How To Die

It’s Good Friday when we read the Passion of the Lord.  So what’s good about today and Jesus’ death on the cross?  The obvious answer is “he died for our sins.” 

Chances are many of us still struggle to understand this important part of our Catholic faith.  It’s a belief championed by the Benedictine monk St. Anselm of Canterbury around the year 1,000 AD.  It has stood the test of time and our tradition.

Perhaps it’s best we simply focus on Jesus’ death itself and not so much on the reason for it. Perhaps we should just appreciate the manner in which he died and what it tells us about his journey from pain and suffering to peace and his passage from earthly life to eternal life. 

What can we learn from Jesus?  He teaches us how to die.  How so?  Let’s listen to his last words.  According to John, he ended his life by saying, “I thirst” and then “It is finished.” These words remind us of what the writer Henri Nouwen once said, “There is no such thing as a good death. We are responsible for the way we die. We have to choose between clinging to life in such a way that death becomes nothing but a failure, or letting go of life in freedom so that we can be given to others as source of hope.” 

As Ronald Rolheiser concluded in his new book Sacred Fire, “We give our deaths away as our last and greatest gift to our loved ones.”  In other words, we have to make the same choice that Jesus made in the Garden of Gethsemane.  How will we choose to die?  In bitterness?  In anger?  Unforgiving?  Without hope?

We remember Jesus as leaving us a model for dying, as well as for living.  There was no bitterness or anger.  He forgave those who condemned and crucified him.   He was hopeful.  He let go of life not as a failure, but as one who succeeded in giving hope to his followers then and now.

When we face that moment none of us welcomes but we know is coming, let’s all remember to say, “We thirst - for that afterlife with those who left before us, and we thirst - for God who will quench our thirst with eternal love.”  Let’s say, “It is finished - but we know there is a new beginning and a new life to come.”

We Catholics believe nothing is really ever finished, just refreshed and renewed through our hope of the Resurrection that awaits us all.

Deacon David Pierce