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 psychology and inner identity of the protagonist as he wrestles within himself with the question: Is he a coward who will run as the first shots are fired, or a hero who will 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 in flight or on the charge.

So it is, I think, with our situation as mortal humans. We too await a defining battle that, regardless of what we do to avoid it, will find us- a 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 rise above the ignorance of how we will grapple with it until it arrives.

As Christians, death is that moment that definitively completes the work begun in us at our baptism,[1] yet we are not promised that that hour will find us prepared to embrace such a defining experience. 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 mentality to develop within us than Lent?

Lent is that 'annual death' the Church rehearses, 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 each individual member.

We observe in a plant well-pruned that diseased and dying branches- as well as healthy ones at times- 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 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) acts as a mini training exercise for that one significant death we shall encounter at the end of our lives.

St. Josemaría Escrivá speaks of a man whom he admired, and that man’s experience of what Escrivá referred to as the "drama of the butter" every time the lad was consciously buttering his morning toast.[2] Just as Crane's young soldier wrestled within himself before battle, Escriva's acquaintance 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, it cannot be denied that immense preparation was being made for that young man's eventual deathbed at his very own breakfast table!

Perhaps this 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) for 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. “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus,” the great apostle tells us (Gal 6:17).

So too must it be with us. We must heed the advice of the holy priest of Ambricourt: "One should die little by little...get used to the idea,"[3] for both the large and small sacrifices we make in this life will inevitably shape who we become in eternity. They will most certainly influence how we meet our final moments here in this world because it is just as the Lorax, the one who spoke for the truffula trees, once warned: "A tree falls the way it leans."

Socrates spoke of the work of the philosopher as a practice in the art of dying.[4] How much more ought we Christians practice this art, for we follow a Teacher who was so good at it, it only lasted three days for Him.

[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1682.

[2] c.f. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, trans. Fundación Studium, Madrid (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1982), 33.

[3] Geroges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishes, 2002), 271.

[4] c.f. Plato, Phaedo.