Day 13

A reading from the holy Gospel according to John (12:23-28)

Jesus said to his disciples:
"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
     unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
     it remains just a grain of wheat;
     but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
Whoever loves his life will lose it,
     and whoever hates his life in this world
     will preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me,
     and where I am, there also will my servant be.
The Father will honor whoever serves me.

"I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
'Father, save me from this hour'?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.
Father, glorify your name."
Then a voice came from heaven,
     "I have glorified it and will glorify it again."

From Death's Duel by John Donne

This whole world is but a universal churchyard, but our common grave, and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an earthquake.  That which we call life is but a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end.  Our birth dies in infancy and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all.  Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise as a phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung.  Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age worse than our youth.  Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy did not know; and our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did.  And besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities, accompany every condition and every period of this life, that death itself would be an ease to those who suffer them.  Yet God has the keys of death, and can let me out at that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the every day’s death, and every hour’s death, by that one death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of all.

But is that the end of all?  Is that dissolution of soul and body the last death that the body shall suffer? (for we do not speak now of spiritual death).  It is not.  Though it may be an issue from the manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrefaction and vermiculation and incineration and dispersion in and from the grave in which every dead man dies over again.  Even those bodies that were “the temples of the Holy Ghost” come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust.  Truly, we must consider this posthumous death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of death) has delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust; that that monarch, who spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private and retired man, that thought himself his own forever, and never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the revolutions of the graves) be mingled in his dust with the dust of every highway and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond: this is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider.

If we say, can this dust live? perchance it cannot; it may be the mere dust of the Earth, which never did live, nor never shall.  It may be the dust of that man’s worms which did live, but shall no more.  It may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it is asked.  This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the most irrecoverable death of all; and yet “to God, the Lord, belongs escape from death”; and by re-compacting this dust into the same body, and reanimating the same body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other death, but establish me into a life that shall never pass into any other death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself.  Though from the womb to the grave, and in the grave itself, we pass from death to death, yet, as Daniel says, The Lord our God is able to deliver us, and will deliver us.

Musical Selection

Prayer

O God,

glory of believers and life of the just,

by the death and resurrection of your Son, we are redeemed:

have mercy on your servants

and make them worthy to share the joys of paradise,

for they believed in the resurrection of the dead.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever. Amen.

Day 14

A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans (5:5-11)

Hope does not disappoint,
     because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
     through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
     died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
     though perhaps for a good person
     one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
     in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his Blood,
     will we be saved through him from the wrath.
Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
     we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
     how much more, once reconciled,
     will we be saved by his life.
Not only that,
     but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
     through whom we have now received reconciliation.

From a letter by Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade

One of my friends said the other day that in getting old it seemed to him that time passed with increasing rapidity, and that weeks seemed to him as short as days used to be, months like weeks, and years like months. As for that, what do a few years more or less signify to us who have to live and continue as long as God Himself? Those who have gone before us twenty or thirty years ago or even a century, or those who will follow us twenty or thirty years hence will neither be behindhand nor before others in that vast eternity, but it will seem to all of us as though we began it together. Oh! what power does not this thought contain to soften the rigours of our short and miserable life which, patiently endured, will be to our advantage.

A longer or a shorter life, a little more, or a little less pain, what is it in comparison with the eternal life that awaits us? for which we are making rapidly, incessantly, and which is almost in sight, for me especially who am as it were on the brink, and on the point of embarking. It is therefore time, I ought to say with St. Francis of Sales and Fr. Surin to prepare my small equipment for eternity.

Now the best equipment is that which appeared for us in the crosses which we bear lovingly, and the great sacrifices we make for God in doing His holy will. Nothing will console us more at the hour of death than our humble submission to the different arrangements of divine Providence in spite of the subtle imaginations of self-love often hidden under the most spiritual disguise and the most specious pretexts.

Musical Selection (Andrew Lloyd Weber)

Prayer

Lord God,

through the blessed passion of your Son,

grant to your servants

the pardon for which they always longed,

that they may behold you face to face

and enjoy for ever the vision of your glory.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever. Amen.