Death of the just
“The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened.”—Matthew 13:33
In this day’s gospel we read that a woman, after putting leaven in the dough, waits until the whole mass has fermented—until, as we commonly say, it has risen enough. By this the Lord teaches us that the kingdom of heaven—that is, the attainment of eternal beatitude—is like the leaven. By the leaven is meant the grace of God, which makes the soul acquire merits for eternal life. But this eternal life is obtained only when “the whole is leavened;” that is, when the soul has reached the end of the present life and the completion of her merits.
Today, then, we shall speak of the death of the just, which we should not fear but should desire with our whole soul. For St. Bernard writes: Triplex in morte congratulatio, hominem ab omni labore, peccato, et periculo liberari—“There is a threefold cause for rejoicing in death: that man is freed from all labor, sin, and danger.” Man should rejoice at his death for three reasons. First, because death frees him from labor—that is, from the suffering of the miseries of this life and from the assaults of his enemies. Secondly, because it frees him from actual sins. Thirdly, because it frees him from the danger of falling into hell, and opens Paradise to him.
First Point.—Death frees us from the miseries of this life, and from the assaults of our enemies.
1. What is death? St. Eucherius answers that “death is the end of miseries.” Job said that our life, however short it may be, is full of miseries, of infirmities, of crosses, of persecutions, and of fears. “Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries” (Job 14:1).
What do men who want to go on living on this earth desire, asks St. Augustine, but to go on suffering? Quid est diu vivere nisi diu torqueri—“What is long life but long torment?” (Sermon 17 on the Lord). Yes; for, as St. Ambrose remarks, the present life was given to us not for rest and enjoyment, but for labor and suffering, that by our toils and pains we may merit Paradise. Haec vita homini non ad quietem data est, sed ad laborem—“This life was not given to man for rest, but for labor” (Sermon 43). Hence the same holy doctor says that, although death was given to man as the punishment of sin, still the troubles of this life are so great that death seems to be given us as a relief rather than a chastisement: Ut mors remedium videatur esse, non poena—“That death may seem to be a remedy, not a punishment.”
2. The hardest of all the trials that those who love God suffer in this life are the assaults of hell, which seek to make them lose the divine grace. Hence St. Dionysius the Areopagite says that they go joyfully to meet death, as the end of their combats, and embrace it with gladness, knowing that, if they die a good death as they hope, they pass beyond all fear of ever again falling into sin. Divino gaudio ad mortis terminum tanquam ad finem certaminum tendunt, non amplius metuentes perverti—“With divine joy they press on toward the end of death as toward the end of their struggles, no longer fearing to be corrupted” (On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, ch. 7).
The greatest consolation that a soul which loves God feels at the news of death arises from the thought of being delivered from so many temptations, from so many anguishes of conscience, and from so many dangers of offending God. Ah, says St. Ambrose, as long as we live, “we walk among snares.” We walk continually amid the snares of our enemies, who lie in wait for the life of grace within us.
It was this danger that made St. Peter of Alcantara say, as he lay dying, to a lay brother who, in tending him, happened to touch him: “Brother, draw back, draw back from me, for I am still alive and in danger of being lost.” This same danger consoled St. Teresa as often as she heard the clock strike, rejoicing that another hour of the combat had passed; for she used to say: “In every moment of life we may sin and lose God.” And so the news of approaching death did not grieve the saints, but filled them with joy, because they knew that their struggles, and the dangers of losing the divine grace, were soon to end.
3. “But the just man, if he be prevented with death, shall be in rest” (Wis. 4:7). He who is prepared to die, living amid so many dangers and fears of this life, takes death—whatever form it comes in—as a relief. If, says St. Cyprian, you lived in a house whose walls were crumbling and whose floor and roof were trembling, so that the whole thing threatened to fall, surely you would want to get out of it as quickly as you could. In this life everything threatens ruin to the poor soul: the world, the devils, the flesh, the passions—all draw her toward sin and toward eternal death.
