DEATH IS NOT ONLY INEVITABLE, IT'S NATURAL: We know, from being in tune with Nature, that death is part of a natural process for all creation. St. Francis called death "Sister Death," in gentle respect and acceptance of the natural cycle of everything that lives. Jean Cocteau puts it "Since the day of my birth, my death begins its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying." Today's obsession with youth is a flight from death, a flight which obscures the real fact that bodies age and wrinkles from smiles are beautiful and gray hair should denote wisdom.
IF WE DON'T FEAR LIFE, WE WON'T FEAR DEATH, OR HOW WE LIVE IS HOW WE'LL DIE: If we live fully, with enthusiasm and gusto, we won't approach death with the fear that comes from regret. Mark Twain says "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die." Are there life-giving experiences we've avoided out of fear or lack of self-confidence? Have we allowed ourselves to deeply love others, or shied away because of perpetual mistrust? If we don't risk our hearts, we won't reap the harvest of love. Often when people have life-threatening illnesses, they focus more clearly on what they want to do and accomplish before they die.
Interestingly, Jesus' parable of the Last Judgment describing the actions of those who will be accepted by the Father, - feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked - is a description of those who live fully engaged with life, in happy, loving, committed relationships with others.
Living fully also includes accepting and embracing all the spiritual deaths we go through, the disappointments, the griefs, the challenges. Every little death we move through liberates us from false ideas of who we are and what is important. When we're conscious survivors, we need not fear anything. I have realized that my spiritual death from enduring my son's death liberated me from fear of everything I used to fear. I can embrace the best of life because I have endured the worst tragedy life could give me. Now I realize that final physical death will liberate me for a fuller, richer eternal life.
Yet some people live in an unhealthy spiritual death, not knowing themselves, and too afraid to be who they really are. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says "It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes from living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are."
IF WE TOTALLY TRUST GOD, WE TOTALLY SURRENDER OUR FUTURE TO HIM:
Jesus lived fully; Jesus lived a life of loving service, devoted to His Father's will. So trusting His Father completely, and trusting in eternal life, He was freely ready to die whenever His Father chose for Jesus to come to Him. He said to His friends "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father." So Jesus, in the end, after His totally human, tear-drenched night-time agony in the garden, was able to trust His Father enough to say on the cross "Into Thy hands I commend my Spirit."
Right now is the time to examine our relationship with God our Father. Do we transfer our troubled, distant, fearful relationship with our human father to our relationship with our Heavenly One? Fearing God our Father can contribute to our fearing death because we fear what God thinks of us, what God will say to us. God does not dislike us because we make mistakes. And God loves us and forgives us everything that we regret doing, that we know was wrong and sinful to do. A good preparation for death is forgiving ourselves for being fragile and imperfect, trusting that God forgives us our sins, and making amends as far as possible.
If we live in a fully loving relationship with God our Father, we can also choose to die in freedom as Jesus did. We can live with the attitude that we are ready to accept death when death comes as the Hand of our Father choosing to bring us home at the right time for us. In fact, if we trust God's personal love and personal plan for each of us, nothing can console us more when a loved one dies than trusting that he or she has lived the complete life God has chosen for him or her. And that we will meet again in Heaven where there are no more tears and no more separations.
If we live with an eye towards heaven, we recognize the unfulfilling temporariness of this life on earth. Nothing lasts; everything is always changing. Nothing fully satisfies us - ever. We are discontent, always searching for new experiences, new pleasures. The older we grow the more poignantly we realize that on earth death separates us in the end from all whom we love. C.S. Lewis observed "If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
And what is this other world like? Lewis tells us "Joy is the serious business of heaven." The joy of meeting God face to face, of fully experiencing our union with God. The joy of reunion with our loved ones. The joy that through, with, and in God all our relationships will be open, kind, unclouded by misunderstandings or arguments. The joy of living with renewed bodies and souls. The joy of a life of perfect tranquility. We will exit this world the way we entered it, through a door to new life. We only die so that we can truly begin to live!