Peter C. Phan

My first reflection about death occurred, oddly enough, in a class on logic. As an illustration of a valid syllogism, the professor often used the classic example: "All men (sic) are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." Socrates' mortality, he said, is correctly inferred from the two premisses, the major and the minor, linked together by their middle term. The fact that Socrates is long since dead may have helped clinch his argument.
During the greater part of our lives death remains an abstract proposition to which we give, to use Cardinal Newman's expression, a "notional," and not a "real" assent. It is always the mortality of Socrates, or someone else's, that is the matter under consideration, not mine. As metaphysics, according to Aristotle, should not be taught to people under the age of thirty (given today's much greater longevity, Aristotle would no doubt extend the age limit considerably) because they would not be mature enough to comprehend it, so death is not an appropriate subject for the young's mental, psychological, and spiritual capacities.

Of course, even as children we may have occasions to meet death, as we gaze, uncomprehendingly, upon the pale and rigid face of the deceased in the coffin, while someone in the family, trying to explain to us what has happened, whispers into our ears all sorts of euphemisms for death so as not to disturb our innocence. In adulthood, encounters with death grow more numerous and more personal as we in our capacity as priests, hospital chaplains, counselors, teachers, doctors, nurses, or as members of the family of the dying person, prepare others to die. Sometimes death hits closer to home, when our husband or wife, lover or friend, parent or child, or even a cultural icon, dies, especially if tragically and suddenly, and then our grief is overwhelming, because the lack of preparatory time offers no buffer against the trauma and pain of deprivation. The sudden and tragic death of Princess Diana, cut down in the full bloom of her life, and the immense outpouring of grief worldwide are incontrovertible evidence of this. At other times death appears to us in a melancholic mood as we stroll through a cemetery in an autumn afternoon, in the waning light, dead leaves fluttering down from branches, and ruminate on the passing of time. But even then, the thought of my death is but a momentary flash across my mind, and I engage in a massive denial of my own death, for, as St. Augustine has observed with his usual candor and deep insight, grief is a strange mixture of sorrow and joy sorrow because of the profound loss but also joy because I am glad that he or she died and not me! Without this "joy" the survivor would not be able to grieve "normally" and then go on with his or her life by developing new interests, new activities, new relationships.

Not: "Everybody Will Die" But: "I Will Die"

This inability to face my own death, despite its inevitability, is exacerbated by our contemporary Western culture. Thanatologists routinely point out that whereas in less technologically developed countries, experiences of death and dying form a common part of daily life, in the West death and dying have been banished from the home to the hospital. Even the process of growing old and feeble, the harbinger of death, has been kept out of sight, in secluded retirement communities or nursing homes. As a result, immediate and personal exposure to death and dying is infrequent; opportunities to witness the ravages of sickness and impending demise, to accompany the dying person with prayers in the last moments of his or her life, to hold that person in one's arms, to see with one's own eyes and feel with one's own hands the body in agony, to whisper the final goodbye and to let that person go peacefully, have become rare. Rhythms of modern life deprive us of these moments and gestures which would bring home to us, powerfully and viscerally, our own mortality and help us imagine our own way of dying.
Furthermore, medical and technological advances have created the hope that fatal diseases can be conquered through new drugs, defective organs replaced through transplantation, youthful vigor restored through Viagra, life prolonged through the knowledge of the aging process, and even death itself vanquished through cryonics. Consequently, instead of speaking about the death of persons there is talk about the death of diseases and of death itself. Paradoxically, even euthanasia, by which one voluntarily wills and hastens one's own death, is an attempt to deny or conquer the dying process by avoiding its attendant pains and suffering.

Yet, much as we try, the specter of death cannot be eschewed for long. The gradual atrophy of muscles, the creaking of bones and joints, the slowing down of steps, the shortening of breath, the weakening of the senses, the wrinkling of the skin, the impairment of memory are daily and persistent reminders of our mortality. These physiological and psychological changes bring to consciousness, gradually but unmistakably, the inevitable fact that I shall die. There is truth in the common saying that the young cannot but think that they are immortal, whereas it is only with age (and hopefully, wisdom) that death and dying become truly real, just as metaphysics is seen to be dealing with real and not abstract issues only by those who have reached a certain age.