It was this that made St. Paul exclaim: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). Who shall deliver me from this body of mine, which lives in a continual dying because of the assaults it endures? Hence he counted it a great gain to die, for by death he would gain Jesus Christ, who was his true life.
Happy, then, are they who die in the Lord; for they pass out of pains and toils, and go to their rest. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the spirit, that they may rest from their labors” (Rev. 14:13). It is related in the lives of the ancient fathers that, as one of them, an old man, lay dying, the others wept, but he smiled. Being asked why he smiled, he answered: “And why do you weep, to see me going to my rest?—Ex labore ad requiem vado, et vos ploratis?” At the hour of death St. Catherine of Siena said to her sisters in religion: Rejoice with me; for I am leaving this land of suffering and going to the kingdom of peace.
The death of the saints is called a sleep—that is, the repose which God grants to his beloved ones as the reward of their toil. “When he shall give sleep to his beloved, behold the inheritance of the Lord” (Ps. 127:2). And so the soul that loves God neither weeps nor is troubled at the news of death, but, embracing the crucifix and burning with love, she says: “In peace in the self same I will sleep and I will rest” (Ps. 4:9).
4. That Proficiscere de hoc mundo—“Depart, Christian soul, from this world”—which so terrifies sinners at the hour of death, does not terrify the saints. “But the souls of the just are in the hands of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them” (Wis. 3:1). The saint is not distressed, as worldlings are, at having to leave the goods of this earth, because he has kept his heart detached from them.
All his life he kept saying that God was the one Lord of his heart, and the whole of the riches he desired: “What have I in heaven? and, besides thee, what do I desire upon earth? Thou art the God of my heart and the God that is my portion forever” (Ps. 73:25–26). He is not distressed at leaving honors, because the only honor he ever sought was to love and to be loved by God; all the honors of this world he has rightly counted as smoke and vanity, which is what they are. He is not distressed at leaving his relatives, because he loved them only in God. As he dies, he leaves them in the care of his heavenly Father, who loves them more than he does; and having a secure confidence of his own salvation, he hopes to help them better from Paradise than from this earth. In a word, what he often said in life—“My God and my all”—he goes on repeating, with greater love, at the hour of death.
5. Besides this, his peace is not lost amid the pains that death brings with it; but, seeing that his life is now at its end, so that no time remains to him to suffer for God or to give him any further proofs of his love, he accepts those pains gladly, to offer them to God as the last remnants of his life; and uniting his death with the death of Jesus Christ, he thus offers it to the Divine Majesty.
6. And although the memory of the sins he has committed will distress him, it will not disturb him; for the very repentance he feels for them assures him of pardon, since he knows that the Lord has declared that he will forget the sins of true penitents. “If the wicked do penance… I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done” (Ezek. 18:21–22). St. Basil asks how anyone can be certain that God has pardoned his sins, and answers: He may indeed be certain of it if he can say: I have hated and abhorred iniquity. (In Reg. inter. 12). He who detests his sins, and for them offers God his death, may rest assured that God has pardoned him.
Mors, says St. Augustine, quae in lege naturae erat poena peccati in lege gratiae est hostia pro peccato—“Death, which under the law of nature was the punishment of sin, under the law of grace has become a sacrifice of penance, by which sin is pardoned” (On the Trinity, Bk. 4, ch. 22).
7. The very love which a soul bears to God assures her of his grace, and frees her from the fear of being lost. “Charity casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18). If, at the hour of death, you are unwilling to pardon an enemy, or to restore what is not your own, or if you wish to keep up an improper friendship, then tremble for your eternal salvation, for you have good reason to fear; but if you seek to avoid sin, and keep in your heart some testimony of love toward God, be assured that God is with you; and if the Lord is with you, what do you fear?
And if you wish to be assured that you have the divine love within you, embrace death with peace, and offer it to God from your heart. He who offers God his death makes the most perfect act of love that he can possibly make; for by gladly embracing death to please God, at the time and in the manner God ordains, he becomes like the holy martyrs, the whole merit of whose martyrdom consisted in suffering and dying to please God.
Second Point.—Death frees us from actual sins.
