S
Well, I am all for some testimonies, and I guess I don’t have to be limited by how many testimonies I can have or on what I can discuss! So, here’s my testimony about Death!
That’s right, death…
We all have thought about death at one time or another. Some of us think about death so much, that people think we are obsessive and may have a problem. Some of us don’t think about death much at all, and maybe people thinks this makes us careless.
Death. None of us really knows what death is like. I suspect no one here is dead. That is the funny thing about death. We don’t know what it is like until we are dead, and once we’re dead, we can’t really do much to tell anyone who’s alive! Life is the opposite of death, and I’d say that we all have a pretty good idea of what life is, considering how we’re all alive. Still, death, for all of us, is at best a mystery we can’t fully understand, and at worse, something we fear.
Death is darkness. Sometimes is follows pain. Sometimes it comes unexpectedly. Sometimes too soon. Sometimes not soon enough. Some who die seem to deserve life, and others who live seem to deserve death, but regardless of what we think we deserve, we will all die.
In class, the Abbot asked my fellow students and I: “Do any of you want to go to Heaven?” Naturally, we all nodded or otherwise indicated that we did want to go to heaven. He then asked one boy: “Would you be upset if I killed you?” The boy indicated he did not want to die. Yet, if we want to go to heaven…well…the prerequisite suggests we have to be dead! But we don’t want to die. We want to continue to live. Deep inside us, we fear what we do not fully understand.
I admit, the prospect of death is startling to me. I don’t want to live on Earth forever. I want to go to heaven. I want to be with God. I have to die first, though. I know this, but in a way, I don’t want to accept it just yet. I want to fear it. Will it hurt? Will it be frightening? I turn these questions around in my head many times as before.
This past summer I spent 6 weeks as an intern. My interns and I lived for 6 weeks in the dorms of a school of theology run by Benedictine monks. There were about 100 of these monks that we would see daily. We would pray with them many times daily, and I had grown accustom to their habit of ringing bells at fixed times in the day to indicate either the time of the hour, or that prayer was about to begin. These bells could clearly be heard anywhere on campus.
One day I was going through my morning routine of shower/putting on clothes, and I heard the bells ring - only they were ringing at an odd time. They should not have been ringing at all, actually. But they were. I shrugged and went on my way to our morning meeting. We were then informed at that meeting that one of the monks had died of diabetic complications. I had heard a death toll. The bell I had heard was rang once for each year he had spent as a monk. We were then informed that we were invited to his funeral.
A funeral? For a guy I didn’t know? I had never even been to a funeral, and now these monks wanted me and my friends to come to one for their brother? I was unsure, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. There had to be a first time for everything.
It was July 4th, the sun was high in the sky, and there I was in a black skirt and a black blouse, walking in the hot southern Indiana humidity of the campus to the abbey’s church which I new was blessedly air conditioned. And there, upon entering the church, was one very dead looking monk in his coffin. When I say coffin, I mean coffin. This was not the casket that most of us have come to be familiar with. The luxurious rectangular padded boxes that go for thousands. No, this was an old-timey, form-fitting 8-sided wooden coffin that looked like something Dracula would feel at home in. The only time I had seen anything like that was in a cartoon. It was a simple box for a simple man. It was made for function and nothing else.
A Catholic funeral begins with a Catholic mass. The mass itself is like any other mass. It is the burial that is the most unique. Right there, in the middle of the church, two monks stood up and walked over to the coffin with a screwdriver and secured the lid forever. We will never see his face again until the resurrection. Then six monks carried his coffin out of the church, with the other 100 or so monks, followed by his friends and family, and finally my fellow interns and I. All the while, one monk stayed behind to ring the great bell again once for every year he had been a monk. I stopped counting after 30. The bell was still ringing just as we reached the monks’ cemetery. There, in the ground, was a 6-foot hole with a mound of red dirt beside it.