Spiritual writers have often urged that awareness of one's own mortality be studiously cultivated, not out of morbidity, but as a way to achieve human maturity and, paradoxically, inner joy and peace. The Rule of Saint Benedict commands: "Keep death daily before your eyes" (4:47). On Ash Wednesday Christians are told: "Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." The late Jesuit Anthony de Mello, a well-known spiritual director, suggests a series of exercises by which you can come to a full awareness of your mortality. In one of these you imagine that you have been told by the doctor that you have a fatal disease and have just a few months left to live. Then answer as honestly and truthfully as possible the following questions: How would I receive this news? How do I want to spend the time left? What activities do I want to continue to do? What decisions in my past life do I regret or rejoice over? If I were given the chance to live life over again, would I accept it? Would I live the way I have lived? If I had to give just one piece of advice, what would I say? How do I want to spend my last few hours, by myself or with others? If with others, whom do I want to be surrounded by? De Mello argues that these imaginative exercises will give us an intense appreciation for and love of life, diminish our fear of death, offer us a proper perspective on life, and fill us with gratitude and joyfulness for the many gifts of God which we tend to take for granted.1
De Mello also suggests that we say goodbye to and thank, imaginatively, the various limbs and organs of our bodies as a way to develop a healthy love and acceptance of ourselves without which it would be difficult to give our hearts completely to God and others. Another recommended exercise is to picture oneself at one's own funeral: myself watching my own body lying in the coffin, listening to the priest's homily or a friend's eulogy, looking at the faces of those who come to the funeral: How do I feel about my corpse? Do I accept what is being said about me? What do I think of the friends who attend my funeral?
The last exercise, which de Mello cautions may be repugnant to some, is to imagine as vividly as possible my corpse and watch it go through the various stages of decomposition, from rigidity to discoloring, cracking of the skin, partial decomposition, full decay of the flesh, showing of the skeleton, and finally, the bones being reduced to a handful of dust. The purpose of the last meditation, similar to the Buddhist "reality meditations," is, de Mello assures us, to give us the gift of peace and joy and help us live life in greater depth.2

The Art of Dying Well

These imaginative exercises, especially the last, may smack of the macabre and call to mind the medieval tradition of representing the dead body as a worm-eaten corpse to inculcate a vivid sense of one's mortality ("memento mori") and the fragility of life (the transitus mundi). In our times they may offer an appropriate shock therapy for the "evasive concealment"in the face of death which Heidegger bemoans as pervasive in contemporary Western culture, in which the dying of others is experienced as a "social inconvenience" and even as "downright tactlessness".3

Furthermore, to cure this widespread forgetfulness of death, even among Christians, it may be helpful to reintroduce to contemporary spirituality, though in a modified form, a longstanding practice known as the ars bene moriendi or the "art of dying well." As is well known, after the cataclysmic ravages of the Black Death (1347-50), there arose in the late Middle Ages a new genre of spiritual writings collectively known as the ars moriendi tradition. To provide pastoral assistance to the seriously ill and to prepare them to die a holy death, authors such as Jean Gerson, Thomas Peutner, Johann Geiler, and Johannes von Paltz (and later, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Robert Bellarmine, and Alphonse de Liguori) composed manuals containing admonitions and questions to be addressed to the dying person, prayers to be repeated by him or her, and directives on practices to perform and to avoid in his or her presence.4

Obviously, a good number of the admonitions, questions, prayers, and practices of this ars moriendi tradition are no longer appropriate to our modern sensibilities, especially its narrow focus on repentance for and confession of mortal sins as well as the fear of hell. Contemporary psychological theories on death and dying, reports of near-death experiences, insights of non- Christian religions on the art of dying, and a renewed Christian pastoral theology of the death of Jesus, sacraments (especially anointing), sacramentals, and eternal life will have to contribute to a better preparation for dying. Furthermore, in view of the growing euthanasia movement and the increasing phenomenon of prolonged terminal illnesses, e.g., cancer and AIDS, ministry to the dying must be extended beyond the preparation for the final moments of agony, usually in the cold environment of the hospital room, to include the hospice movement as a specialized ministry dedicated to helping the patient confront death with dignity, if not as a sister, as St. Francis of Assisi called it, or as a friend, as the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago put it, as least not as an enemy to be feared. More importantly, preparation for death and dying must be extended throughout one's life, since, physiologically speaking, we begin to die just as we are born.

