Death, where is your sting, O grave your victory?

November is the month when we remember the dead in special ways. We offer Masses and prayers in remembrance of them, trusting that the Lord of compassion and mercy will bring them close to Him in the new life promised by Jesus Christ.

We pray for those we have known and loved. We pray for those who caused us pain in some way during their life with us. We pray for those who have no one to pray for them.

The call to pray for the dead is deeply rooted in our Catholic tradition, as Sacred Scripture informs us, ‘it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sin’ (2 Maccabees 12:46).

Please allow me to share with you a short reflection upon the relationship between life and death.

In many cultures the dividing line between us who are living and those who have died is not always clear. When I was in Kenya in the 1980s, it was clear that in the traditional spirituality of the people, there was a clear relationship between the living and the dead. Traditionally the spirits of the dead influence the daily life of the living, and the living can influence the activity of those same spirits for better or for worse.

Christianity builds on this belief and develops it into a message of hope and redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Our culture has largely separated the two. Apart from the scandal of ‘assisted suicide’, death is never really talked about, and often more feared than accepted. I regularly meet good people who say, without hesitation, that there is no life after death. Death is the end, full stop. In reply I respond with a smile on my face that when the time comes, they will have the most wonderful surprise!

The resurrection was central in Jesus’ teaching – his own and those who believe in him. What about those who do not believe in him? We leave that in the hands of a God who is ‘slow to anger and rich in steadfast love and mercy’.

An eternal journey

I am quite happy to admit that I enjoy walking round cemeteries and reading the epitaphs on the headstones. Some are very enlightening, some cold and lifeless, and some challenging.

In a graveyard in Broadway, Worcestershire we read the following, dated 1874:

My time is come. Next may be thine
Prepare for it whilst thou has time
A that thou mayst prepared be
Live unto Him who died for thee

These challenging words celebrate the continuity of life and death as an eternal journey towards perfection in God. Our relationship with the dead as we pray for them, and they for us, is also a call to prepare to meet them.

Christ offers us new life now, in the present moment, a moment that resounds down through eternity. This is exactly what is celebrated in Baptism.

St Paul expresses it vividly in Chapter 6 of his letter to the Romans:

By baptism into his death we were buried with him,
so just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory,
we too should live in newness of life.

In his book ‘The Inner Voice of Love’ Fr Henri Nouwen speaks to our fears: ‘Maybe the death you fear is not simply the death at the end of your present life. Maybe the death at the end of your life won’t be so fearful if you can die well now.

‘Yes, the real death – the passage from time into eternity, from the transient beauty of this world to the lasting beauty of the next, from darkness into light – has to be made now.’

Freedom at last

In 1982, there was an attempted coup by the Kenyan Airforce. I was living in Kisumu town at the time. For three days the country fell into an eerie silence as everyone was forced to stay at home and wonder what would happen next. (No mobile phones and internet in those days!)

The coup was put down by the army, and those responsible were arrested and sent to prison. I used to visit them in the local prison for Mass every Sunday for many were Catholics.

I shall never forget one encounter with a junior officer who was obviously just caught up in the rebellion and may not have even participated in it. He said, ‘Father, I was brought up a Catholic but never took it seriously. As a young man with good career opportunities in the Airforce and money to spare, I was free to enjoy all that life can offer.

‘I often went to bars with my friends and drank too much. Sometimes I took drugs. I danced the night away in clubs. I played around. I thought I had everything, but I wasn’t really very happy.

‘Now I am in prison I have had plenty of time to reflect on my life, to read the Bible, talk with the prison catechist, and pray. I now realise I was not free before. I was a prisoner of that way of life. Now I know Christ lives, and he has given me new life.

‘Isn’t it funny that I had come to a prison to discover what true freedom is?’

‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’ are words of encouragement at most of our funerals.

In following Christ, trusting him, believing in his promise of life eternal for all of us, we have new life here and now. We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that nothing can separate us from our loved ones who have died.

For as St Thomas More wrote in his final letter to his daughter, ‘Pray for me that we may merrily meet in heaven’.