8. It is impossible to live in this world without committing at least some slight faults. “A just man shall fall seven times” (Prov. 24:16). He who ceases to live, ceases to offend God. Hence St. Ambrose called death the burial of vices: by death they are buried and appear no more. Quid est mors nisi sepultura vitiorum?—“What is death but the burial of vices?” (On the Good of Death, ch. 4).
The venerable Vincent Caraffa consoled himself at the hour of death with this thought, saying: now that I am ending my life, I am ending forever my offenses against my God. He who dies in the grace of God enters that happy state in which he shall love God forever and shall never be able to offend him again. Mortuus nescit peccare—“The dead man knows not how to sin,” says the same holy doctor; and he writes further: Quid tanto opere vitam istam desideramus, in qua quanto diutius quis fuerit, tanto majori oneratur sarcina peccatorum?—“Why do we so greatly desire this life, in which the longer one lives, the more he is burdened with the weight of sins?”
9. Hence the Lord praises the dead more than any living man: “I praised the dead rather than the living” (Eccles. 4:2). For no one on this earth, however holy he may be, is exempt from sins. A spiritual soul gave orders that whoever should bring her the news of her death should say to her: “Console yourself, for the time has come when you shall no longer offend God.”
10. St. Ambrose adds that God permitted death to enter the world so that men, by dying, should cease to sin: Passus est Dominus subintrare mortem ut culpa cessaret—“The Lord permitted death to enter, that guilt might cease” (On Prayer, Bk. 2). It is a great error, then, to think that death is a chastisement for one who loves God. It is rather a mark of the love which God bears him, since he shortens his life to take him out of the midst of sins, from which he cannot be free as long as he lives. “For his soul pleased God: therefore he hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities” (Wis. 4:14).
Third Point.—Death frees us from the danger of falling into hell, and opens Paradise to us.
11. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of the saints” (Ps. 116:15). Looked at with the senses, death frightens and makes itself feared; but looked at with faith, it consoles and makes itself desired. As terrible as it appears to sinners, so amiable and precious does it show itself to the saints. “It is precious,” says St. Bernard, “as the end of labors, the consummation of victory, the gate of life.”
The gladness of Pharaoh’s cupbearer, when he heard from Joseph that he should soon be released from prison and restored to his place at the king’s court, was far less than that which a soul that loves God feels on hearing that she is to be set free from the exile of this earth and to go to her true country to enjoy God. The Apostle says that, as long as we live in the body in this world, we wander far from our country in a strange land, far from the life that is the life of God: “While we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6).
Hence St. Bruno teaches that our death should not be called death, but the beginning of life. Mors dicenda non est, sed vitae principium—“It should not be called death, but the beginning of life.” Or, as St. Athanasius writes: Non est justis mors sed translatio—“For the just it is not death but a passage.” To the just, death is nothing but a passage from the miseries of this earth to the eternal delights of Paradise. O lovable death, exclaimed St. Augustine—who would not desire you, since you are the end of evils, the close of labor, and the beginning of everlasting rest? O mors desiderabilis, malorum finis, laboris clausula, quietis principium—“O desirable death, end of evils, close of labor, beginning of rest.”
12. No one can enter heaven to see God without passing through this gate of death. “This is the gate of the Lord the just shall enter into it” (Ps. 118:20). Hence St. Jerome prayed to death and said: Aperi mihi soror mea—“Open to me, my sister.” Death, my sister, if you do not open the gate to me, I cannot go to enjoy my God.
And St. Charles Borromeo, seeing in a picture in his house the figure of death with a scythe in its hand, sent for a painter and ordered him to paint out the scythe and paint in its place a key of gold; for it is death, said the saint, that opens Paradise to us. Were a queen shut up in a dark prison, how she would rejoice to hear that the gates were now being opened to carry her from that dungeon to her palace!
This was just what David asked of God when he said: “Bring my soul out of prison” (Ps. 142:7). This, too, was the favor which the holy old man Simeon asked of the infant Jesus when he held him in his arms: to be delivered by death from the prison of the present life: “Now thou dost dismiss thy servant” (Luke 2:29). “As if held back by force,” says St. Ambrose, “he asked to be dismissed.” It was as though St. Simeon were kept on this earth against his will, and sought to be set free by death.
