’ (Ps.63:1, Grail version). He might reply: ‘Love bids you welcome!’
Since the Christian faith is all about good relationships with God and one another, you are already now experiencing something of eternal life, and only the sleep of death will precede the splendour of its full unfolding. May we all meet there in God’s good time!