The coffin was placed next to the hole for a while, after long ropes had been strung through its handles. At the cemetery, their abbot, the leader of their community, read from the Bible some more, especially those passages that speak of death and hope. It was finally time for the burial. Burial. Closure. Something most people never witness even after the funeral. Most people never see the actual burial of a loved one. The six who had carried the monk’s coffin now took careful grip of the ropes. Slowly, very carefully, that lowered their brother into the ground. It took a lot of effort. The grave had been dug narrow. The coffin audibly scrapped the sides of the grave. The ropes creaked under the strain of the coffin. The monks were sweating and grunting under the labor of their efforts. Finally, they reached the bottom and the ropes were pulled up.
Then, after another prayer, the abbot took a shovel of dirt. One single shovel of earth, the dirt almost as red as blood, and it was tossed into the grave and onto the coffin. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard. I’ll never forget it. I could see everyone as their reflexes made them sort of jump a bit from the shock of the sound. It was at that moment when my own eyes teared up, and it was the same for everyone present. Yes, even the monks, who were generally quite well in keeping their demeanor pleasant but under control. In the stillness and silence, only the moving of tears down cheeks could be detected. Then about 10 of them gathered beside the grave to chant the final psalm. It is a strange thing to see monks chant and weep at the same time. Yet, somehow, there was no sadness. There was joy. There was hope. They were happy.
I figured it out. I had been invited to the funeral with my fellow interns because I we weren’t strangers to the monks. We were all brothers and sisters in Christ. In Christ there is no separation, not even in death. On the contrary, in Christ, death becomes life. Our death in this life is the beginning of life eternal. I thought about how these monks had loved their brother to the very end. They carried him in his death to his resting place. They put him in the ground. They wept for him. Their weeping was partly sorrow over loosing a brother, but mostly joy over realizing that their brother would see the face of God. I thought of how much love was present in those moments. Such great love! Such hope! There was nothing to fear.
And how can I be afraid of death after this? We die in Christ and we rise with Christ. Where there is love, there is God. Where there is hope, there is God. When we die in hope of the resurrection and with a love of God, what is there to fear when we go to God? There needn’t be any fear. Death has no power. It has no victory. Christ has conquered sin and death, and with faith in that reality, there is nothing to fear.
DEATH
That’s right, death…
We all have thought about death at one time or another. Some of us think about death so much, that people think we are obsessive and may have a problem. Some of us don’t think about death much at all, and maybe people thinks this makes us careless.
Death. None of us really knows what death is like. I suspect no one here is dead. That is the funny thing about death. We don’t know what it is like until we are dead, and once we’re dead, we can’t really do much to tell anyone who’s alive! Life is the opposite of death, and I’d say that we all have a pretty good idea of what life is, considering how we’re all alive. Still, death, for all of us, is at best a mystery we can’t fully understand, and at worse, something we fear.
Death is darkness. Sometimes is follows pain. Sometimes it comes unexpectedly. Sometimes too soon. Sometimes not soon enough. Some who die seem to deserve life, and others who live seem to deserve death, but regardless of what we think we deserve, we will all die.
In class, the Abbot asked my fellow students and I: “Do any of you want to go to Heaven?” Naturally, we all nodded or otherwise indicated that we did want to go to heaven. He then asked one boy: “Would you be upset if I killed you?” The boy indicated he did not want to die. Yet, if we want to go to heaven…well…the prerequisite suggests we have to be dead! But we don’t want to die. We want to continue to live. Deep inside us, we fear what we do not fully understand.
I admit, the prospect of death is startling to me. I don’t want to live on Earth forever. I want to go to heaven. I want to be with God. I have to die first, though. I know this, but in a way, I don’t want to accept it just yet. I want to fear it. Will it hurt? Will it be frightening? I turn these questions around in my head many times as before.
This past summer I spent 6 weeks as an intern. My interns and I lived for 6 weeks in the dorms of a school of theology run by Benedictine monks. There were about 100 of these monks that we would see daily. We would pray with them many times daily, and I had grown accustom to their habit of ringing bells at fixed times in the day to indicate either the time of the hour, or that prayer was about to begin. These bells could clearly be heard anywhere on campus.