Dying Every Single Day

One of the difficulties preventing people from realizing that they are dying everyday is the traditional definition of death itself. Philosophically, death has often been described as separation of the soul from the body. Hence, as long as my soul is still united with my body, it is difficult if not impossible for me to realize that I am dying, that my death is an existential reality I am facing and undergoing every day of my life. This is not to say that the classical definition of death does not retain its usefulness. If the human person is seen simply as a "union" resulting from the coming together of two independently existing entities called body and soul, then the traditional definition of death as the separation of these two elements is misleading and anti- Christian. On the other hand, if the human person is understood as a "unity" of two mutually dependent and constitutive elements, such that neither can exist fully and truly without the other (so that the "body" may be said to be the "real symbol" by which the "soul" comes into being and becomes real, just as the "body" is alive thanks to the "soul"), then the traditional definition of death rightly highlights the truth that death affects the entire person as an intrinsically one reality, including the "soul," and that the soul is negatively affected by death, in so far as it is forced to "survive" in a state that is unnatural and incomplete and thus yearns for a "reunion" with its body in the "resurrection." Obviously, the language of "separation," "survival," "reunion," and "resurrection" is metaphorical. Taken from the daily experiences of friends coming together and departing and coming together again, it is pressed to describe what happens to the person in death; but as analogical language, it is fundamentally inadequate, and if understood literally, untrue.

Is there another way of understanding death that while preserving the truth of the traditional definition of death as separation of the soul from the body yet brings out more clearly the difference between the death of a human person and that of an animal or a plant? As Karl Rahner used to say, whereas a plant or an animal simply perishes, a human person dies. A beast dies less of a death than a human being. Like a plant or an animal, a human person dies in so far as death is a physical act that happens to her or him, from the outside as it were. Death in this sense is an act of a man or woman as, in Rahner's language, nature, something a human being suffers.

On the other hand, humans are endowed with freedom by which they can choose this or that course of action. Some of these actions are morally indifferent, others good, still others bad. Moreover, in these myriad choices humans not only choose a particular good but at the same time, in and through these categorical choices, also shape and determine, gradually and indelibly, their character, identity, and eternal destiny of which they may not be conscious at all. As long as they live, this self-determination can in principle be deepened or reversed. In dying, however, this history of freedom is brought to an end and is fulfilled, finally, definitively, irrevocably, for God or against God. Dying is an act whereby a person freely gathers up or consummates his or her history of freedom in a final and definitive way. Death in this sense is different from the perishing of a plant or an animal, it is an act of a man or woman as person, something the human person performs in freedom.

Because death is an act of freedom, it is something that happens every day; truly we die throughout our life (the prolixitas mortis). We do so in our attitude toward our own death. On the one hand, we can run away from it, deny it existentially by trying to achieve immortality through progeny, fame, power, products of scholarship or art by which our memory may be perpetuated. On the other hand, we can accept, freely and willingly, our own mortality, with all that this implies in terms of limitation and finitude, both on the physical and spiritual levels, as a unique opportunity to realize ourselves definitively and irrevocably through freedom. Such an acceptance is no mere intellectual assent to the abstract proposition that one is mortal, as Socrates was mortal. Rather, it is embodied in a spirituality or way of living marked by gratitude for the gift of life, seriousness about the responsibility of shaping one's destiny through freedom, patient acceptance of one's limitations and weaknesses, and humble courage in the face of sickness, old age, and ultimately death.

Dying Like Jesus

For Christians, moreover, this "death mysticism" takes on a sacramental dimension. The task of dying is begun in baptism, in which the Christian dies, is buried with, and rises sacramentally to a new life in Christ. This death, which is a participation in Christ's death, is a death to sin, and since physical death, besides being a natural physical end, is also a punishment for sin, dying to sin is already a preparation for and overcoming of physical death. This journey from death to life is sustained throughout our lives by other sacraments, especially by the Eucharist which has been called the "medicine of immortality," which deepen the Christian's companionship with Christ in suffering and death.

Furthermore, since this journey is undertaken not in loneliness but in the midst of the Christian community, the Christian is surrounded by the care of the church, especially in sickness and old age, moments in which the threat of death is made more real and immediate. The church shows its solicitude and love for the sick and the aged by encouraging pastoral visits to them and providing them with frequent opportunities to receive the Eucharist and the sacraments of reconciliation and anointing. For those in danger of death the church provides the viaticum, and it performs the rite of the commendation of the dying for those in agony.

In all these ministries the church often holds out the passion and death of Jesus as the model of patience and obedience, urging the sick and dying to unite themselves with Christ and to "die like Jesus." The two cries of Jesus on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34) and "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46) are cited to comfort the dying in their conflicting experiences of remoteness from and nearness to God, doubt and faith, despair and hope, defiant rebellion and loving obedience in the face of death. The church also recommends that the dying "offer up" their sufferings to God as a way to merit eternal life. In substance, these admonitions are not very different from the prayers that the late-medieval ars moriendi enjoined on the dying, in spite of their quaint language:

-- To God the Father: "O God most good, into your hand I commend my spirit. Father of mercy, show mercy to this poor creature of yours. Help me now in my last need. Come to the aid of a needy and desolate soul, that it not be crushed by the hounds of hell."

