A Reason to Keep On Living

What will be on your mind when you are dying? What will keep you alive? When will you be ready for death?

Deacon Michael served his practicum in the hospice program at Parkland Hospital, the local charity hospital, serving people who were expected to die. This hospice program did not exist to hasten their death. He could never explain what made him volunteer for this particular service, which was entirely optional. The practicum was a period at the end of his formation for the diaconate where he was to have a chance to put into practice what he had learned in his training. He was supposed to be there only for a few weeks. He continued to serve there for about eight years, which was far beyond the time in which most doctors could face the constant ministry to the dying before needing to rotate out to a different specialty.

written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

The Feast of All Souls

Life is hard.  And in many ways.  Yet, as you hear me say, I keep on talking about how the wonder of Jesus Christ is that He brings meaning to life.  He gives everything that we experience a meaning.  The meaning of the crucifixion.  The meaning of everything is designed so that we can take it as a means to be more holy, to prepare ourselves for eternal life.

The ultimate test that we face, each and every one of us will face, is death.  We are not immortal in the physical sense.  We're going to die.

And the question is, “Okay, when this final test comes, what happens?”  Jesus talks about it in the reading today: the separating of the sheep and the goats.  But, there's more.  He's telling us that everything that we do in our lives is a means to make ourselves holy, and specifically points to the relationship that we have with others.  To the Communion of Saints.  To the communion of souls, both living and dying.  There is a wholeness from which those people in Hell have separated themselves.  That is, and I have said this several days now, that, to me, is the ultimate definition of Hell.  To be separated from the love of God.

But we face in our own mortal lives, we would like to be immortal.  We would like our bodies to feel the way, and act the way they did when we were 23 or 24 or 25, when we were young and vigorous, and we knew we were the smartest thing on the world.  But it's not that.  It doesn't happen that way.  We get old, and we face the reality of death. 

The question then is, "We die.  Is that it?  That's it!  It's gone!  There is no more!”  We are like a chicken that has its head cut and is eaten for dinner.  Nobody remembers the chicken.  It's gone.  Are we exactly the same thing?  Is the reality of our existence total and complete futility?  Because if that's all we are, the only thing that constrains us from doing anything that we please is retribution from someone else.  But there'd be no morality.  There's nothing here.  Why would there be a morality?  The only thing I'd have to worry about is someone else inflicting pain on me.

God said, "No."  No, from the very beginning we are created in His own image and He is eternal.  We see in the first reading from Wisdom. If you listened to it you're going, "Wow, that wasn't a New Testament reading, that was an Old Testament reading!"  Because it was a recognition of the reality of the way God has chosen to define us and to put Himself in relationship with us, that there is something more.  There is recognition that there is something more to our lives than just being a mere flesh that's going to die.  There is something more that goes along with being made in the image of God. 

And that's one of the things that if you read the New Testament, the Old Testament in that context, you begin to understand how they are really struggling with this issue.  And then you see the answer to the question through Our Lord Jesus Christ.  His humanity.  His divinity. His Passion.  His death and His Resurrection.  All of a sudden it's kind of like, "Ah hah!  That's it! That's it!  There's the answer right there!"  We believe and we feel instinctively that there is something more.  It isn't simply a life that ends.  There is something more. 

And the answer, the answer is that Jesus gives our existence, our very mortality, a meaning.  That meaning comes to the promise of eternal life.  That meaning is the sacrifice on the cross, because each and every one of us is inadequate in ourselves to warrant to go to Heaven.  We cannot do it by ourselves.  We have to do it through Jesus Christ.  Through the grace that He has given through his death and resurrection.  The cross: there's the meaning of life.

And on a personal level, and I've mentioned this to you before, I have to bring you back to Parkland Hospital.  Parkland Hospital was an absolutely wonderful place.  I dealt with poor people, the poorest of the poor, who were dying.  They had lived lives that from the perspective of the world is they were poor.  They didn't have what you and I have.  Many of them probably never even had air conditioning, which is bad in Dallas.  Yet there was something special.  I always saw this.  I loved going to Parkland Hospital because I went, "My gosh, I get to see the presence of God, the face of God, and not die."  The face of God in the people who are dying, who are coming so close to God.  And the wonder.  It still amazes me.  The wonder just makes me go, "God, it makes sense!"

It's that when you deal with someone who is on the verge of dying, who has been experiencing extreme pain, and they're getting ready to die.  Forget everything you have seen in the media.  If you are a follower of Christ, it is a time of hope.  It is a time of love.  It isn't a time of, "Oh, I'm going to get this over with, you know, kill me."  No.

Because there is a single characteristic that I saw, and I've talked to a lot of people about this one, and many people came back and said, "Oh, that's what was happening when my mother died, or my father died, or my friend died."  It is a very simple thing, but it brings to light the wonder of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  And that is, that when someone comes to the recognition of the fact that they are going to die soon, a single thing, a single characteristic happens, and that is love.  Love of neighbor.

They become more concerned about other people, usually one person in particular, than anything else.  They come to live the gospel of Matthew that I just read.  They come to be concerned, not about themselves and the fact that they are going to die, but about someone else.  They come to live the second Great Commandment.  That becomes their fact of life.

And you hear about it and you know about it.  How many times have you heard the story of, "Well, my mom wouldn't die, or my father didn't die, and we couldn't understand, and then my brother finally made it [to see them]."  Or someone finally made it, and they had the peace that gave them the opportunity to die.  And that peace comes from the love they have for others.  That peace comes from the living out of the separating of the sheep and the goats.  That peace comes from the ultimate answer of loving God and loving neighbor that is provided to us by Our Lord Jesus Christ, by Christ crucified.  That's the meaning that comes to the ultimate part of our lives: the recognition of the commandment to love God and love our neighbor.

November 2, 2018