1. Essays & Reflections: When the COVID-19 crisis comes to an end, as it most certainly will, Carl Trueman notes that the key question for Christians to consider will be quite simple: "What should we learn from this?"
He goes on to suggest what he considers to be the obvious answer: "The levels of general panic indicate that few of us have been properly prepared for the reality of our own mortality." Trueman concludes that,
grim as it sounds, it is the task of the Church to fight not so much against physical plagues, which come and go, but rather against that which Leszek Kolakowski dubbed the age of analgesics.
The Church is certainly to help people live, but to live in the shadow of mortality. She must set this earthly realm in the greater context of eternity. She is to prepare through her preaching, her liturgy, her psalmody, and her sacraments to realize that death is, yes, a terribly, terrifying reality we must all some day face, but that the suffering of this world – or indeed, this passing superficial prosperity many of us enjoy – are but light and momentary ephemera compared to the eternal weight of glory that is to come.
2. Essays & Reflections: We would be more prepared for the reality of our mortality if we heeded the advice of the early Church Fathers
who encourage us to daily remember death (
memento mori
in Latin) That’s why skulls and caskets are often found in monastic cells. According to St John of the Ladder, "the remembrance of death, like all other blessings, is a gift from God." Not grim, rather a gift and a blessing! That’s from the sixth step in his
Ladder of Divine Ascent, titled "On remembrance of death."
You can read the whole thing here.
3. Essays & Reflections: It was by death, after all, that Christ trampled down death, bestowing life upon those in the tombs.
That’s precisely the message Fr. Alexander Schmemann offers in his short sermon on death:
For Christians, Easter is the feast of victory over death, "Trampling down death by death." In past ages of Christianity’s outward triumph, when Easter was the self-evident focus of the year, when its joy and gladness were shared by people as their own foremost joy, this celebration and its meaning needed no explanation. But today, for someone who knows little or nothing of what occurs on Easter night, who has not experienced that peculiar and joyful thrill when out of the darkness comes the first proclamation of "Christ is risen," Easter has of course ceased being what it was for centuries: the proof, witness, and symbol of genuine victory over the darkness, sadness and hopelessness of death.
4. A few books to recommend on death include:
- Death and Immortality
by Josef Pieper
- Life After Death
by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos
- O Death, Where Is Thy Sting
by Alexander Schmemann
- The Mystery of Death
by Nikolaos Vassiliadis
5. Poetry: Stephen Mitchell’s poem "Jerome," from his collection Parables and Portraits,
meditates on a famous painting by Albrecth Dürer called "St. Jerome in His Study." It’s one of my favorites:
In Dürer’s engraving
you sit hunched over your desk,
writing, with an extraneous
halo around your head.
You have everything you need: a mind
at ease with itself, and the generous
sunlight on pen, page, ink,
the few chairs, the vellum-bound books,
the skull on the windowsill that keeps you
honest (memento mori).
What you are concerned with
in your subtle craft is not simply
the life of language–to take
those boulder-like nouns of the Hebrew
text, those torrential verbs,
into your ear and remake them
in the hic-haec-hoc of your time–
but an innermost truth. For years
you listened when the Spirit was
the faintest breeze, not even the
breath of a sound. And wondered
how the word of God could be clasped
between the covers of a book.
Now, by the latticed window,
absorbed in your work,
the word becomes flesh, becomes sunlight
and leaf-mold, the smell of fresh bread
from the bakery down the lane,
the rumble of an ox-cart, the unconscious
ritual of a young woman
combing her hair, the bray
of a mule, an infant crying:
the whole vibrant life
of Bethlehem, outside your door.
None of it is an intrusion.
You are sitting in the magic circle
of yourself. In a corner, the small
watchdog is curled up, dreaming,
and beside it, on the threshold, the lion
dozes, with half-closed eyes.
6. Bible:
Is. 42:5-16, Gen. 18:20-33, Prov. 16:17-17:17.
Online here.
7. Liturgy:
See today’s Word from the Fathers
below.
8. Today’s Word from the Fathers
comes from the pen of St. John of Damascus, the patron saint of Eighth Day Institute.
These are just a few of his sublime reflections on death and resurrection, hymns that have been sung at Orthodox Christian funeral services for over 1,200 years:
Where is the pleasure in life which is unmixed with sorrow? Where the glory which on earth has stood firm and unchanged? All things are weaker than shadow, all more illusive than dreams; comes one fell stroke, and Death in turn, prevails over all these vanities. Wherefore in the Light, O Christ, of Your countenance, the sweetness of Your beauty, to him/her whom You have chosen grant repose, for You are the Friend of Mankind.
Like a blossom that wastes away, and like a dream that passes and is gone, so is every mortal into dust resolved; but again, when the trumpet sounds its call, as though at a quaking of the earth, all the dead shall arise and go forth to meet You, O Christ our God: on that day, O Lord, for him/her whom You have withdrawn from among us appoint a place in the tents of Your Saints; yea, for the spirit of Your servant, O Christ.
Where is now our affection for earthly things? Where is now the alluring pomp of transient questing? Where is now our gold, and our silver? Where is now the surging crowd of domestics, and their busy cries? All is dust, all is ashes, all is shadow. Wherefore draw near that we may cry to our immortal King, "Lord, Your everlasting blessings vouchsafe unto him/her that now has gone away, bringing him/her to repose in that blessedness which never grows old."
When in Your own image and likeness You in the beginning did create and fashion man, You gave him a home in Paradise, and made him the chief of Your creation. But by the devil's envy, alas, beguiled to eat the fruit forbidden, transgressor then of Your commandments he became; wherefore back to earth, from which he first was taken, You did sentence him to return again, O Lord, and to pray You to give him rest.
Weep, and with tears lament when with understanding I think on death, and see how in the graves there sleeps the beauty which once for us was fashioned in the image of God, but now is shapeless, ignoble, and bare of all the graces. O how strange a thing; what is this mystery which concerns us humans? Why were we given up to decay? And why to death united in wedlock? Truly, as it is written, these things come to pass by ordinance of God, Who to him/her, now gone gives rest.
The death which You have endured, O Lord, is become the harbinger of deathlessness; if You had not been laid in Your tomb, then would not the gates of Paradise have been opened; wherefore to him/her, now gone from us give rest, for You are the Friend of Mankind.
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