To Jesus our Savior: "Dear sweetest Jesus, in honor of and by virtue of your most holy passion call me into the number of your elect. My savior and redeemer, I give myself wholly to you, do not reject me. In you is my only hope, but if you reject me I am utterly lost. Lord, I long for your paradise, not because of the worth of my merits, but in virtue of your blessed passion, through which you redeemed me, a poor soul, and purchased paradise for me by your precious blood. Grant this to me, for thereby neither your mercy nor power will be lessened, nor paradise made smaller."5

There is no doubt that these prayers for a holy death as well as the church's exhortations to the dying to die like Jesus, in obedience to God's will and offering up their sufferings to God, are rooted in deep piety and a popular theology of Jesus' death as an expiatory sacrifice or atonement for our sins (the Christus Victima christology). Nor is there any doubt that they may help the dying cope with their pains and fear of death. Nevertheless, the theology of Jesus' death they reflect is inadequate and misleading, because it isolates Jesus' death from his ministry. This theology of expiation tells us why Jesus died and explains the purposes or spiritual effects of his death but does not state the causes of his murder. After all, Jesus did not simply "die," he was murdered. Hence, because these prayers and the church's exhortations to the dying employ an inadequate theology of Jesus' death, their theology of death in general is also unsatisfactory.

What then murdered Jesus? What were the historical causes that brought about his assassination? If there is anything contemporary biblical scholars agree upon, it is that Jesus' life and ministry, his preaching, his teaching in parables, his performance of miracles, his sharing of meals with sinners and the outcasts, and finally his passion and death, all revolved around the reality called the kingdom of God. And by kingdom of God four things are meant: the kingdom of God has come; evil is not the final answer; the Spirit has returned; and the poor or marginalized have the Good News preached to them.6 It is the forces that opposed the kingdom of God that murdered Jesus; it is the anti-kingdom that was responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. To be more precise, it was those who were opposed to Jesus' message about the kingdom and his activities to bring the kingdom to the poor and the marginalized that sought to put an end to Jesus' life because the kingdom of God was contrary to their socio-political, economic, and religious interests. Jesus willingly and freely accepted his death because he was faithful to his Father's kingdom of freedom, justice, and love. His death on the cross was not "willed" by God the Father, as if the more atrocious were Jesus' pains, the greater would his redemptive power be; rather, his murder was planned and executed by the enemies of the kingdom. It was not his sufferings as such, immense as they were, that brought redemption to the world. Suffering, of whatever form and origin, is evil and must be removed; by itself, it has no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. It must not be "accepted" and "offered up" to God as if it were something valuable to God, especially if the sufferings of others are at stake, in a kind of perverted apologetics for God's justice. What made Jesus' passion and death redemptive was the kingdom of God which his death ushered in, and not his pains and sufferings.

What are the implications of all this for the challenge of "dying like Jesus"? To die like Jesus does not mean first of all to die in resignation ("obedience") to God's will, to "go gently into that good night," to "offer it up" to God, to "go to the Father's home," to die with the hope of "paradise purchased by the precious blood of Jesus," to die free from mortal sins, to die without fear of eternal punishment, not "crushed by the hounds of hell." It is primarily to die for the cause for which Jesus lived and was murdered: the kingdom or reign of God. To die like Jesus is to work and suffer for the coming of the reign of peace, justice, freedom, and love and to die as the result. To die like Jesus is to make the same "preferential option for the poor" that he made and for which he was killed. Only if our sufferings and deaths result, directly or indirectly, immediately or remotely, from our solidarity with those who suffer and die can they be "offered up" to God who suffers with and for us because God's children suffer and because God wants to remove their sufferings and deaths. Only in this way can we "unite ourselves" to the sufferings of Christ, who is not only the Christus Victima but also the Christus Liberator of the kingdom of God.

It is also in the light of the kingdom of God that the resurrection of Jesus and ours must be understood. Resurrection is not coming back to life, being "reunited" with our bodies. The core of Jesus' resurrection does not lie in his getting back his former body but in his new and transformed life with God and in God, in the peace and love of God's reign for which he lived and died. So too will our own resurrection be: we do not live and hope for the reunion with our bodies after death; rather, we live and rejoice and suffer and die for the reign of God, and in this way hope for a new, transformed life in God and with God, in the company of Jesus and all our sisters and brothers, in a new heaven and a new earth.