Then
Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my
spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. St. Luke 23:46
Several of the Fifteen Os also make
mention of a particular aspect of discipleship that was especially important in
St. Bridget’s time, ending life in faith and trust, having what Jeremy Taylor
famously described as “a holy dying.” As
she meditates upon the end of Jesus’ life, St. Bridget is also inviting us, as
does the final stanza of one of the Victorian passion hymns, to “Learn of Jesus
Christ to die[1]”
In her concern with a holy death, in part St.
Bridget reflects the reality of her times.
She was surrounded by people, all of them baptized Christians, who died
in unexpected ways every day. An
epidemic struck a village, an army laid siege to a town, a fire swept through a
city, and thousands would die. People
lived perilous lives, and unlike the reality in the Western world today, there
were very few means of effectively blunting the pain, so that most people were
conscious and fully aware of death’s approach.
Life, the church taught and taught often,
should have a sacramental end. One’s
sins should be confessed, the body should be anointed, the last sacrament
should be consumed, the viaticum,
they called it, the food for the last journey, out of this life and into the
embrace of God. People usually made
wills on their deathbeds, children and neighbors were summoned to receive
parting words of instruction or long-desired reconciliation. Last words were recorded, often treasured as
a valuable summation of the meaning of one’s life.
This intense focus on the time of death
had been an important part of Christian piety before St. Bridget’s time and it
continued long after. I was reading last
week about the writings of the great 17th century Anglican spiritual
writer, Jeremy Taylor and was surprised to read that of his two companion books, Holy Living and Holy Dying, it was Holy Dying
that sold far more copies in his own lifetime.
There is Biblical precedent for this
intense concentration on the end. The
Book of Genesis closes with an extended deathbed scene in Egypt, where Jacob is
surrounded by his twelve sons, offering parting blessings and words of wisdom.[2] The last words of Samuel[3] and David[4] are recorded, and
Deuteronomy is really Moses’ last will and testament. But above all, the passion and death of Jesus
are set down for us in such great detail so that we can understand how a
faithful life can come to a blessed end, even when beset by an overwhelming
ordeal.
Today, of course, few of us like to think
about our own deaths. Occasionally, I
will happen into a group conversation about how “we would like to go.” Most people say they’d prefer to just go to
sleep and not wake up again, that they fear suffering, don’t want to trouble
anyone. Death is an inconvenience,
something that must be gotten through, certainly not something they have
thought about doing well or poorly, something that should best be faced with
careful preparation and support from others.
I usually point out in such conversations
that the church has long prayed that God spare us from a “sudden death,” a
death we didn’t notice or prepare for, drifting off into the next world.
This is in part because we believe that
death is a perilous time. One of St. Bridget’s
prayers asks that Christ have mercy on us “at the hour of my death when my mind
shall be troubled and my strength fail.”
Another mentions death as a time of trials, beset by terrors and
pains. As our own physical powers fade
away, we are in danger of succumbing to doubts and fears. Unless we have trusted fully in God’s grace,
and are living in the strength He supplies, we may not be strong enough to push
on and resist temptation to the very end.
And of course, no one comes to the hour of
death free from sin, with an absolutely spotless conscience. If we know ourselves honestly, we can trace
the many ways that we have squandered God’s gifts and chosen our own
destructive ways. The deathbed is a
place for confession, when we need what St. Bridget calls “true contrition and
the remission of all my sins.” The best
way to prepare for this, of course, is to turn to God continually for forgiveness,
to not let the day pass without turning to God in sorrow and in faith to
receive renewal through His forgiving life.
And because after death comes judgement,
St. Bridget’s prayers include a plea for God’s help in that final ordeal, when
we must make answer for our lives.
Remember me, one of her prayers pleads, as you did the penitent thief,
“not weighing my merits, but pardoning my offenses.” Welcome me, says another, “like a pilgrim
returning home.” May your promise be
confirmed even for me, though I am a sinner, because you have gone ahead to
prepare a place for me.
Jesus is our model for a holy death, as He
resists the crowd’s taunts to come down from the Cross and show His power. He could surely have done that, but he chose
to be steadfast instead. From the cross,
he settled the last duties of his mortal life, entrusting his mother to John’s
care. He had no sins to confess, but
begged God’s mercy for the wrongdoings of others, departing this life, as one
of the funeral prayers says, “in perfect charity with the world.”[5] Jesus could say, in earnest, that all was
finished, that He had given Himself completely to bringing God’s will to
life. In the end, like all his faithful
followers, He still commended Himself into the Father’s hands, trusting in His
grace to make all complete.
As in the models of discipleship I
outlined in the last talk, these are things to bring to our own mind, as a
pattern for our way of dying. But we
bring them also to His mind, we make a memorial of them, so that He would give
us grace to do the same when our hour has come.
Over the next half hour, let us close our
meditation time by doing something many of us very rarely do, thinking on our
own death, and asking for God’s help to die in His faith and fear, as Christ
did in such a perfect and final way.
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