Befriend death to improve life

IT may sound morbid, but I feel it has to be told. With the recent death of my father, I have been thinking a lot more about death.

Of course, as a priest, I think and talk about it quite often, as I go to many wakes, celebrate Masses there and give homilies. But this time, the reality of death has assumed a more intense character.

I know that death has to be viewed with the eyes of faith. But I must confess that at my father's wake I could not avoid thinking how it feels to be inside that box. For a while my sentimental curiosity vanquished me completely.

I mean, yesterday you were sleeping quite normally in bed, and now you are there in a box! I mean, yesterday you were still with us, enjoying things with us, and now you are gone, for good, completely unmindful of what we are doing!

I remember what a saint once said that considering death at least once a day is a good exercise. I remember how shocked I was to hear about that idea for the first time. Only later did I realize its wisdom.

Saint Josemaria Escriva wrote this in his book, The Forge:

"At least once a day, cast your mind ahead to the moment of death so that you can consider the events of each day in this light.

"I can assure you that you will have a good experience of the peace this consideration brings." (1038)

In another book he described death as a friend, as a sister whom we should welcome and not be afraid of. These ideas at first mocked me and challenged me. I felt the need to defend myself.

It took me time and effort before I became a believer and, hopefully, also a practitioner of these words. And now I strongly recommend that such exercise be done by all of us. I believe such exercise would be a tremendous help to all.

Not that we should all have a morbid attitude towards life in general. I'd be the first one to rebel against that idea! We all like to be happy, to have a go-go lifestyle. Morbid people are sick people!

Not that we should always carry with us some wet blanket, to check the many and often healthy impulses of our humanity. I think we are all for freedom.

We all hate being unduly bound or tied down or restrained. We want to be free and quite spontaneous.

But we should avoid, at all costs, being trapped by such childish and irresponsible prejudice of considering death regularly as taboo. Sad to say, that bias has the knack of fooling many people, even the more educated ones.

The fact is that ignoring death does not help us at all. In all likelihood, such indifference can even harm us. It prevents us from knowing the whole truth about ourselves.

Ergo, it can undermine our true freedom, as such ignorance can lead us to live under some illusions and outright errors about our life. Again sad to say, evidence of this sorry phenomenon is aplenty.

Just look at many of our youths today, many of our politicians and many, many others. They often give you the impression as if there is no death, or worse, that there is no life after death. Or that there's no judgment, nor hell.

The daily consideration of death produces many and crucial advantages. For one, it completes our vision of things. It makes us sharper in distinguishing between what is essential and non-essential in life, and helps build a sense of purpose in our life.

It deepens and expands our understanding of things. It helps us plan things more properly as well as assess things with greater objectivity and sensitivity. It helps us understand better the value of the problems and difficulties in life.

With it, we can learn to submit our spontaneity and sense of freedom to a principle higher and more reliable than our usual play of emotions and hormones. With it, we can learn how to relate time with eternity, how to focus our thoughts and actions.

It can give us a deeper sense of serenity and security, as we get to know better where we came from and where we are headed. It can convince us of how necessary it is to make daily examination of conscience, just to find out how we are standing at any given day.

It can sharpen our sense of morality. As I said, many, many crucial advantages can be derived from making a daily consideration of death. Such exercise can truly change the quality of our life -- for the better.