Reflection: Death

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070918.cfm
Hosea 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22
Matthew 9:18-26http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070918.cfm

I was thirteen when my youngest brother died. He was just three years old when he was hit by a car on the street in front of our house. He died in the hospital from head injuries three days later. This was not my first experience with death; both my grandfather’s had died in previous years. Still, my brother’s death was the one which had the greatest and most lasting impact. My two younger sisters, about four and six at the time, witnessed what happened on the street that day. It was a split second ordeal that would not be erased. I was away from the front of the house, pulling a wagon for some forgotten purpose as my memory records it; and it was their screaming which prompted me to run to the front to see what happened. It’s possible I was the first adult — or almost adult — at the scene..

The trauma of my sisters was, unfortunately, secluded in some unspoken dimension. My mother’s grief seemed unending. More than a year later the event was still a cause for her persistent and profound sorrow. When Jesus arrived at the official’s house, a man called Ja’irus as Mark and Luke observe, “he saw a tumult, and people weeping and wailing loudly.” (Mark 5:38, Luke 8:52) My mother would have been in the midst of them. She would have been there a long time.

I was young enough at the time as to be confused by the anguish of my parents and relatives. Such had not been my experience when my grandfathers had died. And I was probably sufficiently naive enough to struggle with my religious training about resurrection and this real life experience.

People deal with death in different ways. Indifference is not usually one of those ways. The loss of child, spouse, sibling, friend, or just someone of whom we thought highly can be a cause for mourning — quietly or “wailing loudly”, with interior silent pain or communal reflection. But while our humanity finds the loss of another a cause for pain and sorrow, this gospel selection provides more than just an intimation of what the future holds for those who know the Savior. A few centuries ago John Donne, an English poet, penned a few verses, addressing Death as if death were a person.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

If there is any “good news” to be had, the conquest of death by the life, passion and death of Jesus, certainly deserves its own banner headline. All of these Scripture selections are about death. Matthew shares with us the remarkable restoration of a twelve year old girl to her parents. The preceding gospel alleluia verse vigorously proclaims what we all profess: “Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death.” In the responsorial Psalm, the Psalmist asserts: “Every day will I bless you, and I will praise your name forever and ever.” an event that is possible only for one who actually lives forever and ever. And yes, even the reading from Hosea addresses the issue of death, for it is about a relationship — the relationship between God and his Chosen People. It is about a relationship that has died — or at least is on its deathbed — at the time the text was written. And even with the infidelity that effected that death, we wonder at the persistence and mercy of God.

I will allure her;
I will speak to her heart.
I will espouse you to me forever:
I will espouse you in right and in justice,
in love and in mercy;
I will espouse you in fidelity,

Even further, we are amazed at the unexpected hope which God has.

She shall respond as in the days of her youth.

Donne wrote another poem about the same time as the previous one. Such disparate notables as Thomas Merton and Earnest Hemingway have pulled phrases from Donne’s text to be titles for their own works. The poem is short. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

No man is an island entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Donne was reflecting on a specific religious teaching which was probably better understood before the emergence of the pre-eminence of individuality.

“The Church is Catholic, that is, universal”, he says. “All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me, for that child is thereby connected to that Head which is my Head too, and engraved into that body, whereof I am a member. All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of he book, but translated into a better language.”

Paul said it simpler when writing to the Romans.

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. (Romans 14:7-8)