13. St. Cyprian says that the sinner who must pass from his temporal death to the second death—that is, to eternal death—has good reason to fear death. Mori timeat, qui ad secundam mortem de hac morte transibit—“Let him fear to die who will pass from this death to the second death.” But he who is in the grace of God, and hopes to pass from death to eternal life—which is the true life—does not fear death.
It is related that a rich man gave a large sum to St. John the Almoner, to be spent in alms, that he might obtain from God a long life for the only son he had. But the son died a short time afterward. The father complained of his son’s death; but, to console him, the Lord sent an angel to say to him: “You sought a long life for your son, and the Lord has heard you; for your son is in heaven, where he enjoys a life that is eternal.”
This is the grace which the Redeemer obtained for us, according to the promise made through the prophet Hosea: “O death, I will be thy death” (Hos. 13:14). By his redemption Jesus Christ gave death to death, and made death become, for us, life. So St. Pionius the martyr answered, when he was asked how he could go to death so joyfully: “You are mistaken; I am not going to death, but to life.” Erratis non ad mortem, sed ad vitam contendo—“You err; I strive not toward death, but toward life” (Eusebius, Bk. 4, ch. 14). In the same way St. Symphorosa encouraged her son, St. Symphorian, to martyrdom: “My son,” she said, “your life is not taken from you; it is only changed for a better one.”
14. St. Augustine says that he who loves God desires to see him soon, and therefore suffers in living and rejoices in dying. Patienter vivit, delectabiliter moritur—“He lives patiently, he dies joyfully” (Tract. 9 in Ep. Joan.). St. Teresa used to say that life, for her, was a death; and so she composed her famous song, “I die because I do not die.”
To that great servant of God Doña Sancia Carriglio—a penitent of Father Juan de Avila—it was revealed one day that she had but a year left to live. And what did she answer? “Alas,” she said, “must I stay another year far from God? O year of tears, that will seem to me longer than a century!” Such is the language of souls who love God from their heart. It is a mark of little love not to desire to go and see him soon.
15. But someone will say: I desire to go and see God, but I fear death; I fear the assaults I shall then have to endure from hell. I find that even the saints have trembled at the hour of death; how much more ought I to tremble!
I answer: it is true that hell does not fail to assail even the saints at death; but it is also true that God does not fail to assist his servants at that moment; and where the danger grows, he multiplies his helps. Ubi plus periculi, says St. Ambrose, ibi plus auxilii—“Where there is more danger, there is more help” (Commentary on Joshua, ch. 5). The servant of Elisha was struck with terror when he saw the city surrounded by enemies; but the saint gave him courage by showing him the many angels sent by God to defend it. Hence he said to him afterward: “Fear not, for there are more with us than with them” (2 Kings 6:16).
Hell will indeed make its efforts against the dying Christian; but his guardian angel will come to comfort him. His holy patrons will come, and St. Michael, appointed by God to defend his faithful servants in that last struggle with the devils. The Mother of God will come to assist her devout servant. Jesus Christ will come to guard from the assaults of hell the soul, his own little sheep, for whom he died on the cross; he will give her confidence and strength to resist, so that, full of courage, she will say: “The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?” (Ps. 26:1).
Very true is what Origen says, that God cares more for our salvation than the devil for our perdition, for the love God bears us is far greater than the hatred the devil bears our souls. Major illa cura est, ut nos ad veram pertrahat salutem, quam diabolo, ut nos ad aeternam damnationem impellat—“Greater is His care to draw us to true salvation than the devil’s to drive us to eternal damnation” (Hom. 20).
16. God is faithful; he will never permit us to be tempted beyond our strength—Fidelis Deus non patietur vos tentari supra id quod potestis (1 Cor. 10:13). It is true that some saints have suffered great fears at the hour of death; but these have been few, and the Lord has permitted it in order to purify them at death from some defect of theirs, as Belluacensis writes. Justi quandoque dure moriendo purgantur in hoc mundo—“The just are sometimes purified in this world by dying hard.”
