Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
4th August 2019

Life - The Preparation for Death by Rev. Fr. Frederick Faber

Life, as such, is more important than death. If death has a great influence on life, the influence of life on death is still greater. In fact, the work of death can only be done safely in life. Every single thing we do (in life) is actually making death either harder or easier.

Death is not an isolated action. Time and eternity are riveted. Life is not secured without it. Eternity is ratified by it. This is obvious; for death is at once a part both of life and immortality. Yet men often speak as if preparation for death were a distinct spiritual exercise, and nothing more than that. Whether we think of death or whether we forget it, whether we serve God or neglect him, life, in spite of us, is all the while a minute and detailed preparation for death.

It is the way of worldly people to make too little of death. The thought of death tends to make men timorous, and selfish, and little. Preparation for death can hardly avoid being one of the occupations of life, and an occupation stretching over a great deal of its surface. Death is an unknown act. It happens only once. It is inevitable and necessary. There is a universal uncertainty in everything connected with it. Yet everything is infallibly fixed by it to all eternity.

Not to fear death is a slight (insult) to Him who made it our special punishment. Not to desire death is an indifference to Him, whom we can only reach by passing through it.

The desire of death, then, may be a great grace and imply very much. But it must be when the soul is really athirst for God, and only looks wistfully at death as the portal it must pass to reach Him - just as an impatient traveller sees nothing but the mountain pass or the harbour mouth. Yet this desire may also be a delusion, and often is so.

The Creator has felt the exile of the creature. Like other fathers, He wants His children home. Thus He has a predilection for the hour of death. Of all the hours of life, it is most His. So in it His love is special, and where love is special, justice is special also.

What kind of deaths, then, are those which are more particularly precious in his sight? A Saint's death is a work of divine art, accomplished by supernatural skill and flushed with the glow of eternal beauty. No two are alike, and all are beautiful. We can but select some specimens from the various multitude. The first may be the death of those who have always been dying to themselves. They have adopted this for the form of their spiritual life, as St. Andrew Avellino did. It is a death like the death of Christ, the death of Him who "pleased not himself". It is the last act of a life which has been death all through, the last death of a thousand deaths. There is a harmony between death and such a life as this, which makes music in the ear of God. For the most part, the less a death stands apart from the foregoing life, the less it is a detached and separate mystery - the more has it a look of completeness and perfection about it. This is in truth a very blessed death.