I read an archbishop asked his clergy not to preach for more than five minutes. His point: the briefer the homily, the more effective it should be. After all, the Ten Commandments are only 297 words; the Bill of Rights, 463 words; Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, 266 words.
With brevity in mind, I’m reflecting upon Sunday’s second reading: Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Philippi, Greece.
Paul here writes from prison. His life hangs in the balance. He doesn’t know whether he’ll be executed or freed. He’s torn between wanting to die so he can be with Christ forever, and living so he can continue ministering to the communities he fo
Paul is face to face with his own death. Death of course is a fact of life. Each of us ultimately will die.
Many of us know Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief in her best seller “On Death and Dying.” She wrote another book titled “Death: The Final Stage of Growth.”
That title brings me to the Christian understanding of death. The foundation of that understanding is Good Friday/Easter. Hidden in the death of Jesus on Good Friday was the glory of his resurrection on Easter.
Our faith challenges us to remember that the light of our resurrection will shatter the darkness of our own death.
The story of Jesus did not end in the tragedy of the cross but in the triumph of the Resurrection, the God-man Jesus, transfigured into an indescribable heavenly reality. The Risen Christ anticipates what we one day will become.
But let’s be totally honest. Most of us do not long with St. Paul “to be free from this earthly life so that we can be with the Risen Christ.”
Nor are we like St. Francis of Assisi who welcomed Sister Death in his Canticle of the Creatures: Praise to you, my Lord, for our sister bodily death from whom no living person can flee.”
We may feel we still have “unfinished business.” Many of us may even experience Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief as we approach the end of life. Yes, there’s a darkness about death that even Jesus cried out against.
Yet, in the Christian view, we expect that the Spirit of God, who continually amazes us, will surprise us in the moment of our own dying with a new, indescribable heavenly reality.
I close with a line from the comedienne Erma Bombeck, who wrote: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me for others.’”
That’s really good advice for a “happy death.”