One day I was going through my morning routine of shower/putting on clothes, and I heard the bells ring - only they were ringing at an odd time. They should not have been ringing at all, actually. But they were. I shrugged and went on my way to our morning meeting. We were then informed at that meeting that one of the monks had died of diabetic complications. I had heard a death toll. The bell I had heard was rang once for each year he had spent as a monk. We were then informed that we were invited to his funeral.
A funeral? For a guy I didn’t know? I had never even been to a funeral, and now these monks wanted me and my friends to come to one for their brother? I was unsure, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. There had to be a first time for everything.
It was July 4th, the sun was high in the sky, and there I was in a black skirt and a black blouse, walking in the hot southern Indiana humidity of the campus to the abbey’s church which I new was blessedly air conditioned. And there, upon entering the church, was one very dead looking monk in his coffin. When I say coffin, I mean coffin. This was not the casket that most of us have come to be familiar with. The luxurious rectangular padded boxes that go for thousands. No, this was an old-timey, form-fitting 8-sided wooden coffin that looked like something Dracula would feel at home in. The only time I had seen anything like that was in a cartoon. It was a simple box for a simple man. It was made for function and nothing else.
A Catholic funeral begins with a Catholic mass. The mass itself is like any other mass. It is the burial that is the most unique. Right there, in the middle of the church, two monks stood up and walked over to the coffin with a screwdriver and secured the lid forever. We will never see his face again until the resurrection. Then six monks carried his coffin out of the church, with the other 100 or so monks, followed by his friends and family, and finally my fellow interns and I. All the while, one monk stayed behind to ring the great bell again once for every year he had been a monk. I stopped counting after 30. The bell was still ringing just as we reached the monks’ cemetery. There, in the ground, was a 6-foot hole with a mound of red dirt beside it.
The coffin was placed next to the hole for a while, after long ropes had been strung through its handles. At the cemetery, their abbot, the leader of their community, read from the Bible some more, especially those passages that speak of death and hope. It was finally time for the burial. Burial. Closure. Something most people never witness even after the funeral. Most people never see the actual burial of a loved one. The six who had carried the monk’s coffin now took careful grip of the ropes. Slowly, very carefully, that lowered their brother into the ground. It took a lot of effort. The grave had been dug narrow. The coffin audibly scrapped the sides of the grave. The ropes creaked under the strain of the coffin. The monks were sweating and grunting under the labor of their efforts. Finally, they reached the bottom and the ropes were pulled up.
Then, after another prayer, the abbot took a shovel of dirt. One single shovel of earth, the dirt almost as red as blood, and it was tossed into the grave and onto the coffin. It was the loudest sound I had ever heard. I’ll never forget it. I could see everyone as their reflexes made them sort of jump a bit from the shock of the sound. It was at that moment when my own eyes teared up, and it was the same for everyone present. Yes, even the monks, who were generally quite well in keeping their demeanor pleasant but under control. In the stillness and silence, only the moving of tears down cheeks could be detected. Then about 10 of them gathered beside the grave to chant the final psalm. It is a strange thing to see monks chant and weep at the same time. Yet, somehow, there was no sadness. There was joy. There was hope. They were happy.
I figured it out. I had been invited to the funeral with my fellow interns because I we weren’t strangers to the monks. We were all brothers and sisters in Christ. In Christ there is no separation, not even in death. On the contrary, in Christ, death becomes life. Our death in this life is the beginning of life eternal. I thought about how these monks had loved their brother to the very end. They carried him in his death to his resting place. They put him in the ground. They wept for him. Their weeping was partly sorrow over loosing a brother, but mostly joy over realizing that their brother would see the face of God. I thought of how much love was present in those moments. Such great love! Such hope! There was nothing to fear.
And how can I be afraid of death after this? We die in Christ and we rise with Christ. Where there is love, there is God. Where there is hope, there is God. When we die in hope of the resurrection and with a love of God, what is there to fear when we go to God? There needn’t be any fear. Death has no power. It has no victory. Christ has conquered sin and death, and with faith in that reality, there is nothing to fear.