When a person reaches what is euphemistically called a “good age,” he has witnessed the passing of many friends. He does not know why he has survived, or why the companions for whom he grieves have not. Their passing jogs his memory, and he recalls their friendliness, their humor, their uniqueness, and their vivacity. Anything that is not endless, said St. Augustine, is too brief. I had so much more to say to my confreres. And now the time and opportunity has been rudely interrupted. It is as if they departed from me in mid-sentence.
During World War II, when death was close at hand and people needed hope, Vera Lynn provided them with its anthem. The year was 1939: “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.” The lyrics combined heroic optimism with painful poignancy. There would be no such meeting for so many. The sunny day would arrive without such valiant hopes being realized. There will be a meeting, but on a different plane.
Christ offers us hope. He is the Resurrection. Perhaps the most consoling words of the New Testament were said to the “Good Thief:” “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43). We shall meet again, not on some sunny day, but in heaven.
We pray for the dead because we believe they are, in some way, still alive. They are part of the Mystical Body. We need to be with them once again because friendship is forever in a place where conversations never end. Life is a prelude. It warms us up for the Great Second Act.
We can abide death. We cannot abide extinction. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has written: “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest. Was not spoken of the soul” (“A Psalm of Life”). The soul is immortal! In the words of Reverend Billy Graham, “The Bible says that as long as we are here on Earth, we are strangers in a foreign land. There are enemies to be conquered before we return home. This world is not our home; our citizenship is in heaven.”
We are beings meant for eternal life. “The party’s over” evokes a sense of sadness because it cannot go on forever. Then there is the cleanup occupation. Then, there will be work to be done on the morrow, and we must return to a world where everything expires in due time. We cannot hold on to time. It flees from us. Day becomes night, and night becomes day. “All good things must come to an end” is a phrase that we find unacceptable. It cannot be, I protest, that all my friends and all their good works come to an end. What, then, would be the purpose of life? It cannot be to whet the appetite and then not serve the meal! To perform the overture and omit the play! To start the engine but not drive the car!
God would not initiate a life, fill it with hope, and then extinguish it with death. God is not a sadist. He is, as the Gospel tells us, Love. I pray to God for my departed friends and look forward to meeting them in heaven so that I can say to them the things I was remiss in saying when they were alive. We need to continue our friendship because it had been so dreadfully incomplete here on earth. Misunderstanding must be rectified. Love must be expressed. Joy must be restored.
I find the sheer pessimism expressed by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov utterly alien to me. “I don’t believe in an afterlife,” he wrote, “so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” Asimov has penned more than 100 science fiction books, and yet his imagination seems to run dry trying to imagine a better world in heaven. On the other hand, he once said that, “In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.” He believed in morality and lamented the fact that technology “gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” And yet, to believe in morality and wisdom is to knock on the door of an omniscient God who would not betray us. Star Trek cannot set its course to heaven.
The final words of St. John Paul II were these: “Let me go to the house of the father.” John Paul taught that the afterlife is a state of communion with God and described heaven as a “living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity.” He taught that hell is a rejection of God and viewed purgatory as a purification of souls that are filled with joy and the anticipation that they will enter heaven. His view reiterates the three stages described in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
My mourning for my departed friends is accompanied by my hope that I will see them again and raise our friendship to a more exalted level. I cannot believe that I have lost them forever. And I trust that sentiment that stirs within me. This also means, on my part, to live my life in such a way that they will be able to welcome me.
Photo by Gabriele Proietti Mattia on Unsplash