But we know that, generally speaking, the servants of God have died with a smile on their lips. Father Joseph Scamacca, a man of holy life, being asked whether he was dying with confidence in God, answered: Have I, then, served Mahomet, that I should now doubt the goodness of my God, or his wish to save me? Ah, the Lord well knows how to console his servants in their death. Even amid the pains of death, he makes them feel a certain great sweetness, as foretastes of that Paradise he means soon to give them.
And just as those who die in sin begin, even from that deathbed, to feel certain foretastes of hell—certain extraordinary terrors, remorses, and flashes of despair—so, on the other hand, the saints, by the fervent acts of love toward God which they then make, and by the confidence and the desire they feel of soon seeing him, already taste, before dying, that peace which they shall afterward enjoy fully in heaven.
17. Father Suarez died with such peace that, as he was dying, he came to say: “I could never have thought that it was so sweet to die.” Cardinal Baronius, warned by his physician not to fix his thoughts so constantly on death, answered: And why? Lest the fear of death should perhaps shorten my life? But I do not fear death; I love it and desire it.
Of the Cardinal Bishop of Rochester, Saunders relates that, going to die for the faith, condemned by Henry VIII, he put on the best clothes he had, saying that he was going to a wedding. And when he came within sight of the place of execution, he threw away his staff and said: Walk fast, my feet; for we are not far from Paradise. Ite pedes, parum a paradiso distamus—“Go, feet, we are not far from Paradise.” And before dying he wished to recite the Te Deum, in thanksgiving to God for letting him die for the holy faith; and so, full of joy, he laid his head beneath the axe.
St. Francis of Assisi sang as he was dying. Brother Elias said to him: Father, at the hour of death one should weep rather than sing. But I, replied the saint, cannot keep from singing, seeing that I am soon going to enjoy God. A nun of the order of St. Teresa, at the point of death, said to the three nuns who were weeping: Oh God, why do you weep? I am going to find my Jesus Christ; if you love me, do not weep, but rejoice with me. (Discourses and Words, 1.6).
18. Father Granada relates that a certain huntsman found in a forest a solitary who lay stretched on the ground, dying and singing. How, said the huntsman, can you sing in such a state? The hermit answered: Brother, between me and God there is nothing but the wall of this body of mine; and now I see that, as my flesh falls to pieces, the prison is being broken down, and soon I shall go to see God; and that is why I rejoice and sing.
Through the same desire of going to see God, St. Ignatius the martyr said that if the wild beasts did not come to tear him apart, he would provoke them to devour him. Ego vim faciam, ut devorer—“I will force them to devour me.” St. Catherine of Genoa wondered that some should count death a misfortune, and said: “O beloved death, how little they understand you! And why do you not come to me, who call on you day and night?” (Vita, ch. 7).
19. And oh, how happy a death the servants of the Mother of God die above all others! Father Binetti relates that, having gone to assist a dying man who had been devoted to the Blessed Virgin, the man said to him: “Father, you cannot conceive the consolation that the memory of having served our Lady brings at death. Ah, my father, if you knew what happiness I feel for having served this Mother of mine! I cannot express it.”
What joy, too, will the coming of Jesus Christ in the most holy viaticum bring to those who love him! Oh, that one could then say to him what St. Philip Neri said, at the point of death, when he saw the venerable Sacrament arrive: “Behold my love, behold my love; give me my love!” But to be able to say this, we must have loved Jesus Christ much in life.
Points for Reflection
1. “Happy, then, are they who die in the Lord; for they pass out of pains and toils, and go to their rest” (§3)
2. “He who offers God his death makes the most perfect act of love that he can possibly make; for by gladly embracing death to please God, at the time and in the manner God ordains, he becomes like the holy martyrs” (§7)
3. “If you seek to avoid sin, and keep in your heart some testimony of love toward God, be assured that God is with you; and if the Lord is with you, what do you fear?” (§7)