32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Wis 6:13-17
Second Reading: 1 Thes 4:13-18
Gospel Reading: Mt 25:1-13
Death, says The Penny Catechism, is one of the “four last things to be ever remembered.” Indeed, it seems to have come particularly close during this pandemic.
The other three are judgment, hell, and heaven, which Pope St. John Paul II called “truths which many try to hide today, when they are not able to place them in doubt or deny them completely.”
Human nature is mortal, subject to death, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, from the beginning, God called Adam and Eve to share in his own life, divine life, and thus become immortal. Death, therefore, was “contrary” to his plan.
As long as Adam and Eve remained in their original “state of holiness and justice,” they “would not have to suffer or die.” However, Satan persuaded them to rebel against God. As a consequence, “death made its entrance into human history.”
Death is horrible: the soul leaves the body and the body decays. Christ himself wept at the death of Lazarus. Isaiah called death “a reproach” in the sense of a disgrace, of which we are ashamed.
We feel this sense of shame and disgrace when we view a dead body. Some people try to subdue it, arguing that death is natural, to be regarded with indifference. Others exaggerate it, as if death is to be avoided at any cost. A Christian interprets it as a hint that death is not what God planned for us.
By accepting the shame and disgrace of crucifixion, Jesus transformed death into a blessing, says the Catechism. His obedience made death, the consequence of Adam’s rebellion, an instance of that free and willing submission to God which Adam had refused. “It was death alone that won freedom from death,” St. Ambrose said; “death itself was its own redeemer.”
Now, as baptized Christians, members of Christ’s Mystical Body, we ourselves can participate in the blessing of his death. In baptism, we died with him sacramentally, in order to live with his supernatural life; now physical death completes our incorporation into him.
Death, therefore, is not just the consequence or punishment for sin, but also the medicine or remedy for our fallen condition. “God did not decree death from the beginning,” St. Ambrose said; “he prescribed it as a remedy.”
In our course “The Catholic Faith in Plain English,” we have been asked why the Church does not put more emphasis on physical healing, as Jesus and the apostles did.
Various saints have answered that question. “I want to see God and, in order to see him, I must die,” said St. Teresa of Avila. “To me, ‘life’ means Christ; hence dying is so much gain,” St. Paul said. “I am not dying; I am entering life,” said St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
“We should have a daily familiarity with death, a daily desire for death,” St. Ambrose said. Indeed, readiness to die is part of the “wisdom” of the first reading.
Accordingly, we pray, in the Litany of the Saints, “From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord.” In the Hail Mary we ask our Lady to pray for us “at the hour of our death.” We beg the intercession of St. Joseph as the patron of a happy death.
To those dying “in Christ,” the Church says, with gentle assurance: “Go forth, Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the almighty Father, who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who suffered for you; in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you . . . May you live in peace this day . . . May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints come to meet you . . . May you see your redeemer face to face.”
“So we will be with the Lord forever,” St. Paul says in the second reading. Let us “encourage one another with these words.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English” free of charge. All the materials (video and print) are available online at www.beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 10, “The Contradictions of Atheism,” will be available Nov. 8.