We are body-soul creatures made to live sacramental lives. All around us and in us and through us, the visible reveals the invisible. All of creation reveals the Creator. This time of year, as the natural world succumbs to its annual seasonal death, creation echoes the ultimate eschatology of our existence: death and resurrection.
Yet even as death is the one true inevitability of life, death somehow feels unnatural, disordered, a mistake. Our bodies resist the separation of death because they still hold echoes of the truth! We are made for life and love that never ends; death is not our design, but a consequence of our fallen world.
In one of my first newsletter essays, I wrote about how the Savior doesn’t ultimately save us from dying, but from death. From this summit of salvation, we can confront death with a certain joy as our birth into eternity. And pondering death—memento mori style—helps us prioritize our time in life.
Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear; for He that created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be Thou, O God, for having created me.
+St. Clare (on her own deathbed)
If we were required to die twice, we could jettison one death. But man dies once only, and upon this death depends his eternity. Where the tree falls, there it shall lie. If, at the hour of death, someone is living in bad habit, the poor soul will fall on the side of hell. If, on the other hand, he is in the state of grace, it will take the road for heaven. Oh, happy road!
+St Jean Vianney
Let us grieve, therefore, over the necessity of losing our loved ones in death but with the hope of being reunited with them. If we are afflicted, we still find consolation. Our weakness weights us down, but faith bears us up. We sorrow over the human condition, but find our healing in the divine promise.
+St Augustine
Live so as not to fear death. For those who live well in the world, death is not frightening but sweet and precious.
+St Rose of Viterbo
It is not Death that will come to fetch me, it is the good God. Death is no phantom, no horrible specter, as presented in pictures. In the catechism it is stated that death is the separation of soul and body, that is all! Well, I am not afraid of a separation which will unite me to the good God forever.
+St Thérèse of Lisieux
Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.
+St Thomas More
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.
+St Teresa of Ávila
Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death
from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Blessed are those whom Sister Death
will find in your most holy will,
for the second death can do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord, thank him
and serve him humbly but grandly!
+St Francis of Assisi
I pray you, go to the nearest church, and bring me the cross, and hold it up level with my eyes until I am dead. I would have the cross on which God hung ever before my eyes while life lasts in me.
+St Jeanne d'Arc (preparing for her execution by fire)
Yes, I’m like a tired and harassed traveler, who reaches the end of his journey and falls over. Yes, but I’ll be falling into God’s arms!
+St Thérèse of Lisieux
Lazarus rose because he heard the voice of God and immediately wanted to get out of the situation he was in. If he hadn’t wanted to move, he would just have died again. A sincere resolution: to have faith in God always; to hope in God always; to love God always… he never abandons us, even if we are rotting away as Lazarus was.
St Josemaría Escrivá
Each and every one of us, at the end of the journey of life, will come face to face with either one or the other of two faces… And one of them, either the merciful face of Christ or the miserable face of Satan, will say, “Mine, mine.” May we be Christ’s!
+Ven Fulton Sheen
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