An Annual Death

In Stephen Crane's "The Red Badge of Courage" a young man battles his own fear and sense of unknowing as he prepares to enter his first engagement in war. Most of the story explores the inner identity and psychology of the protagonist as he wrestles within himself: is he a coward- will he run as the first shots are fired; or is he a hero- will he fearlessly enter the sortie and be willing to risk it all? This question cannot be answered beforehand by the private. He must remain ignorant of who he is until at long last he is finally thrust onto the battlefield and either finds himself fleeing or charging.

So it is with our situation as mortal humans. We too await a defining battle that, regardless of what we do to avoid it, will find us: our battle with death itself. Death casts its encompassing shadow across the entirety of our lives and, as we live (and simultaneously await it), we cannot emerge from our ignorance of how we are to grapple with it until it eventually comes.

As Christians, death is that moment that definitively completes the work begun in us at our baptism (c.f. Catechism of the Catholic Church #1682), yet we are not promised that that hour will find us prepared to embrace such a defining moment. Thus, because of our ignorance of how we shall personally meet death, the Church provides us with a mindset it has been taught by the Lord Himself- a mindset of being ever ready to die to ourselves. What season is more fitting for such a mindset to develop within us than Lent? Lent is that annual death the Church experiences as small dying acts (manifested through various sacrifices) occur in the lives of her members in preparation for Good Friday; the Good Friday of our Lord and the Good Friday of ourselves.

We observe in a plant well-pruned that diseased and dying branches, as well as healthy ones, are cut off so as to bring renewed vigor and maturity to the overall life of the plant. So too must we allow the unhealthy parts of our lives to be done away with and, on occasion, certain healthy goods be foregone, so as to produce a certain maturity in the life of our spirit. In so doing, each insignificant death we freely impose on ourselves (during Lent or outside of it) will act as a training exercise for that one significant death we shall encounter at the end of our life.

St. Josemaria Escriva speaks of a spiritual son of his experiencing what he referred to as the "drama of the butter" every time he was consciously buttering his morning toast (c.f. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, #205). Just as Crane's young soldier wrestled within himself before battle, Escriva's disciple would enter a minor skirmish every time he felt inordinately attracted to the idea of buttered bread. By occasionally abstaining from the butter as a small sacrifice offered to God, how much preparation was accomplished at that young man's breakfast table for his own eventual deathbed!

Perhaps that is why St. Paul spoke so mockingly at death: "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:55). The daily sacrifices the Apostle made during his life, which he united with the Lord's salvific sacrifice of the cross, gradually dulled the sting of his own eventual death. So too with us. We must heed the advice of the holy priest of Ambricourt: "One should die little by little...Get used to the idea" (Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest). Both the large and small sacrifices we make in this life will inevitably shape who we become in eternity because they will influence how we meet our final moments here in this world. It is just as the Lorax, the one who spoke for the truffula trees, once warned: "A tree falls the way it leans."

Socrates speaks of the work of the philosopher as a practice in the art of dying. How much more ought we Christians practice this art, for we follow a Teacher who was so good at it that it only lasted three days for Him.