Momento Mori. The words stuck out like a flashing neon sign as I perused by bookshelf. Death. This year I have known its silence, beauty, loneliness, and agonizing separation. In this Advent season, those words pierced my heart as I remembered that this year, for the first time in my 44 years on this earth, I will not hear my father’s voice and the words “Merry Christmas, Kid!” The cold darkness of the Christ child laying in a manger in a cave in the heart of the world is filled with deeper meaning this year.
In many ways, Advent is a pilgrimage into death. It is a time when we are reminded that we are trapped in the darkness of sin and death. Without a Savior, we are trapped in death’s snare. Each step we make toward Christ lying in a cold, dark cave is a reminder that we must die. It foreshadows the tomb that awaits all of us from the moment of our birth. To reach out towards our Baby-King, we must be willing to die a little more each day. In fact, our lives are one, long death in order to come into the radiant presence of God.
We die how we live. Priests have told me how rare deathbed conversions are because this life is a dress rehearsal for death. When confronted with our own impending demise, most people stay locked in the patterns of their lives. Witnessing this firsthand in hospital ministry and in others, I believe this to be true, not because God is not merciful, but because we miss the call to die to self a little more every day. Then, we are not ready when death arrives. We refuse to surrender to God what is rightly His. We decide we do not want to be saved.
My father, when confronted with death, was more ready than most. He had his moments of fear—understandably so—but he surrendered when the time came. As he lay dying in a hospice bed beside me, I opened his Bible. He had written in the margins of the Magnificat one word: Death. In God’s providential plan, my father died on Saturday, which is Mary’s day. Deep within my father’s soul, was a profound connection to Our Heavenly Mother and the call to die to self that is imbedded in the words of the Magnificat.
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
Through the profound mystery of what Christ has done in Our Mother Mary, we come to see what the Lord does in our own lives. He looks upon each one of us who are His lowly servants. Unlike His Mother who was sinless, He still looks upon us with compassion and love. He desires to save us and do great things in our lives.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
To seek Christ, we must turn from the bright lights, hustle and bustle, and worldly esteem and power of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, which was supposed to be lowly and humble, turned from the Savior of the World. We must forsake the worldly goods we are so often addicted to—the Lord knows I am—and walk the lonely road into the dark, chilly night towards the Holy Family. We must die to our sins and attachments. We must desire God alone. It is a lonely road that requires greater and greater deaths in preparation for our ultimate death at the end of our lives. Only then will we be ready to enter into eternal life.
When we come to the Christ child in the cave, we are confronted with poverty and death. The Son of God was Incarnate in order to die. He came to die so that we might have abundant life through and in Him. Through His death on the Cross, He brought about our redemption, but He also teaches us how to die well.
In the end, at 3:00 pm on that Saturday afternoon in March of this year, I watched my dad surrender to the reality of death. He did not wake up again. He surrendered as his body shut down. He died shortly before 11:00 pm. After decades of chronic illness, my dad knew how to die.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
For he remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.
My father died knowing he had been rescued by Christ. He was able to make the journey along the dark, lonely road to the Christ child and further on to Golgotha. It is because we know death does not have the last say that we can learn to relinquish the things of this world that are mere dust in order to be made ready and open to the saving power of Christ. It is only through interior poverty that we can be filled by Him in order to make the final journey towards death.
I miss my father deeply. The tears still come in overwhelming torrents some days. There are days the tomb seems much too silent and still. Advent and the coming of Christmas are a reminder that it is in the seemingly lonely stillness and silence of death that we encounter the Baby-King who comes to rescue us. He is the One who conquers the despair of death and brings us profound joy and peace despite the absence of our loved ones this Christmas and the reality that death comes for us all.
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash
